The next edition of the Liveability Talks is coming up - register now!

In this session, Jaakko Blomberg, who is known for organising a range of successful community-based events and art projects in Helsinki, will share his experiences and learnings. The talk will highlight the importance of fostering a creative and supportive environment for municipal employees and strategies of employee engagement and motivation. The input by Jaakko Blomberg will be followed by a Q&A session, offering participants the chance to ask specific questions.

The talk is a great opportunity to gather your colleagues over coffee and snacks, watch Jaakko’s lively and engaging presentation, and discuss his ideas together!

One of Jaakko’s core principles is involving the community early in event planning process to give room for people’s creativity and foster their sense of ownership. “When you do things together with people you never know what will come,” Jaakko says, sharing how gaming students transformed the National Sauna Day into a VR sauna experience. He also emphasizes the value of balancing traditional approaches with people’s needs.

Jaakko’s vision aligns with the Liveability project, which sees liveability as deeply connected to the sense of belonging. It is about creating meaningful spaces in the city that inspire pride and empowerment, where people feel they can shape their living environment for the better.

Registration for the webinar here.

Jaakko Blomberg is an activist, producer, and executive director of the association Helsinki Urban Art. He specializes in co-creation, placemaking and urban art. For more than ten years he has been creating community-based events and art projects that use urban spaces in new ways, bring people together and simply make life more fun. These include, for example, a national flea market day, setting up a table for a thousand people to eat in the middle of a street, a day of open saunas and pop-up restaurants. He has also created the Pasila street art district in Helsinki and developed former industrial areas and other buildings for cultural use. He likes to think of the cities as playgrounds, full of resources that can be used to create something new and exciting.

The Liveability Talks were launched in September 2024 in Copenhagen with a live talk of the renowned architect and urban planner Jan Gehl and a discussion about Copenhagen’s journey towards liveability, hosted by the director of Copenhagen International Theatre Metropolis Travor Davies. The talks are continuing as monthly online events and will feature new exciting speakers in 2025 – city leaders, activists, and researchers, who will address pressing urban challenges and share innovative solutions.

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