On 5 January 2025, a group of our members enjoyed a performance of Christmas Comes to Moominvalley at Jacksons Lane, in Highgate, north London, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the global phenomenon of the Moomins in the year of the 50th birthday of Jacksons Lane in the beautiful Edwardian Grade II listed former Wesleyan Methodist church.

Christmas Comes to Moominvalley is Jackson Lane’s new adaptation of Tove Jansson’s classic tale, The Fir Tree. The Moomins are woken up from their winter sleep to be told that ‘Christmas’ is coming. The only trouble is, the puzzled Moomins have no idea who, or what ‘Christmas’ is…

The audience included all ages and it was especially lovely to see how excited the youngest members of the audience were. The performance of circus acrobats was also breath taking.

After the performance we had drinks in the foyer and a tour of the building with the Artistic Director Adrian Berry.

On 14 January 2025, we enjoyed a film projection and talk by Kirsten Adkins, a filmmaker based in Glasgow, of her film Singing the Wooden House.

A journey to a border zone, in search of a wooden house, provokes questions on selfhood and national identity, place and belonging and the lasting implications of flight and return.

Rajavyöhyke translates from Finnish to English as border zone. Signs that line an 800-mile border, cross the forests and lakes of Finland and Russia. They operate as a modest indication of who belongs, and where. In April 2023 I travelled with a camera to a wooden house near the border town of Imatra, in the region of Carelia. The area was fought over during the Winter War between 1939 and 1940, and the Continuation War between 1941 and 1944. My mother and her family, who lived in the house, were neither Finnish nor Russian. They were exiled to Sweden, settled in Stockholm and they never returned: some 400,000 people were evacuated as the border between Finland and the Soviet Union shifted. With a new war in Europe, rajavyöhyke articulates an increasing tension between opposing geopolitical forces. This year, Finland joined NATO. Sanctions were issued against Russia and the wooden house now owned by a family from St Petersburg is once again abandoned. In November 2023, at the time of writing, Finland closed the entire border to Russia, for the first time in its history. There is an unsettling stillness and marked absence of people near the rajavyöhyke. A few voices carry across the lakes on the border – it is unclear whether they are Russian or Finnish.

Kirsten Adkins is an artist and filmmaker who has a professional background in documentary television. Kirsten’s filmmaking and writing practice is concerned with stories of home, belonging and migration. She is currently working on a forthcoming edited anthology (Routledge 2024), and curated project space that is concerned with ways that artists and filmmakers use hybrid practices in film, poetry, song and dance to provoke questions on place, identity and belonging. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by her work in news and factual programmes at the BBC where she worked as a producer and director. Kirsten has exhibited, presented, published, and broadcast nationally and internationally. She teaches filmmaking and artists moving image at the University of Glasgow. See also:  Kirsten Adkins