Five members of the Australian sauna community are heading to Oslo to learn, contribute and build stronger international connections for the movement back home.
This September, five members of the Australian Sauna Association community will travel to Oslo for the International Sauna Congress.
Paul Strasser, Naomi Gregory, Drew Neiht, James Mugavin and I will be joining sauna associations, researchers, builders, operators, designers and enthusiasts from around the world for three days of talks, conversations and, naturally, a fair amount of sauna.
For a young association on the other side of the world, this matters.
Australia's sauna movement is growing quickly, but we are not the first country to work through the questions that come with that growth.
How should a national association support a rapidly developing industry?
How do we help new operators establish strong, sustainable businesses?
How do we protect sauna culture without becoming rigid or exclusionary?
How can sauna become part of public life, rather than something available only through private homes, gyms and expensive wellness facilities?
There are associations and community organisations around the world that have already spent years working through these questions. Oslo gives us the opportunity to meet them properly, understand what has worked, hear what has not, and build relationships we can continue when we return home.
Australia on the program
We are particularly proud that James Mugavin has been selected as a speaker at the Congress. James is a Melbourne-based architect, designer, artist and filmmaker whose work explores bathing culture through architecture, landscape and film.
He has designed and built a number of saunas and has spent years considering how sauna can respond meaningfully to Australian landscapes, communities and ways of life.
Having an Australian voice on the program is significant.
We do not want Australia to simply copy a Finnish, Norwegian, German or British model. We have much to learn from countries with deeper sauna traditions, but the work here must eventually respond to our own climate, planning systems, communities and relationship with public space.
James's contribution is part of that conversation.
We are going to Oslo to listen as much as we speak.
What we hope to bring home
Paul will be looking closely at how other national associations are structured, funded and governed. Naomi will be connecting with people working in Aufguss, sauna-master education and professional development.
Drew and James will be part of conversations around design, building, materials, public access and creating saunas that belong to their setting. I will be meeting with association leaders and other organisations to better understand how the ASA can become genuinely useful to Australian bathers, operators, builders, researchers and emerging sauna businesses.
None of us expects to return with a perfect blueprint. Australia is geographically large, our industry is still small, and much of the work will need to be developed here through trial, collaboration and the experience of our own members.
But we should not have to solve every problem from scratch.
What should we take with us?
We also want this trip to represent more than the five people travelling. Before we leave, we would like to hear from ASA members about the conversations you want us to have.
Perhaps you are trying to open a sauna and want to understand how councils in other countries approach planning and waterfront access. Perhaps you are interested in Aufguss training, sauna research, insurance, ventilation, construction standards, community ownership or operating a small mobile sauna sustainably.
You may already know an international operator, researcher or association you think we should meet.
Start a conversation in the member forums and tell us what you would like us to investigate. Where possible, we can connect members directly with people working on similar questions overseas, or bring useful contacts and knowledge back into the ASA network. Let us know in the member forums.
We will also share what we learn during and after the Congress. Not simply photographs from impressive saunas, although there will probably be a few of those, but practical notes, introductions and ideas that can help the movement here.
Thinking beyond Australia
The Australian Sauna Association exists to support sauna in Australia. But doing that properly means thinking internationally.
Sauna culture has always moved through relationships: between generations, communities, builders, bathers and countries. Australia has a great deal to learn, and increasingly, something of its own to contribute.
We are still a young association. We do not yet have all the structures, funding or answers we want.
What we do have is a seat within the international sauna community, an Australian speaker on the Congress program, and five people prepared to make the journey and start building the relationships that may shape what comes next.
Tell us what you think we should take to Oslo. We will do our best to bring something useful home.
Nikita Miltiadou
President, Australian Sauna Association
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