In the post-1945 world, Finnish schools were appointed the new task of fostering democratic values and educating peace-loving citizens. By exploring postwar art and environmental education in Helsinki, understood as means to expand children’s emotional competences, Malinen and Vahtikari provide a unique analysis of the ways educators, children and urban space co-produced the nation in everyday (school) practices. Malinen and Vahtikari show the importance of fully acknowledging the spatial, material and sensory aspects of emotions when discussing children’s emotional formation and historical manifestations of everyday nationalism. To illustrate the adult-children co-creation of different ideas, practices and emotions with respect to the national community, the chapter uses two sets of contemporary sources: educators’ writings and children’s drawings.

The chapter introduces the concept of “lived nation” as a new perspective on studying nations and nationalism. By employing theories and methodologies from the histories of experience and emotions, the authors suggest a framework for analyzing how nations form and renew contexts for experiencing and feeling, and how the nations themselves are constructed in this process. Experiences and emotions are seen as mediators between different personal, social, cultural, and political spheres. Linked to discussions on everyday nationalism, personal nationalism, and national indifference, the chapter points toward future steps to be taken in nationalism studies, steps which will pay growing attention to historically varying bodily, material, and spatial contexts of experiencing.