Me, myself and Lights On!

Hey all! I am Maaria, cultural management student from HUMAK Turku. I have been working with the Lights On! project from autumn 2015. This project was connected to our innovation course in 2015-2016. During the course we innovated some new tools for the project. First task was to think ’how to make Lights On! more known’ using different kind of channels. My group worked with social media and we innovated an event called Race On! Race On! was held in April 2016 in Turku. We had three teams, four cars, four locations and a quite foggy day. The main idea with Race On! was, that Lights On! could arrange this kind of race trough all eight project sites. Here are more information about the Race On!:

Race On! is a competition where the teams race against one another from one location to another. They will perform different tasks on each location and will get a hint to the next one after they have successfully performed the task. The fastest team wins the whole race. During the race the teams will document the competition on their social media channels for example Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. The idea of the race is to bring more visibility to the historical locations that are part of the Lights On! -project via social media. https://www.facebook.com/raceonfinland/

After the innovation course and Race On!,  somehow, I found myself in a situation, where I signed my thesis contract with Lights On! 😀 And that was just a start…

So, now I am currently working with my thesis. The main point is planning lightning festivals which will be arrange on 26th of August this year. These festivals are part of the Lights On! project, part of the nature day 2017 in Finland and related also with the Suomi100 year of celebration events. These festivals will be arrange at every Finnish project site on the same day 26th of August: Rapola fort hill, Kuusisto Bishop’s casle ruins, Vallisaari island and Raasepori Castle.

Main working methods in my thesis is benchmarking and developing ideas together with different kind of groups from every project site. We have arranged workshops and meetings together with Nina Luostarinen and Aino von Boehm where we have brainstormed and developed any kind of ideas for the events with local entrepreneurs and other local operators.

Right now the situation is this: hundreds of singular ideas for the events but also few very good ’large-scale’ frames and red wires for the events! J The next step is to pick up those goldest ideas and focus to create the frames to the events.

And now, back to the work. See you soon, because I have something to tell you about how to write of the Partner progress report for Lights On! It is a one kind of a jungle.. So, see you there!

 

Maaria Toskala