Aisha Korpela
Helsinki, Uusimaa
Aisha Korpela is a dance and movement therapist (ERI), an artist and an expert in cultural wellbeing. She has worked in the performing arts and across a wide range of fields, including cultural wellbeing, psychiatry, mental health and work addressing violence. She served as Artistic Director of the School of Performing Arts from 2018 to 2023.
Korpela works in particular with clients who have experienced violence, crises and insecurity. Her core expertise lies in body-based and trauma-informed participatory art methods for women and children who have experienced sexual and intimate partner violence. Korpela also works with professional artists, such as actors, musicians and dancers, using psychotherapeutic body and movement work, and gives lectures and training on the aforementioned themes.
All her work – as an artist, trainer and therapist – is grounded in embodied thinking and experiential approaches. Central to her art is a trauma-informed approach that respects the body’s memory.
Korpela’s work operates at the intersection of the performing arts, community-based processes and embodied artistic research. Artistic thinking remains at the heart of it all: central to this is the body as a vessel of experiences, and art as a space where what lies beneath the surface can also become visible.
“In my work, I seek forms for experiences that often lie beyond the reach of language. As an artist, my aim is to make the multidimensional nature of human experience visible.”
Customer references
PARTNERS:
The Federation of Shelters and Safe Houses
YLE
The A-Clinic Foundation
EHYT ry
Seinäjoki City Theatre
Seinäjoki Art Hall
The Arts and Culture Agency
The Regional Council of South Ostrobothnia
Seinäjoki City Cultural Services
Seinäjoki City
Ilmajoki City
Lappajärvi Municipality
Capital City Shelters Association (Tilkka, Pellas and Hertta Shelters)
Monika Women’s Association (Mona Shelter)
Mannerheim Child Welfare Association, Helsinki Branch (Sophie Mannerheim Shelter
MLL Safety Net)
LECTURES & TRAINING COURSES:
2026 Culture Action Europe, Brussels, lecture on “Working with trauma-affected beneficiaries in culture and health”
2026 Federation of Emergency and Shelter Homes,
“Bodily methods in working with clients who have perpetrated domestic violence” – training course
2026 Federation of Emergency and Shelter Homes,
training course on “Art as a tool for change”
2025 Children’s Culture Forum, Vaasa, lecture on “Safety through art”
2025 Paediatric Pain School, Tuohilampi,
“The Potential of Art Therapies to Help Traumatised People” – lecture
RECENT PROJECTS:
SAFETY THROUGH ART, 2025–2027, Helsinki
– An art therapy project addressing violence, working with clients at women’s refuges.
COMMON RHYTHM 2025–2026, Helsinki
– A preventative violence intervention project utilising participatory art methods and art therapy.
‘FAREWELL TO THE GIRL IN MOURNING’ performance, 2025
TANGOMARKKINAT, 2025
– Physical and artistic mentoring at a tango singing competition.
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