People travel for different reasons. For those who do so in order to make friends and experience more local culture than you’ll find on organised holidays, couch surfing is a cheap and potentially fulfilling way of travelling.

FOR TRAVELLERS on a budget, perhaps especially in places with fairly high costs of living like Finland, the biggest headache can often be finding accommodation which is possessed of a decent standard, while remaining affordable. If you want to spend a week exploring a Finnish city, for example, you could easily be looking at spending anywhere from 300-700 euros on accommodation alone, and potentially much more. This might mean you can thereafter for the duration of your stay...

Tough girls on retro roller skates in wild outfits – roller derby has landed in Finland, but what’s it all about exactly?

FISHNET STOCKINGS, fast speed, bruises and tattooed girls – these are some of the first images that come to mind when somebody mentions roller derby. But despite the image created on the sport most recently by Drew Barrymore’s film Roller Girl, it’s not all about tough looks and the will to hurt your opponent.

Becoming a rock star is possibly the number one dream of any teenager who has ever picked up a guitar. But the music business is no easy one to break into, the competition is tough and the countless number of aspiring bands makes becoming noticed almost impossible – or does it?

AS THE continued (and baffling) success of shows like X Factor and Pop Idol attests, not to mention the thousands of garage bands playing bad cover songs and trying to get gigs in their local bars, there are few industries which can compete with the music business for sheer allure. After all, who wouldn’t want to perform in front of adoring crowds, spend your days touring the world and making more money than you can...

Despite the overwhelming popularity of major social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the internet is also proving to be fertile ground for alternative social media.

SOCIAL media websites are undoubtedly the most groundbreaking communication innovation of the modern era. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are not only means of socialising but also provide a modern, convenient and efficient way of political campaigning, music distribution and citizen activism.

Abandoned houses, polar bears roaming the streets and arctic regions threatened by global warming - Mieland speaks out against negative news and clichéd images of Lapland through modern design filled with humour and political satire.

IN 2006, four students at the University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art and Design got together within the Arctic Pearls competition for innovative design concepts. The designer team of Katariina Imporanta, Marjo Remes, Erja Tuhkala and Ilkka Väyrynen did not win, but the foursome received an honourable mention for their fresh take on traditional Lappish elements. From that initial cooperation, Mieland was born.

Since the beginning of cinema film makers have revelled in depicting the annihilation of our species. Hollywood has certainly benefited greatly from this obsession. But has all of this thirst for carnage gotten out of control?

ACCORDING to Tero Koistinen from the Finnish Chamber of Films, there are currently five tales of the apocalypse being screened in cinemas, with many more to follow in the coming months. Ranging from art house (The Road), to animation (9) and popcorn blockbusters (2012), destroying the world seems to be the “in” thing this season.

“2012 alone was in the top ten list for eight weeks in Finland in 2009 and was the fifth highest grossing film internationally in that year,” notes Koistinen.

Playing second fiddle to the Bollywood dream 

India’s Bollywood is the largest film industry in the world, offering the tantalising lure of fortune and fame in a country where 220 million people live below the poverty line.

MUMBAI is where Indians come to get rich. With the average wage here three times the national average, the streets are bulging with the hustle of touts, cabs, people, markets and beggars, all engaged in a mad scramble for rupees.

The photographic art of ‘Don’t think, just shoot’

Recent interest in old Soviet cameras has sparked an entire art movement: the Lomography movement. One little camera in particular, the LOMO LC-A, has revolutionised photography ideology, serving as a reminder of what art should be about.

RUSSIAN manufacturers Leningrad Optical Mechanical Amalgamation (LOMO) first produced their Kompakt Automat (LC-A) in 1982. Allegedly it was originally intended for espionage, but the quality of the images meant that the technology was sold to the public instead.

Driven forward by technological innovation and spectacle, the next revolution in modern cinema is heralded by the progress of digitalisation and a renewed interest in 3D motion pictures.

After several promising attempts by a string of Hollywood studios, the release dates of a spate of films utilising enhanced 3D technology have appeared on the horizon. While Pixar’s latest animated feature Up was able to add a compelling plot to computer-generated 3D animation, the true landmark production is about to be released, ushering in a new age of 3D.

Amidst the acres of paper, beer cups, abandoned tents and mounds of rubbish left behind by patrons, how responsible are music festivals in the current haemorrhaging of the earth’s natural resources?

On the weekend of 15 August 1969, an estimated 400,000 people from all corners of America descended on a 600-acre dairy farm in New York State to attend the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Forever etched in history as the pinnacle of the hippie movement and the cultural peak of the love parade, it set the benchmark for all other music festivals to follow.

What is often overlooked, when seen through rose-tinted glasses, was how the ineptitude of the organisers also created the benchmark...