Our LEARN&CHANGE digital storytelling pedagogy and educational materials were put to heavy use when more than 50 international students, teachers, and industry partners met up in the annual blended intensive programme Krea Spring School at Haaga-Helia UAS, Helsinki, on 13-17 May 2024.
The project challenge was to plan and produce sustainability marketing videos for the Sea Fortress Island of Suomenlinna. The aim of the digital storytelling project was to inspire visitors for sustainable picnics and lifestyles. The challenge-based project course was organized in collaboration with The Governing Body of Suomenlinna and K-Market Suomenlinna.
The hands-on video editing tasks were all carried out in just one day, supported by the highly skilled and energetic video storytelling professional Thomas Halloran from Video Agency Ikimedia.
Video Storytelling Challenge: Inspiring Sustainable Picnics and Lifestyles
The 5-step digital storytelling process, starting with the Sustainable Picnics project brief, was planned and implemented in collaboration with nine universities and three industry partners, making use of the LEARN&CHANGE educational materials.
In mid-April 2024, our eight multicultural and multidisciplinary student teams started working virtually and online, getting to know each other, creating empathy maps of their target audience’s needs, and reflecting on individual and collaborative ways to develop uncertainty tolerance during creative work.
During the intensive week in Helsinki in May, teachers, students, and industry partners met up in person to discuss their sustainability goals and values and to plan and create short video stories encouraging Suomenlinna visitors for sustainable picnics and responsible life choices:
1. Make Suomenlinna Smile 🙂
2. Suomenlinna – Finnish The Quest
3. Respect Suomenlinna – Don’t Be a Goose!
4. Suomenlinna – Spend a Day with Us
5. Suomenlinna – Change your Future
6. The Suomenlinna Effect
7. Visit Suomenlinna – Escape the Hustle
8. Suomenlinna – Mission Failed Successfully
Krea Spring School 2023 Winning Video: The Power of a Relatable Character
The jury of the videomaking challenge consisted of the teachers from participating universities and two representatives of Suomenlinna Governing Body: Milla Öystilä and Heidi O’Gorman. As it was such a challenge for the jury to unanimously come up with just one winning video, the students themselves were also given the opportunity to vote (their own video excluded).
As a result of this complex, Eurovision-style, assessment process, the Krea Spring School 2024 winning video award was finally given to video story number 3 on the list above: Respect Suomenlinna – Don’t Be a Goose! The video relies on a strong and sympathetic central character, which makes its sustainability storytelling approach and message relatable and memorable to the audience.
The creative students behind the winning video were: Daniel Hagleitner (UAS Wiener Neustadt, Austria); Alexandra Jank (UAS Wiener Neustadt, Austria); Noa Moens (Thomas More UAS, Belgium); Daan Van Assche (VIVES UAS, Belgium); Tiia Mäkinen (Haaga-Helia UAS, Finland); and Anh Hoang (Budapest Business University, Hungary).
Sustainability Reflections and Collaborative Learning
During their digital storytelling process, student teams reflected on the sustainability attitudes, values, competences, and learning through individual and collaborative learning journal tasks. Overall, students were happy and proud about their collaborative creative work and felt that they learned a lot about sustainability from each other and from the project. As one student team put it:
“The filming on the island of Suomenlinna was fun and probably the best part of the week for all of us. After this project, we will make sure to take what we learned with us to our personal and professional lives. We will try to approach things with an open mind in terms of sustainability, not only with regards to environmental issues but also social and economic responsibility.”
Krea Spring School 2024 was organized in collaboration with nine European higher education partners from 7 countries: Saxion UAS (the Netherlands), Thomas More UAS (Belgium), VIVES UAS (Belgium), Polytechnic Institute of Guarda (Portugal), Budapest Business University (Hungary), UAS Wiener Neustadt (Austria), OTH – University of Applied Sciences Amberg-Weiden (Germany), Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (Germany), and Haaga-Helia UAS (Finland).
Text: Tanja Vesala-Varttala (Haaga-Helia UAS)
Images: Marc Clerkx (Thomas More UAS), Jan Pieter van Haaps (Saxion UAS), and Ulrike Pavelka (UAS Wiener Neustadt)
Videos: The Krea Spring School 2024 student teams