Tampere aims to become the forerunner of media education – what is it about?

At the end of the year 2020, some exciting information was published: “Tampere^[i] will be developed to become the forerunner of participatory storytelling, media education, and new media” (article in Finnish). Collaborators are the city of Tampere, Tampere Universities, and Yle[ii].

What does it mean in practice when one locally aspires to earn the title of a forerunner in media education? 

I investigated this by talking with two people who took part in the collaboration projects in different ways. Panu Pokkinen is the director of Sports and events unit in Yle. Working at Tampere University’s Faculty of Education and Culture as a lecturer, Reijo Kupiainen has a lot of experience in researching and teaching media education. He has also taken part in various collaborative projects in the field of media education – some of these with Yle. 

According to Pokkinen, a great outcome of the partnership would be the successful creation of collaborative projects and environments, where one can try storytelling, new forms of media, and different ways of inclusion in an authentic way. In active use, Medialaboratorio (translates to Media laboratory) and Pikku Kakkonen’s Mediamaailma could be considered successful ventures of that kind. In an ideal situation, the internal interest towards the venture would be so extensive that it would be possible to select the best contributors to the best projects. Pokkinen thinks the most important is that the projects are genuinely cooperative and free from organizational limits. To Yle it is also important that the venture is built to include Yle on a national level rather than be limited to Yle Tampere’s department alone. 

Kupiainen emphasises that co-operation within Tampere Universities now involves many different sciences. He is involved in practical collaboration projects himself, which he attends to as a part of his work in research and teaching. For example, specialising in developing critical reading skills, the CRITICAL project (website in Finnish) investigates how escape room concepts and mystery-solving can be used in teaching. One of the university’s courses has been utilized and customized according to the goals set during the collaboration. Kupiainen is also a member of an expert group that works in Pikku Kakkonen’s Mediamaailma (translates to Media World) project, which aims to create and develop an exciting environment for 3- to 13-year-old children, which would ultimately help to strengthen their media creation and media literacy skills.

One significant and concrete form of co-operation between Yle and Tampere University launches in autumn 2021. At this time Sustainable Digital Life master’s program starts, which will be developed with Yle.

Clearly a lot is already going on, but where are we headed? In what kind of situation we should be in three years so one can say that the partnership has progressed as it should have?

According to Pokkinen, a great outcome of the partnership would be the successful creation of collaborative projects and environments, where one can try storytelling, new forms of media, and different ways of inclusion in an authentic way. In active use, Medialaboratorio (translates to Media laboratory) and Pikku Kakkonen’s Mediamaailma could be considered successful ventures of that kind. In an ideal situation the internal interest towards the venture would be so extensive that it would be possible to select the best contributors for the best projects. Pokkinen thinks the most important is that the projects are genuinely cooperative and free from organizational limits. To Yle it is also important that the venture is built to include Yle on national level rather than be limited to Yle Tampere’s department alone.

Kupiainen views the issue mainly from the point of view of teaching and the students. “When we are developing media education studies, the students could plan its content and pilot its activities. This way the students could form a solid relationship with practical media education”, Kupiainen describes. In this venture, Yle’s production resources and environments could offer opportunities that would otherwise be impossible to arrange for students. Additionally, Kupiainen hopes that the venture could inspire something that would appeal in a genuine and diverse way to the people in the city.

Contemporary ventures in Tampere Universities and Yle have naturally also been international. Pokkinen hopes, that the collaboration would create something that would interest cities and academies across the world. “That we have built an idea that everybody wants to ‘steal’. That is how you measure one’s prospect as a forerunner.” Pokkinen summarises.

Saara Salomaa

The writer works at KAVI (National Audiovisual Institute) as a media education specialist. She is also a dissertation researcher in Tampere University, a member of Pikku Kakkonen’s Mediamaailma’s expert group, and an ex-citizen of Tampere.

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[i] Tampere is a city in western part of Finland and the third most-populous individual municipality in Finland.

[ii] Yle is an abbreviation from Yleisradio Oy (translation: general radio), Finland’s national public broadcasting company.