The IVLA2022 conference I organized in August as Chair of the Local Organizing Committee just received the Special Mention as the Best Congress that took place in 2022 in Jyväskylä. Together with IVLA2022, only four events were awarded by the City of Jyväskylä and the Jyväskylä Convention Bureau. The press release from the award ceremony can be read HERE (in Finnish).
I am extremely proud of this recognition, especially that this was the first event of this kind that I was fully in charge of as a Chair. Enormous work was involved in planning and managing the whole event, and I would not make it without my wonderful team: Terhi, Rasa, Judit and Anne.
The IVLA 2022 Conference is just a week ahead. I am so grateful to the whole local organizing team – I would not be able to make it without Terhi Paakkinen, Judit Hahn, Rasa Zakeviciute and Anne Pitkänen-Huhta. I have learnt a lot during this time, both the good and the bad about organizing a conference. I hope that the attendees, both onsite and online, will enjoy the event and get as much as possible from it.
The 54th Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) will be organized at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland on 10-12 August 2022. It will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with the MultiLEAP (Multiliteracies for social participation and learning across the life span) profiling area of the University of Jyväskylä.
I am in charge of chairing the Local Organizing Committee. The call will be out in January 2022. Here is an overview of the conference theme (from almost ready CFP):
Connecting & Sharing – Envisioning the Futures of Visual Literacy
The past two years of ongoing restrictions caused by the worldwide pandemic have shown the importance of the visual in the everyday. Our lives have become more visual than ever before – from intense visual-sharing practices with relatives and friends, video conferencing and online education, to the visual presence of pandemic contexts in cityscapes, artistic practices in local communities, media feeds including charts and graphs, and creation of remixed images as a commentary to the crises. It has become clear that we increasingly need visual literacy in terms of image creation, reception and visual thinking. Therefore, in these current unpredictable (visual) times, we aim for the impossible – to envision the futures of visual literacy. We invite scholars, educators, students, and practitioners from all over the world to discuss theoretical insights and to share research, artistic, and educational practices around the concept of visual literacy and/or in dialogue with multimodality, multi-sensory experiences and multiliteracies. The concept of visual literacy has been used for over five decades in education, art, museum studies, information design, photography, and new literacies research, but currently we have reached the point when we need to (re)build and (re)discover the (new) connections between the variety of theories, disciplinary traditions and educational practices in visual literacy and beyond.
The view on the Jyväsjärvi Lake in the center of Jyväskylä with Ylistönrinne Campus in the background (photo source: Jyväskylän kaupunki promotional materials).
Joanna Łucja Kędra 