Activism Workshop for Students

The culture center Stoa in Helsinki asked me to be a part of a culture course that they were arranging for eight graders in the spring of 2016. In the workshops, named “taking over your neighbourhood with every-day activism”, the eighth graders from schools from eastern Helsinki took part in six-hour workshops. In the workshops, the students turned into activists for the day, and created a project or a performance in their school or in their neighbourhoods. Some of the projects the students did were making a proposal on how to improve the school lunches, and creating a new design for the school hallway. Several classes gave out free coffee to strangers passing by to cheer people up. The students giving out coffee ended up meeting all kinds of people, from old people to people in the streets, and the other way around: the people coming to get free coffee got a chance to update their view on teenagers. Some of the students got so involved with the project that they stayed to hand out free coffee even after their school day was finished.