“After school” TV program presents Finnish partners

Two episodes of “After school” program devoted to work of Finnish participants of Matka.ru project aired in February 2014 on TNT-Onego channel. Episodes were prepared by school students – young TV-journalists of Doroga youth union. They filmed during their trip to Joensuu, Kontiolahti and Oulu in January 2014 within Matka.ru project.

Episode from 10 February 2014 featured reporters’ trip to Joensuu and its youth life. They investigated whether young people found museums interesting, visited a girls-only house, watched rehearsal of senior students’ ball dance and found out why a new youth club was called “Whisper”.

Episode from 17 February 2014 was devoted to Joensuu unit of School of Eastern Finland. The school specializes in teaching Russian and has the most experience in cross-border cooperation. Reporters from  “After school” program visited a Talent show organized by the student board of the school. Later they were on an unusual class called “Working with iPad”.

There will be new episodes of “After school” program devoted to Matka.ru project  in March on TNT-Onego. The audience of the channel amounts to 400 000 viewers which is more than half of Karelian population. Citizens of Petrozavodsk, Prionezhsky, Pryazhinsky and Kondopozhsky district watch TNT-Onego.

“After school” program is produced by the youth team of Doroga youth union and airs Monday at 19.50 on TNT-Onego. 

Episode from 10.02.2014. Youth backstage of Joensuu





Episode from 17.02.2014. School of Eastern Finland

Training of cultural managers in north-west Russia - lessons learnt in project KA425

The development of cultural and creative industries (CCI) has been a topic in policy discussions for over several decades now. The approaches to CCI have been gradually broadened and the understanding of its influences has become more complex, but is still evolving. It has been continuously claimed that CCI are among the main drivers to promote smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in most regions and cities. It looks that some regions in North-West Russia have been very good at tapping into this extraordinary potential as a way to promote socio-economic development, while many others have not been making most of this potential.

Judging by the talks of the stakeholders, from both government and industry, there is a desire for quick wins – the magic bullet of a grant, tax cut or promotional campaign that will give them the spurt of growth they want. But what the creative sector really needs is quite different, and more boring. The relevant decision-makers talk about the things that most excite them: how to encourage more risk taking and an entrepreneurial culture; the importance of visionary business leaders; and of course, the constant refrain that we need new business models. But do we really need these?

It appears that we need the things that policymakers and business groups don’t talk enough about: high quality, affordable education, lifelong learning support for the professionals working in CCI, and continuous professional development programmes. We need businesses and educational providers to work together – not simply to churn out graduates to slot into jobs, but to equip them with the kinds of in depth skills that can be applied and built upon in the workplace.

Nowadays in the North-West Russia emerging markets for leisure and arts business have created demand for the professionals running business in the field of CCI, including but not limited to event managers, media producers, brand and image promoters, cultural tourism specialists. Until late 90-s most cultural managers in the NW Russia were trained during the Soviet period and some still operate with attitudes entrenched in that time. For cultural managers accustomed

to non-competitive total state funding, when all commercial activity was illegal and marketing unnecessary, it is difficult to adapt to a climate of enterprise and funding mixes, or to understand the notion of the mission-driven but self-sustaining organisation.

The “decision-making capacity” needed to run a cultural enterprise was not enabled in the Soviet period because the policy-making process was separated from management, so integrated approaches of policy/marketing/management are not established among senior staff. It is also difficult for young cultural entrepreneurs to acquire this expertise except by trial and error, since a distinction between policy and management is maintained in Russian cultural management courses today. The impact of these problems is possibly more apparent in the Republic of Karelia and in its remote territories, where the cultural sector professionals seem to be far from the latest trends of Moscow and St Petersburg.

Apparently, there are few degree programmes in the higher education institutions working in the NW Russia that would train professionals for the regional CCI. (Petrozavodsk State University is about to get a license in 2014 for a running such a programme for the first time in Karelia). Although, a significant progress has been achieved in capacity building for training of professionals for CCI, there is a lot to be done to ensure that the education and training mechanism is well in place and is “tuned” to support the CCI development.

The partnership between employers and education institutions could be a more powerful alliance for supporting CCI, and for encouraging the fusion of new technologies and creative practices. Accredited courses signal high quality in teaching, inter-disciplinarily and industry-relevance. Alongside these training courses the specific institutions should be acknowledged not only for their excellence in teaching, but also recognising relationships with industry that offer degree programmes and joint research and development projects between academics and business. It seems that the key is to facilitate these partnerships encourage industry professionals to be seconded to education institutions to strengthen these links and encourage innovation, links of best practices and new approaches within academia.

There is clearly no ”one-size-fits-all” strategy in the field of CCI and it is up to each and every region to find its own way based on its own assets, but the author is convinced that the good practices accumulated within the Russian-Finnish cross-border cooperation projects can serve as examples and inspiration for regional and local authorities.

Denis Pyzhikov

Head of development Karelian regional institute of management, economics

and law of Petrozavodsk State University

Dancing photos

On the 7-th of February 2013 Karelian College of Culture and Arts opened a photo exhibition «Dancing whirlpool» in the hall of the Board of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Karelia. Works of the Finnish photographer Egon Tiika are presented at the exhibition. The most impressive moments of the premiere in Outokumpu are presented at the exhibition.

The photo exhibition is organized in the framework of the project «Dancing whirlpool» which is being implemented with the support of Cross-Border Cooperation Programme within European Instrument of Neighbourhood and Partnership «Karelia». The main idea of the project is development cross border cooperation in the field of contemporary dance art, developing a network of contacts between educational institutions in the sphere of culture and involving  children and youth to participation in cultural events. Together with their partner - North-Karelian Professional College in Outokumpu (Finland), Karelian and Finnish students and teachers created the choreographic performance which was shown in Petrozavodsk, Segezha, Kostomuksha, Outokumpu and Kuopio. 

Oksana Konopleva 

Some aspects of the Development of Cultural Tourism

One of the very first activities of the Contemporary Old City Project in North Karelia, Finland was to make an inventory of cultural and historical sites in the region. Naturally, many already existing channels of touristic information were used as sources of information. Furthermore, some materials produced by regional authorities were utilised, too. For example, the Regional Land Use Plan (Regional Council of North Karelia) offered detailed information about built cultural environments as well as culturally and historically valuable buildings.

The inventory work resulted in a list of 500 objects in North Karelia. The selected approach to culture and history was wide, and objects related to handicraft, arts, music, theatre, local history, history of businesses, history of transportation, religion, galleries, food, statues and monuments, museums, architecture, etc. were equally taken into account. All sites were listed, firstly, by municipalities, and secondly, by thematic content. Only after this process was it possible to describe the core content of our region’s history and culture, and place the sites in this overall picture of culture tourism in our region. 

How will this material be used in the development of culture tourism in North Karelia? The inventory was exactly what was needed to produce background information for the Culture Tourism section on the revamped VisitKarelia.fi website, which will be launched on 16 Jan 2014 at the Nordic Travel Fair in Helsinki. Even before decision on how to structure the Culture section in practice, it was found extremely useful to benchmark how the same thing has been done elsewhere. For example, the VisitEstonia website is an impressive example with interesting story-based content and a strong thematic approach. For sure, we are not able to offer tourism information in 14 languages as the Estonians currently do, but this example was in many ways worthy of deeper familiarisation.

Tourism is growing and the amount of Russian tourists has been increasing in Finland, including North Karelia, South Karelia and the Helsinki area. There are also many regions, for example, in Estonia and Latvia, which are now actively investing in the development of culture tourism products and services in general, and for the Russian market in particular. Why not exchange experiences and share knowledge with tourism developers, who are facing similar challenges and searching for feasible solutions? Personally, I was lucky to be among those whose application to the Nordic-Baltic Mobility Programme of the Nordic Council of Ministries was approved this year. The grant enabled one week’s study trip to Tallinn, Riga and Cesis.  

From the study trip, I returned with a suitcase full of touristic materials, many new contact details to be added to the network, plenty of new experiences to be shared and a lot of new ideas to be implemented in our own ENPI project. In many discussions with Estonian and Latvian colleagues, it was continuously emphasised that the culture sector needs investments and development initiatives, even in economically tough periods. 

In many regions the role of tourism in the regional economy is growing. At the same time, the structure and volume of culture services are under political discussion. How can a sufficient range of cultural services be maintained or even improved in this complicated economic situation? In practice, how well can the expectations of culture tourists be met at weekends, if, for example, museums are closed on Saturdays and Sundays because of municipal budget cuts? It is a question of strategic decisions, product and service development with innovative solutions, intensified productisation, etc., and first and foremost, a clear understanding of the importance of tourism for the regional economy and importance of cultural content to the regional tourism offering.

Erja Lehikoinen

Project Manager, City of Joensuu

Contemporary Old City: Enhancing Cultural Tourism across the Border

What is a result?

...and how does it differ from an objective? These are two very relevant questions, as these concepts seem interchangeable in some projects. Some funding programmes use slightly different terminology, e.g. outcomes and outputs, which causes further confusion. Sometimes people talk about impact and relevance, and the list of esoteric words goes on and on. It is difficult to keep up with all these terms, but unfortunately they cannot be completely ignored. But once one understands the logic behind these terms, life becomes easier. When one has grasped what a project is and how it works, the terms are no longer a very big problem.

So why is the definition of result important? Because it is an indispensable piece in a logical chain which constitutes a project, and if you do not know how it differs from the next item in the chain, you cannot fully appreciate the way in which projects are supposed to bring about their effects. 

Here’s how it works:

Activities produce results;

Results enable specific objectives;

Specific objectives contribute to overall objectives.

Consider the verbs that I have used here. None of them imply a fully automatic mechanism, which would take us to the next step. All advancement from activities towards objectives requires some amount of work. Usually results follow activities with a little work, but specific objectives are not necessarily fulfilled even if the intended results are produced – even if a lot of work is put into the process. What is more, overall objectives may fail even though specific objectives are fully attained and the project is a complete success. Basically this means that a project may fail miserably although all activities have been implemented as planned. 

To further illustrate how it works, here’s a simplified example:

Project A brings together a group of experts so as to make use of their knowledge in the project (activity);

a handbook of best practices is produced based on this knowledge (result);

knowledge/ability among the target groups is increased (specific objective);

there is an increase of X % in statistics on the regional level (overall objective).

Even if the activity is successfully implemented, the book still needs to be written. The project manager, with the help of his/her project assistant and the experts, writes the book and gets it published, which is a tangible result that makes possible for the target groups to increase their skill level. But the specific objective will not be fulfilled until a sufficient number of members from the target groups have read the book. This would be the hardest thing to accomplish in this project, since you cannot force people to read books. If the project publishes the book but nobody reads it, the project has failed. The overall objective is obviously affected by a very considerable number of factors other than the project but the project is expected to contribute to it.

The idea which can be extrapolated from this example is that results are more tangible than objectives. They also do not automatically guarantee any benefit and are not ends in themselves. The book is not useful until it is read and it should not be the goal of the project. In our example above it is also easier to measure the result than the specific objective: the book either exists or it does not, but how do you measure whether people have read it? And if they read it, did they gain any insights or new ideas? What could be a good indicator for learning?

Let us leave these questions unanswered for now. If you want to hear the answers, make sure you attend our one of coming thematic seminars!

Toni Saranpää

Programme Coordinator

Health in focus - obesity worries women in Petrozavodsk

I'm really happy that the Health in Focus project started a group focused on health not only in Joensuu but also in Petrozavodsk. The group at Joensuu is called Renovation Group, the Petrozavodsk group is called Health Group but both are similar in their goals and activities: to encourage people towards healthier way of life.

This is the first time this kind of group is organized in Petrozavodsk and there were over 30 applicants to the group. Only one third of the applicants could be selected to participate. Majority of the applicants were overweight middle-aged women. They considered the group as a lifeboat, their last chance to improve their quality of life.

There are also three men among the applicants. They applied mostly because their wives asked or told them to. At the moment men at the republic of Karelia are not that eager to tell about their health problems in public.

I'm really proud that I'm not just an ordinary member of the group but also one of the leaders of the group. My Finnish colleagues have emphasized that the leader doesn't have to be a model but I'd like to be a role model for the desperate and help them to live a healthier life. 

This goal encourages me towards healthier life style. I don't smoke or use alcohol neither do I eat greasy food. However, my BMI is at the moment not as good as it should be. Love for biscuits and buns and for tea with pastries combined with minor exercising has increased my weight and my health has downgraded fast. Since 2008 my blood pressure has been high and I often have headaches.

Doctor order medicine and told that I have to take them till the end of my life. Last December the result of cholesterol test was poor and the digits on the scale were 93. I decided it's time to do something. 

Since December I've walked to work. I live in the suburbs and my workplace is located at the central Petrozavodsk, near the Onega Lake - the distance is over 4 kilometres. I don't care about the weather - even when it was minus 28 degrees in January I continued to walk. I believe active exercise is the best way to fight obesity. 

In the summer I spent my lunch breaks using the outdoor gym by the Onega Lake. Besides exercising I paid more attention on not eating that much sugar or pastries. My weight went down by 13 kilos. At the moment my goal is to lose 20 kilos. Only then will I be as fit and healthy as I was when I was 25 years old.

One of my everyday hobbies is now nordic walking. I bought the sticks from Joensuu in September when the participants of the Health Group went there for a study tour. I hope to find companions from the group. 

My motivation for living healthy is very strong: I have promised for my husband that on his birthday 14th December my weight will be 68 kilos. If I lose I have to buy him a rubber boat for fishing. I'm not used to lose, I want to win and improve my health.         

Marina Tolstyh

Writer is a reporter at Karjalan Sanomat and a leader of the Health in Focus projects Health Group