Tourism Thoughts

It is always fascinating when cultures confront. Be it different nations, people in different positions and situations, or different personalities. Think about this from the viewpoint of tourism: born from the interest that people have towards discovering new matters and from the possibilities and market that are seen being related to that interest.

To plan and organise tourism so that it would be sustainable and responsible is not easy, or self- evident. Some places have lost their identity and local, special features when they have started to serve tourism to the extreme, and some left totally abandoned and empty when the tourist masses have lost their interest and moved to another place. But luckily there are also different stories!

Have you heard of the Road of Onions –Sibulatee (www.sibulatee.ee )? It is a non- governmental organisation and a network of different enterprises that can offer services to tourists around the area of Lake Peipus. Using the network instead of looking for services one by one is attractive in the eyes of the tourists, and promoting such a network also brings tourists to the area that might otherwise be more forgotten. This is what I mean by a different story: tourism can also lead to a survival of a culture, maintaining employment and possibilities to live where you were born –and creating cultural awareness. 

Travelling on Sibulatee allows you to participate and get involved with the local culture. In my opinion this is sustainable tourism. Instead of just consuming the culture and leaving it for good when you’ve had enough you start to appreciate the culture and want to make sure that it will bloom on with its specialities, which you have once become a part of. Genuine, real experiences are more memorable, and the local community benefits from your experience at the same time.

When cultures confront, cultural exchange is also always involved. So it is not only the tourists visiting different places and experiencing the cultures, it is also the local people experiencing and learning from the tourists. So we observe and adapt, sense and develop.  That is a good motive for one to travel, for one to welcome visitors, and a mutual reason for both to support and enrich the daily life of each other.

Traditional Bombs

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about natural cosmetics? In my opinion it is something that used to be a way of us people taking care of, treating and pampering  ourselves  already generations ago, an old tradition that is to say. This tradition we almost lost when the beauty industry started to offer us artificial products and means of beauty treatment, but luckily it survived.

Estonians transferring this tradition through generations doesn’t come as a surprise. I have met so many people practising different skills that they have learnt from their parents and grandparents that I have started to think that such a habit, such a message should spread everywhere.  And thinking of it from the viewpoint of natural cosmetics, it is probably the most natural a natural can get if you find the ingredients from your nearest food store and your own garden. Just as your grandmother did.

I got to see how transferring the tradition turns also into a creative business when I participated a workshop about natural cosmetics with my colleagues.  We were learning how to make bath bombs from daily ingredients, and it was just great fun! Mixing soda and citric acid with some oils and scents such as herbs or spices gives you limitless possibilities to prepare yourself a unique treatment as you wish. At a low cost, environmentally and especially bodily friendly!

in the middle of bomb making

Consider these claims and compare them with industrial cosmetics: Are they as affordable? Or do they have the same spirit of being ecological and supporting sustainable development?  Natural, self made cosmetics have many advantages that the industrial ones don’t.  They can be suitable for allergic persons who otherwise wouldn’t be able to use cosmetics, and they can bring the joy of body treatment also to places where no classy spas or specialized beauty boutiques can be found. I see that as an adequate evidence of the importance of transferring the tradition.

choosing the herbs

For sure you can also end up making a mess when you get carried away by scooping funny feeling pulp with your hands and imagining all the different combinations of ingredients you could possibly have in your bombs and pastes –but do it together, share and change the cosmetics you have created (and clean up together)! Share the habit, transfer the tradition!

There is one danger with natural cosmetics, though. You might just end up eating the things you were supposed to treat yourself with. 

Secret Garden

A gallery and an arts shop LOOV (http://www.lmk.ee/loov) from Tartu Loomemajanduskeskus was participating an event called Salaaed in Tallinn on Friday the 11^{th of March}. The event was a combination of handicrafts market and a trade fair of creative businesses spiced up with a fashion show, and it gathered exhibitors from Estonia, Finland and Latvia to Viru Keskus shopping centre. The brilliant purpose of the organisers was to bring the products and services of the creative enterprises into sight of the big audience, so that they would reach also the common man.  They wanted to express how the acts of creativity and art are often perceived in the minds of people –and named the event Salaaed –Secret Garden.

LOOV Galerii

What a name, what a metaphor it is! It’s fascinating, it describes the liveliness nature of the field of culture perfectly and for sure wakes your attention. Who wouldn’t be interested in secrets and revealing them? Bringing this garden of creativeness in the middle of people opens the gate for anyone to step in and have a piece of fairytale called culture and art. And maybe even step out from that garden with fruits from it in your pocket found on the path.

And that garden needs to be visited. It is being watered and fertilized with interest, admiration and irritation, with all the emotions and experiences that art and culture can wake in us. If art and culture are left alone in the studios and halls where the big audience doesn’t know to look them from, the spell of the garden might fade away and the garden grow shut and forgotten.

So when you see a gate to a secret garden like this, go and try it. Step in, start exploring and experiencing! There might be something to mesmerize you so that you want to return to the garden again and again. Maybe share the secret with your friends and beloved ones, too. Become a gardener for life.

Salaaed in Viru Keskus

...btw, check what I found from the secret garden: www.artbag.lv !

Have a Laugh!

There’s nothing like a good laugh. Laughing cheers you up, freshens up your thoughts and feels good also physically. At its best it reboots you.  Comedy Estonia (http://comedyestonia.wordpress.com/) just served this reboot to me with its open mic stand up show. An international  group of comedians gave their best to the audience crowding the place, making it laugh until it cried, and giving a chance for those brave enough to take the mic to also tell their craziest, rudest, most surprising and the best jokes and stories public. Would you have the courage to do that?

Andrei Tuch performing

Experiencing a show like that is about creativity and culture at its best: bringing together people with different backgrounds, making them share a moment of joy, laugh together and to each other.  In my opinion stand up is also an art that exists only in the moment, because you couldn’t fully plan it forehanded or save the laughter for later. At the same time it leaves its mark – a smile – to the faces of those enjoying it. 

Comedy Estonia is a great cultural act and a creative business. It is a service that you can pay for and have a laugh with a price but they are also willing to offer it to everyone with no price, and thus they are truly doing their part in making culture easy to approach and accessible to all of us. This example should be followed by any cultural institution, and again I am finding myself thinking how great it is to find this happening in Estonia, and in Tartu!

The next time Comedy Estonia is performing in Tartu is March the 15^th. To guarantee the daily portion of joy I would highly recommend anyone to participate the event.  We need to look after ourselves to make sure we get the reasonable amount of laughter every day, but it’s a great advantage to have creative operators such as Comedy Estonia to make it easy for us to get this laughter. For these purposes I could recommend some laughter yoga also, but that is a whole another story...

Beginning the Journey

I have come to Tartu to dive into its field of creative industry, the people, ideas and ideologies behind it. This is made possible by the Finnish Ministry of Culture and Education Cultural Exports program and administrated by the Finnish Institute in Estonia (www.finst.ee).Positioned in Tartu Center for Creative Industries (www.lmk.ee) I have a great opportunity to reach a good view on this field both on a regional and national level, and to build bridges to the corresponding ones in Finland.

There is no single, absolute definition that explains the concept of creative industry, and there lies the art of it all: originating from creativeness it  allows and wants itself to live, change, adapt and develop as it proceeds, going hand in hand with a will to link creativeness to finding ways of making it beneficial in different ways.

But does it mean, as it can easily be thought, industrial in a sense that there are dirty factories pushing products from a conveyor belt and people looking bored with their tasks? Looking at the Center for Creative Industries in Tartu, it’s really the opposite. It means  dynamic, innovative people working in an inspiring atmosphere and letting  creativeness  flourish all around them, and being professional business- wise at the same  time.

Tartu Loomemajanduskeskus -step in!

Building up a business around creativeness can be a challenging task. This is why it is delightful to find conditions that aim to make it easier  for those willing to develop their ideas in the center. Entrepreneurs or people willing to become entrepreneurs can find premises, cooperators and support all under the same roof, find the knowledge and the partners they might need to breed their creativeness to become other values, such as financial benefit, employment and welfare of the society, too.

Estonian creative field has made a good impression for me already before, and I believe that getting to know an atmosphere such in Tartu can only make it stronger. Tartu Center for Creative Industries feels like a place full of ideas and will to execute them. The center is rather young but is still already working with a great pace and having a future full of plans. It is my very joy to have a chance to get to know and  be a part of it.