Design Dimensions: Content for Cross-Cultural Events

Design Dimensions is a collection of articles about a three-year design project Contents for Cross-Cultural Events, C3E, funded by the CBC 2014–2020 South-Eastern Finland – Russia cross border programme. C3E falls under Priority 2, aiming at supporting an innovative, skilled and well-educated area. The thematic objective is to support education, research, technological development, and innovation. C3E offered collaboration with the creative industries in Mikkeli, Kotka, Kouvola, Vyborg and St. Petersburg regions. C3E invited festivals, theatres, and other stakeholders in Finland and in Russia to express their development needs and start planning case studies. Organizations, such as cultural institutions, festivals, tourism sector, development agencies, NGOs and SMEs related to the creative industries were invited to participate various activities such as Future of Festivals further education series and educational collaboration. C3E developed the participant festivals’ business models, provided in-depth knowledge about management, marketing & brand development, enhanced key stakeholder relations across the Finnish-Russian border and organized conferences on leadership in creative industries. Through the carefully selected development cases C3E created new event concepts including gamified and immersive aspects and enhanced sustainable brand development. Other focus areas were audience engagement competencies and better end-user understanding through service design methods and empathetic design. As demonstrated in the articles through development case studies and educational case examples, this project succeeded in renewing education by building flexible hybrid and online courses, hackathons, seminars and shared curricula. The best proposals were finally made into prototypes and products and showcased in events on both sides of the border. The project partners included the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Xamk as the lead partner and the Saint-Petersburg State University of Technology and Design, SPbSUITD and Institute for Cultural Programmes, ICP as partners