With a few tiny tweaks Helsinki has all the ingredients to be the living lab for the future of cities. “Each resident of Helsinki has the right to feel they are a true Helsinki citizen and to do something significant for their community. In Helsinki, it is easy to be of help to others.” – Quote […]

Following American news for two weeks showed numerous examples how diversity is changing the way we live from Disney princesses to Donald Trump. The main Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat wrote on 17 December 2015 that the Finnish capital is expecting “a rush of immigrants“. According to Helsinki Urban Facts, the percentage of people not having Finnish […]

Young people´s optimism regarding Finland is in rapid decline. Are they losing interest in institutional Finland for them or is it just cynicism spreading? Today is Finland´s independence day. I took a glance on how young Finns see the country´s future. The development is quite dramatic. The share of young people having optimism regarding Finland´s future has […]

Minorities need professional networks in order to frame their insecurities as political, not personal. And in order to take action. The British liberal newspaper The Guardian had two weekends back two prominent articles  (1 and 2) on gays in politics promoting Michael Bloch’s new book Closet Queens. After the May election, the United Kingdom has […]

The slogan of Finland´s 100th birthday is Together. Let´s make it a year of dialogue – and disagreement. A while back I attended a planning session with external partners. We were joking around and the discussion was flowing. I felt that we were creating something new. A member of the group leaned back and said:“Yeah, it […]

If we want functioning neighbourhoods, we should build movements instead of groups. It means that we in government learn to hustle. Below some London-inspired ideas on how to develop government’s community engagement. The framework you use defines the resources you see. At its worst, government focuses purely on running its own services and sees the […]

I attend a lot of seminars – and give a lot of talks. Here’s 10 tips on how to make it. When used well, Power Point is amazing. A lot of people need visual triggering to get what you are saying. But approximately 90 percent of presentations I see break the rules below. Which makes […]

Sweden, worth visiting. Learn from have-nots. Sociologist Erik Hannerz (Lund University) gave an excellent presentation on punk mentality. He asked whether youth work could adopt things from those subcultures, which start from having no resources. He meant punk rockers, anarchists and squatters. As he said, a notion of alienation – of not being like others […]

This year we interviewed 1012 10–20- year-olds around Helsinki on how they spend and understand their free time. Here are three main findings. The order of choices Key observations: Friendships rule over activities. Both ‘what’ and ‘where’ are commonly agreed in a WhatsApp group. We need to advertise the possibility to come with friends and […]

The Finnish basic education is not saved by putting more pressure on the individual teachers. Collaboration and sharing responsibility with the students are the ways forward. Couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post listing 10 strengths and 10 problems of the Finnish basic education. These are the problems I listed based on discussions […]