Challenge Solving Course Pilot I – Laurea University
Spring 2017
19 social services bachelor students from Laurea UAS took part in a HEISE pilot project in Keski-Uudenmaan Sopimuskoti ry –association as a part of their Creativity and functionality in customer work -course. Sopimuskoti provides mental health services for mental health rehabilitees. Association was originally founded by family members of mental health rehabilitees in the 1980’s. Currently it employs 15 professionals from social and health care field and their services reach approximately 100 rehabilitees weekly.
Sopimuskoti and Laurea agreed the aims and goals for the pilot project together. Arts related methods were seen as a tool to strengthen the interaction skills of the rehabilitees. Students planned and carried out 6 workshops: drama, visual arts, music, creative writing and two workshops on physical exercise. Each workshop consisted of 4-5 sessions that took place in April-May 2017. Workshops were attended by 50 rehabilitees.
As an outcome workshops created positive impact. Rehabilitees were able to express their thoughts and feelings through creative activities. They supported and encouraged each other to take part and try out new things. Doing things together with the students created joy and strengthened the feeling of belonging not just to the surrounding community, but to the society as whole.
Using arts related methods can strengthen the sense of belonging not only on an individual level, but on the society’s level.
Challenge Solving Course Pilot II – Sibelius Academy
Autumn 2016 – Winter 2017
Since the beginning of HEISE project, the Sibelius Academy of Uniarts Helsinki has piloted challenge-solving process within two different topics and course contents: audience development and cultural planning. The course on audience development involved different types of arts organizations outside the Metropolitan area such as an art museum, a theatre, a club type of music venue, and a children’s culture centre. The students engaged with the professionals from these organizations to create an audience development plan. In the process of creating audience development plans, the students had to familiarize with the cultural and organizational (incl. strategic) contexts of the places to properly adjust their ideas and plans into these specific contexts. Whereas these were more like one-time engagements with the challenge-owners, the cultural planning course started a long-term engagement with the city of Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. The city is committed to developing a cultural district of Töölönlahti area and the arts management students were engaged in the beginning to study the expectations of nearly 30 institutions operating in the area. The students interviewed the directors of these institutions and wrote summarizes of the interviews. This turned out to be a really win-win situation for both the city of Helsinki and the students, and there are plans how to make this into a long-term collaboration between the arts management students and the city.
