workshop the audience learned about the musical tradition of one of these cultures and had an opportunity to try the instruments themselves. At the end of each workshop the musicians and audience members played together in a jam session.
The Baye Fall and Mouride communities (1998–ongoing) Helinä Rautavaara was a member of the Senegalese Baye Fall brotherhood and travelled between Finland and Senegal several times during the 1980s. Members of the community have visited the Museum, mostly during 2018– 2019, for archival research, and to curate the Senegalese collection for the Museum’s new collection exhibition, which opened in August 2019. As a result of this collaboration the Museum has given copies of the archival photographs to the community in Senegal. The Museum staff visited the community gatherings and together they produced a short film for the collection exhibition.
International capoeira community (2005–ongoing) Helinä Rautavaara researched the martial art of capoeira while travelling in Brazil, 1963–4 and 1971. During her travels she met the most famous capoeira teachers, Mestres, of the time. She interviewed them, took photographs and recorded their capoeira events. In the 1980s, the Brazilian Mestre Samara (Claudio Lemos) based in the Netherlands, met Helinä Rautavaara in Finland, researched her collections and informed the other Mestres around the world about them. Since then our museum has hosted several visitors from Brazil and the international capoeira community. As part of these exchanges we have facilitated archival research and organised capoeira workshops in our museum space. In addition, we produced a video film together with Mestre Cobra Mansa (Cinézio Feliciano Peçanha) for the collection exhibition.
Arooska – Somali Wedding (2009–2014) Between 2009 and 2014, the Museum also carried out many diverse projects together with members of the local Somali community. Rather than display Somalian material culture, which the Museum did not have in its 144