Blog: Conceptualization workshops for the Reflections project have started  

In the new "Reflections - museums as development platforms for nature-based business" project managed by the city of Imatra, which started in September 2022, the business, association and educational institution cooperation network that has already formed around the museum will be developed with the help of a three-part workshop series.

The workshops are implemented as a university collaboration with the University of the Arts, LUT University and the University of Eastern Finland. The purpose is to build, test and conceptualize new types of nature tourism products and earning logic, with the field museum acting as a development platform.

Utilizing artistic and cultural thinking in the development of regional vitality is a new perspective

The project's workshop process started at the end of January. The conceptualization workshop carried out by the University of the Arts discussed how innovation based on artistic thinking is applied to business development.

The utilization of artistic and cultural thinking in the development of regional vitality is a new kind of perspective that has not been tried before in a similar environment.

As the leader of the workshop Jari Rinne stated, it is possible to find confluences between artistic activity and business opportunities related to the museum, where consumption trends that describe the phenomena of this time are highlighted.

One key current trend is related to the experience of community. In the time after the corona pandemic, people yearn more and more for experiences that can be experienced together.

In the workshop, it was considered that this manifests itself in the museum context in such a way that themes such as voluntary agency and participation have emerged in recent years alongside the collection, preservation and presentation of the traditional tasks of museums.

The traditional object-based museum is moving more and more to a living environment. Object-centeredness is changing to experience-centeredness.

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In addition to community spirit, responsibility and ecology emerged as contemporary consumption trends at the workshop.

In the field museum context, nature offers enormous opportunities for the development of intangible services. Nature services based on sustainable development have increased their demand in recent years.

 There are long traditions in the commercial exploitation of nature in Finland, but recently there has also been a new entrepreneurship that utilizes nature in a more versatile way than before, where the ecological use of nature's intangible values ​​and renewable natural resources are the focus.

By combining community spirit and responsibility, could new nature-based business opportunities linked to the future Wilderness and Nature Culture Museum be found?

 For example, during the corona period, the increased interest in moving in nature, the growth in popularity of food produced nearby, and new forms of tourism that support sustainable development offer something to think about for future project workshops.

Aleksi Laaksonen
Reflections - museums as development platforms for nature-based business project
p. 020 617 2228
alexi.laaksonenimatra.fi (aleksi[dot]laaksonen[at]imatra[dot]fi)