Active Citizens Leedsis

Briti Nõukogu ja Avatud Eesti Fondi koostööprojekt “Teeme Koos!” kuulub Briti Nõukogu rahvusvahelise projekti Active Citizens  võrgustikku. Üheks projekti komponendiks on rahvusvahelised vahetused, mille raames erinevate projektis osavõtvate riikide osalejad sobitatakse kokku ühe organisatsiooniga Suurbritannias. “Sobitamine” toimub vastavalt sellele, kuidas Suurbritannia organisatsiooni ja projektiosalejate taust omavahel kokku sobib.

Projekti “Teeme Koos!” osalejatele valiti partneriks organisatsioon T4P Leedsist. T4P peaeesmärgiks on omavahel kokku tuua erinevate rahvuste esindajad läbi mitmesuguste tegevuste, et tagada rahulik ja sõbralik kooselu. Leedsi seisukohalt on sellise organisatsiooni olemasolu äärmiselt vajalik, sest tegemist on linnaga, kus elab Inglismaa keskmisest märksa suurem asiaatide kogukond ning kus kultuuridevahelised probleemid on sellega seoses märksa teravamad.

“Teeme Koos!” kaheksa aktiivset osalejat läksidki mai alguses Leedsi, et külastada erinevaid organisatsioone, näha erinevaid projekte ning saada uusi ideid, mida rakendada endi projektides Eestis.

Esimesel päeval avanes võimalus külastada projekti Positive Futures, mille kaudu pakutakse alternatiivset haridust noortele, kel on oht suunduda kuritegelikule teele. Teiseks projekti põhitegevuseks on vabaajaspordi, eelkõige kriketi, pakkumine noortele. Et täpsemalt aru saada kuidas see mäng võiks noori aidata, keerasid meie osalejad oma käised üles ning proovisid seda ka ise õppida. Välja tuli mäng väga hästi aga sellest hoolimata jäeti päris kriketiväljak ainult professionaalidele nautimiseks.

Teisel päeval suundus seltskond Leedist välja – Bradfordi. Bradfordis on Inglismaa suurim moslemi kogukond Londoni järel ning 2001 aastal toimusid linnas suured rahutused, mille põhjuseks olid pinged erinevate etniliste gruppide vahel. Kuna rahutus raputas linna ja selle elanikke tõsiselt, on selliste asjade edaspidiseks vältimiseks loodud mitmeid algatusi, mille eesmärgiks on linnale rahu toomine. Bradfordi ülikool on koduks näiteks „Peace and Conflict“ õppeprogrammile, mis on maailmas väga tunnustatud ning mida oli meilgi võimalus külastada. Teine huvitav projekt millega meil oli võimalus Bradfordis tutvuda oli Women of Peace , mis koondab endas erinevaid Bradfordi naisi, kes on tulnud kokku selleks, et levitada rahu sõnumit ning olla vastu Briti paremäärmuslus rühmitusele, EDL. Samuti tutvusime rahvusvahelise projektiga Peace Jam, mis viib Nobeli preemia laureaate kokku noortega, kes erinevate algatuste ja projektide teel panustavad rahu säilitamisse maailma erinevates paikades.

Kolmandal päeval tegid osalejad oma panuse projekti Nthuse, mille jooksul pandi käed mulda ning aidati heakorrastada kogukonna aeda. Inglismaal on väga populaarseks osutunud ühisaedade rajamine linnapiirkondadesse. See seab kahte eesmärki – tervisliku toidu propageerimine ning kogukonna kokkutoomine. Õhtu lõppes noortekeskuse külastamisega, mille eesmärgiks on noorte eemale hoidmine tänavalt ja pahandustest. Selle projekti käigus valiti selleks viisiks mootorrattaklubi, kus noored saavad harjutada sõitmist ning õppida hoolitsema mootorratta eest. Kui noored on projektis 12 nädalat osalenud saavad nad endale ka vastava tunnistuse.

Neljanda reisipäeva võib kokku võtta sõna all religioon. Grupp külastas Leedsi ühte linnaosa, Beestonit, mis sai kurikuulsaks Londoni 7/7 pommidega. Nimelt sealt olid pärit kaks Londoni pommitajat. Tegelikkuses on Beeston nagu iga teinegi linnaosa ning vastupidiselt ootustele, tõi kurikuulsaks saamine kogukonna väga kokku.

Samuti käisime Beestoni aasia kogukonna keskuses, Hamara. Eriti populaarne on selts vanemate inimeste seas, kes tulevad tihti sinna ainult selleks, et teiste inimestega suhelda. Beestonis külastasime ka South Leeds Academy, kool mis näeb välja nagu iga õpilase unistus aga mis kohe üldse see ei ole. Nimelt 2005.a. septembrist otsustati Beestonis panna kokku kaks kooli – üks, kus käisid peamiselt ainult valged ning teine, kus käisid ainult aasia immigrantidest lapsed. Kui koolid kokku pandi, tekitas see väga suuri pingeid. Pinged oli lausa nii suured, et koolis oli pidevalt kohal 4 politseinikku koos koertega, et rahustada olukorda. Kool algatas mitmeid programme, mille kaudu püüti laste tolerantsust erinevate etniliste gruppide vastu kasvatada. Saab öelda, et kindlasti on erinevatest programmidest kasu olnud, sest pinged on vähenenud ning enam ei ole koolis kohal 4 politseinikku.

Oma viimase päeva esimese poole saime veeta kuulates Suurbritanniasse tulnud põgenike jutte. Kui kollased ajalehed räägivad pidevalt kuidas põgenikud riiki riisuvad, siis reaalselt nende elu nii ei ole. Paljud põgenikud ei saa pikalt töötada, kuna see on neil keelatud ning kui nad lõpuks tööle lähevad siis püüavad nad kõigest väest olla abiks teistele põgenikele ja asüülitaotlejatele. Seda abi saavad nad teostada läbi mitmete organisatsioonide, mis on mõeldud just põgenikele ja asüülitaotlejatele, nagu näiteks REEMAP, RETAS ja City of Sanctuary.

Nagu eelnevast näha oli nädal väga tihedalt täis erinevaid tegevusi ning loodetavasti leidsid kõik osalejad endale midagi, millest kinni haarata ning midagi, mida saaks rakendada ka Eestis. Nägime seda, et projektid ei pea olema suured ja väga kulukad, väga palju head tööd saab ära teha ka ainult heade Inimeste olemasoluga. Samuti oli huvitav see kui palju mehi Suurbritannias sotsiaalvaldkonnas töötab. Kui keegi teaks mõnda head trikki kuidas Eestiski neid sellele alale tööle meelitada, oleks hea seda kuulda

Pilte reisist saad vaadata siit.

Mitmekesine Pelgumaja-Kalalinn

Briti Nõukogu ja Telliskivi Seltsi koostöös toimuval Kalamaja-Pelgulinna tulevikumängul võtame vaatluse alla piirkonna mitmekesisuse säilitamisega seotud probleemid*, lähenedes neile ruumilise keskkonna kaudu. Mängu jooksul testivad rühmad parimaid ideid ja esitlevad neid samal õhtul avalikul debatil.

* mõned käsitletavad teemad:

1. avaliku ruumi sidusus ja liikumisvõimalused

2. tegevusvõimalused avalikus ruumis

3. kodulähedased teenused

4. väikeettevõtluse ja loomemajanduse võimalused

5. elanikkonna mitmekesisus

Tegu on jätkuga eelmistel Kalamaja päevadel sisukaks osutunud Kalamaja mini-visioonikonverentsile. Ka seekordse ürituse väljundiks on ettepanekud peagi vastuvõetavasse Põhja-Tallinna üldplaneeringusse.

Ootame rühmatöödesse osalema Pelgumajas ja Kalamajas tegutsevaid kultuuri-, meelelahutus-, loomemajanduse jt asutuste esindajaid, kinnisvara-arendajaid, seltside esindajaid, linnaametnikke ja valdkonna eksperte.

Kontakt: ursula.roosmaa@britishcouncil.ee

May Events

May is yet another busy month for British Council. Everyone can find something interesting for themselves from variety of events and activities that we have a pleasure to offer you.

5 May – London National Theatre Live broadcast of Frankenstein

London National Theatre Live broadcast to cinema screens around the world. NT Live is an exciting new initiative to broadcast live performances of plays onto cinema screens worldwide. The pilot season was launched with Phèdre on 25 June, when the performance was filmed in high definition and broadcasted via satellite to various cinemas around the world.

This month you can see Danny Boyle’s production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley.

7 May – 26 June – Untold Stories:The Queer and the Political at Tallinna Kunstihoone

‘Untold Stories. The Queer and the Political’ focuses on the challenges facing the LGBTQI movement in Europe today, taking a critical look at the representation of gender, sexuality and the body in modern art, visual culture and public space.

The focal point of the project is primarilyEastern Europe, where the problems related to sexual minorities and gender inequality form a battlefield of social conflict and prejudice. The project also examines the history of the Eastern European LGBTQI movement, telling the public untold stories and unveiling identities forced to be invisible.

More info from here

8 May – Alan Wilder Recoil soloproject at Rock cafe

Recoil is the project of Alan Wilder, formerly of Depeche Mode. Alan is a classically-trained musician and renowned contemporary music producer.
Alan will be presenting the updated version of ‘A Strange Hour’.

12 May - Marc Sands open lecture at 10.00 at Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (Orelisaal) and at 14.00 at Viljandi Culture Academy (room 105)

Marc Sands is the Director of Audiences and Media, Tate.

Marc Sands leftCambridgein 1986 and immediately undertook an MBA. He joined the board at Guardian News and Media in July 2000.  During his time The Guardian and Guardian Unlimited have been awarded the Marketing Week Effectiveness Award and the Media Brand of the Year award for The Observer by Media Week. The advertising and marketing created for the Guardian has won many awards.

Since October 2009 he has been responsible for developing Tate Media, the organisation’s drive to develop the brand across online, broadcast and social media, to “strengthen Tate’s relationships with audiences and build social networks for the organisation”.

13 May - Marc Sands at Pärnu Marketing, Sales and Services Conference “The Age of Stories”

Marc Sands, the marketing manager of Tate Gallery will talk about organizing “Gauguin: Maker of Myth” at Tate Gallery – the exhibit that shook the art world. A thrilling story will tell us with what kind of efforts they created this exhibit that included all of Gauguin’s top works and that has been called the “tour de force” of culture.

13 May – 25 September – Gateway at KUMU

The exhibition gateways. Art and Networked Culture introduces a young generation of artists whose work deals with the changing conditions of a networked world – a world increasingly transmitted through media. The artistic works presented here use various means to tackle the theme of gateways that lead to realms of action and experience in our digitally interconnected culture.  More about it from here

7-14 May - Active Citizens Leeds visit

A group of Active Citizens in Estonia are matched with a group of Active Citizens in Leeds. During one week of May they meet, get to know each other and go through the joint training. Hopefully this is the beginning of few collaboration projects

22 May - Future City Game at Kalamaja Päevad

Future City Game generates new ideas on how to improve the quality of life either in a specific area within a city, the city as a whole, or in response to the common challenges facing cities around the world.  It is a two-day event involving city inhabitants from diverse backgrounds, representing different disciplines and led by a trained games-master.

27 -30 May - British writers at Reading Festival Head Read

• 27 May at 18:00 Jason Goodwin with Historian Tiit Aleksejev in Apollo bookshop (Solaris)
• 28 May at 12:00 Susanne MacLeod with Sash Uusjärv in the Writers House
• 28 May at 3:00 M.C. Beaton  (Marion Chesney) with Krista Kaer in the Writers House
• 28 May at 16:00  Jason Goodwin with Tiit Aleksejev
• 28 May at 18:30 Elaine Feinstein in the Russian Theatre Café
• 29 May at 12:00 Pascale Petit talk about poetry and art at Kloostriait
• 29 May at 14:00 Robert Service with Mart Laar  in the Writers House
• 29 May at  17:30 Elaine Feinstein, Pascale Petit reading poetry in the Writers House

The full programme of the festival and information about the authors can be found at http://www.headread.ee/

28-29 May - Active Citizens training: Project Management II

Project is implemented in cooperation with Open Estonia Foundation and it brings together representatives from Russian speaking schools, Estonian speaking schools and NGOs.

Creative Hotspots

If you missed Creative Hotspots then you can read from this post how did the day go.

Creative Hotpsots – a day that looked at best practice and international hotspots for the creative economy. The close to 180 participants were from various countries across Europe (Slovakia, Poland, Denmark, Finland, UK, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Norway, France, Russia) and came from various backgrounds including music, software, games, design, TV, film. The day provided insightful knowledge from our keynotes, inspiring experiences from our showcases, practical solutions from our workshops and ample opportunities of networking for future collaboration.

It started with opening remarks after which word was given to our keynotes.

To set the tone for the day, Andres Kütt gave a short overview of some of the innovations and milestones that changed the course of the world, for example electricity, the light bulb, Henry Ford’s production techniques and Skype. Jeremy Silver followed with looking at what it is that drives innovation, giving us facts about what the internet and online sphere is used for these days and stressing how important it is to know these things in order to know where and how to connect with your customer. Did you know that email makes up only 0.3% of the total internet usage?!

Then Jenny Tooth went on to look at the possibilities for a creative industry start-up to find investment and how they should put their propositions forward to the potential investors. It is not easy. She sees a large part of the problem in the fact that the finance community simply doesn’t know enough about the creative industries to risk investing in them. Her Angel Investing, however, is one company that does invest heavily in creative start-ups, and not only by giving them money, but also giving them expertise, helping them access markets, giving them their time.

Stein Bjelland finished this set of speakers by talking about his innovative concept of getting musicians themselves involved in the process of selling their art. He believes that, contrary to popular belief, if you want to survive as an artist, you absolutely have to be able to work the business side of your art even before you go to any investors. The more the artist knows themselves the less he/she needs a ‘business advisor’, so like Stein said, he is working with the artist to put himself (as a business advisor) out of business J

The session ended with a provocative question and answer session, where the audience was given the chance to enter the discussion. The session was skilfully moderated by Villu Arak. Something came out from this Q&A right at the beginning that will be echoed through the day, that as an artist, you have to be a story teller.

After a short break, we heard from six showcases who all told us their inspirational success stories. The moderator Villu Arak started this part of the day by saying “we will be inspired”, and we truly were.

Ville Heijari, “the bird whisperer at Rovio” as he calls himself, gave us an overview of the flight of his Angry Birds. The key to his success seemed to be taking one local market at a time – Finland, then Sweden, then Scandinavia, but things truly exploded when Apple Apps decided to feature Angry Birds in their product. In just one year, Angry Birds went from 12 employees to 60 employees!

One of the things that Adam Goodyer has come up with is doing live recordings of concerts and making physical products out of them in the form of USB wristbands, CDs, DVDs and other interesting ways. His three pointers to success were to directly deal with the end customer, keep in constant communication with the customer, and offer the customer a wide range of products and services, from the high value low volume customer to the low value high volume customer. He also emphasised the need to data-capture customers through your products.

To present to us his company, Audioboo, Mark Rock did an interactive show  for the audience by recording a live video on the spot and playing it back to us on the internet there and then. The reasons explaining his success were self-explanatory, we were all convinced.

Ruslan Fazlyev told us about the wave of ups and downs of a commerce business that started with three university students with no experience and no funding and quickly grew to 150 employees that it has now! His key to success seems to have been his view on the customer – your customer can be your investor, your product manager and your marketing guy, so listen to your customer!

Then Elizabeth Varley took the stage, and told us about TechHub in London – a space and focal point to bring together the technology community, offering them the four things that Elizabeth finds starting technology companies most need: meeting and event rooms, wifi, coffee, and an opportunity to connect and network with each other. The reasoning here is that often we can learn most from the other people who are or have been in a similar situation to us.

Ragnar Sass concluded this session by telling us about Garage48 – an organisation providing a place, time and atmosphere for creative brains to come up with new business ideas and bring them to life in just 48 hours! It is a concept that has reached far out of Estonia, even to Nigeria and Ghana, and there is never anywhere a shortage of great ideas created by great minds!

The showcases were also followed by the audience’s opportunity to ask questions and pose ideas for the panel to discuss. The successful creative entrepreneurs had plenty of wisdom to share, just check the video yourselves!

After a picnic style lunch, everyone gathered back to the big hall to hear from the panel of Culture Capitals of Europe – Neil Peterson who told us about Liverpool’s success in 2008, Bernd Fesel who let us in on how Essen did it, Cay Sevón to tell us about Turku’s ups and downs on the Culture Capital path and Elena Natale sharing with us the Estonian experiences. After a discussion on various aspects surrounding the topic of Europe’s Culture Capital (What can being a Culture Capital offer to the city in the long term? Where is this concept going? How long should it be kept going? What then?), everyone divided into the workshops they had previously chosen.

There were six different workshops, each participant could choose two sessions, lasting 1 hour each. As Neil Mcinroy said, the workshops had four purposes,

1)     To offer an opportunity to network, collaborate and learn from each other;

2)     To celebrate all the hard work that the participants did in their respective areas;

3)     To give practical advice to each other;

4)     To come up with some policy messages, i.e. things that could be passed on the EU, to national governments or to local agencies who are involved in the spaces between investment and creative industries.

All workshops filled all these aims and much more, so I will only bring out one point from each workshop, for a more comprehensive study, have a look at the feedback section in the online video.

Workshop 1: Financing creativity and creative financing (moderator Ragnar Siil) – the key is that the business plans that will be pitched to investors should be written by the creator of the idea themselves and should come from their hearts, it is the passion in the idea that the investors want to see.

Workshop 2: Markets and market making (moderator Villu Arak) – basically, the truths are all out there, the workshop only reiterated them, and their most important message was that the product needs to have a story to tell, this is what will make it a success.

Workshop 3: Making it legal (moderator Priit Lätt) –copyright laws need to be accommodated to the rapidly growing digital world, perhaps in a pan-European way like a lot of the European Union regulations on other things. Further, to stop illegal downloading, more possibilities should be created for legal downloading.

Workshop 4: Cooperate to accumulate or compete to thrive? (moderator Roy Cross) – the conclusion was that cooperation and collaboration is sometimes the only way to realise your idea, but what the start-ups really need is a physical and virtual space where they can communicate in a trusting and inspiring atmosphere.

Workshop 5: Creating new and maintaining relationships with users, clients and customers (moderator Anna Hildur) – the key to creating and keeping your customers is to have a story, that story will determine your specific customer, it will add value to your product, and that value will help you with the rest of the relationship and communication platforms.

Workshop 6: Looking to the future and keeping an edge (moderator Neil Mcinroy) – as their future, the participants here saw six roles that the creative industries can and should play in the world, the last one being their role in the “paradigm shift that our society needs to take to move from the carbon eating, planet destroying, economic self servicing world, to one that’s more caring, more society based and more enlightened.”

 

Truly inspirational!

This closed the seminar part of the day, with some final remarks from Hede Kerstin Luik, after which the guests went on different creative tours in Tallinn – to Estonian Design House, the Re-design exhibition and a tour of Tallinn Old Town. Once they were back from their tours, it was time to head for the last part of the day, to the dinner and networking event at F-Hoone on Telliskivi Street, an old storehouse converted into an atmospheric dining place with extremely high ceilings, delicious food and a truly creative buzz. The evening truly was buzzing. Many guests chose to later move on to Von Krahl (where they had energising welcome drinks the night before) where Tallinn Music Week had live performances from different bands.

The day was long and intense, bubbling with inspiring stories and fresh ideas. There was a lot of cooperation, collaboration and communication, the day filled its aim of providing networking opportunities and knowledge sharing, even a business deal was struck! A truly successful event!

 

April Events

Have a look what British Council is doing in April:

31 March – 2 April Minifestival Madchester at Kino Sõprus

Weekend minifestival Madchester bring three good UK movies to you: Control, Soulboy, 24 Hour Party People. But Madchester is not only about movies. On Saturday, 2nd of April, dust off those dancing shoes of yours and come to Kino Sõprus where you can party until morning with Luke Unabomber. More about it from here

1-5 April – British Day at Moscow Fashion Week

British Council will take promising young fashion designer Kristian Steinberg to Moscow Fashion Week where he will take part of British Day.

Kristian is Estonian born and London based menswear fashion designer.

10 April - Jan Blake Storytelling session and Workshop in Hobuveski

Jan Blake was born in Manchester of Jamaican parentage. She has an international reputation for dynamic, witty, exciting storytelling. Specialising in stories from Africa and the Caribbean Jan is currently one of Europe’s leading female storytellers. She has featured at all the major storytelling festivals in the country, performs, runs storytelling workshops and teaches and performs all over Europe.

15-16 April – Active Citizens training: Social Entrepreneurship

Project is implemented in cooperation with Open Estonia Foundation and it bring together representatives from Russian speaking schools, Estonian speaking schools and NGOs.

22 April – Jazzkaar: Talvin Singh-Niladri Kumar at Mustpeade maja

Master of electronical rhythms meets classical Indian music. More about Talvin Singh-Niladri Kumar in Estonia

26 April - Jazzkaar: Brass Jaw in theatre NO99 jazzclub

More about Brass Jaw in Estonia

28 April – Jazzkaar: Omar Puente Group at Rock Café

More about Omar Puente Group in Estonia

28 April – London National Theatre Live broadcast of Frankenstein

London National Theatre Live broadcast to cinema screens around the world. NT Live is an exciting new initiative to broadcast live performances of plays onto cinema screens worldwide. The pilot season was launched with Phèdre on 25 June, when the performance was filmed in high definition and broadcasted via satellite to various cinemas around the world. This month you can see Danny Boyle’s production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. More about it from here

28-30 April – Iwan Brioc workshop at Forum Theatre Festival in Tartu

Iwan Brioc is director of The Republic of the Imagination,  an International Network of Creative Citizens that together are exploring the possibilities of Context Oriented Theatre. Context Oriented Theatre is a new approach to applied theatre that Iwan has developed through 20 years of working in the field. It employs conventional and non-conventional applied theatre methods to invite consciousness of the context rather than the content of experience; that which is experiencing rather than that which is experienced. More about Forum Theatre Festival from here

Estonia’s Road to Tolerance

Estonia’s Road To Tolerance – summary

On a beautiful sunny morning I had a great opportunity to take part in a seminar „Estonia’s Road to Tolerance“, hosted by The British Council Estonia and The British Embassy Tallinn. The moderator Edward Lucas, a well-known editor of The Economist, started the day with words: „What does tolerance mean and what can it bring to society?“.

Making people think about tolerance

The first speaker was Kari Käsper, the member of the management board of Estonian Human Rights Centre.  According to him, the tolerance topic has not been addressed in Estonia for a long time and has not been put in a larger perspective. He stated that their aim is to look at the minorities in Estonia from a wider point of view, not only talking about Russians who came here in the 60’s but also about todays migrants from all over the EU. After bringing out the Estonian laws of equal treatment: the Constitution, the Equal Treatment Act and the Gender Equality Act, one of his main concerns was that it is quite difficult to defend one’s rights based on overall and vague constitutional points. He said people are mostly unaware what equal treatment means and therefore raising knowledge about it is crucial in Estonia’s society. He also gave a summary about the 2010 campaign „Diversity Enriches“ which aim was to make people think about discrimination in Estonia’s society and had hopes for continuation of it.

The second speaker Indarjit Singh, a British journalist and broadcaster, a prominent British Asian active in Sikh and interfaith activities, was delighted to be back in Estonia. He said this conference shows how quickly Estonia is moving towards equality and being able to talk freely about it.

His speech was very impressive, enriched with many profound metaphores. The fact that minorities are often given jobs others don’t want is no surprise for us. He said minorities are often criticized about living in ghettoes and not connecting to the community but if minorities are not being understood in the first place and not made feel welcome, we should not expect great amity from them either.

I really liked his thought that at a distance we all look different and in the fog of not understanding we might look even dangerous to others. But the bottom line is that no matter what our religion or ethnic identity is, we are all members of human family and that God is not interested in our different religion or skin tone but interested in how we live.

He said that the greatest improvement on minorities has been in the UK schools. In the 60’s considerable bullying from other students and teachers occured but today the position has changed considerably for the better. Children are taught about differences and diversity as something that enriches society. „Sadly, there are still some schools in the UK  that do not teach equality and they should be shut down,“ he said.

This made me think about schools in Estonia and how equality is taught here. I have to admit when I went to the secondary school, there were incidents where pupils bullied fellow students who were different, for instance the ones were bullied who were better students and who got better grades. I don’t think there is less bullying in Estonian schools today, and to be honest, I think equality as a subject should be definitely brought in to the school curriculum. There is this everlasting debate on how everything a kid does starts from his home but I believe school can play a crucial role in developing the knowledge on equality and tolerance in a child also.

Accordingly to Mister Singh, the minority groups should feel the warmth and welcome from its host and that different communities are not barriers between people, they can be the gateways in understanding life and enriching it. He also theorized that when people have somebody to call „us“, they automatically search for someone to look down on and call „them“. Is it just human nature? Competition? A true will to survive?

Russians prefer TV and do not like subtitles

The third speaker’s Viktoria Korpan’s speech was colourful and full of statistics. She is the Russian Editor in Chief of the daily Postimees and her aim was to present the media preferences of the non-estonian speaking population in Estonia. She admitted that Russians prefer TV and the Internet to the print media and only quarter of non-Estonians read Postimees Rus. Surprisinly, she stated, women tend to read more than men. She conducted an on-line Postimees research with sampling of approx. 1000 people and the results were stunning indeed: over 60% of the non-estonian population does not watch Estonian TV-channels for two main reasons: the poorness of the content and the subtitles (!) as Russians prefer audio translation. The most watched TV-show on Estonian channels is the Estonian News.

When she was asked, what she would do differently if she were the new director of ETV2 – the Estonian TV channel for non-Estonians, she stated it’s all about motivation to create different and interesting programs for them. She also didn’t believe it’s even possible to compete with the Russian channels due to the small amount of finances ETV2 has.

Estonia as a mirror

Professor Evhen Tsybulenko was the next speaker. He is the director of Human Rights Centre and full Professor of Law, Chair of International and Comparative Law Department at Tallinn Law School. In my opinion this was one of the best speeches I have ever heard.

He started the presentation with a compromising thought that in the Soviet times Russians were the first among equals and after Estonia regained its independence, many Russians lost their identity. Still, there are Russians in Estonia who are loud and forming NGOs that are financed by Kremlin, using themselves as a political tool, which is indeed quite hypocritical because they do not want to go back to live in Russia. They prefer to stay here and make others believe they are extremely discriminated. In his opinion strong people always try to find solutions but weak ones see nothing else but problems and this applies to some non-Estonian speaking minorities here. Of course, to some extent personal discrimination appears in every country and he thinks it is inevitable.

I very much liked the positive examples he brought out about the Ukrainian community in Estonia. In his opinion they can excercise all their national activities here, without any problems (having their cultural centre, a church and even a summer school which is very popular among the Estonian children). „If you want to keep your identity, you can do it and can still be integrated into the Estonian society,“ he said, „Estonia is like a mirror – if you smile to it, it will smile back, if you make ugly faces, it will do the same to you“.

Abdul Turay, a British journalist based in Tallinn, was the next speaker. His speech was dynamic, full of good quotes and sadly too short for me. His aim was to talk about the black population in Estonia and about the overall tolerance in the country. „Well firstly the black population in Estonia is so small it’s much more likely for your daughter to be eaten by a lion than to get married to a black guy,“ he stated.

He pointed out that in many cases Estonians are more black than he is due to the enslavement in their history. „They are acting in a normal way thanks to their history,“ he said about how Estonians try to preserve their identity and culture. He also stated the problem Estonia is facing is not immigration, it’s emigration. I agree because in my opinion every year a disturbingly large number of Estonians leave the country thanks to the low wages and without knowing if they ever return and even though the problem has been pointed out even by the Estonian President, I have hardly seen anything done about it. One thing is to be tolerant about the minority groups, another thing is to accept the governments’ not doing anything in order to improve the emigration situation.

Children and dwarf-groups

Indrek Teder, the Estonian Chancellor of Justice, was up next with his presentation on the children in Estonia. His main point was that the state should offer citizenship to all the children living here and that all people are wanted and necessary.

Marju Lauristin’s speech was next. She is a social scientist and the Editor in Chief of the Estonian Human Development Report being probably one of the best English-speaking professors in Estonia, considering her respectable age. She started the speech with numbers: more than 200 000 people have Estonian citizenship who’s mother tongue is not Estonian. According to her, a difference should be made when addressing the non-Estonian population here. Ones are the Estonian citizens who think Russia is their homeland, others have no citizenship at all and the third group consists of the citizens of Russia living here and she thinks those groups should not be put together which is mostly done. The loudest group in Estonia are the citizens of Russia and they make others believe that ALL of the Russian population here is governed by the Kremlin propaganda, which is also not true.

She pointed out that the tolerance debate is very substantial and has to go in depths of society, not only starting and ending with purely political discussions. One thought I very much liked, was that we have to turn our integration process towards children so every child is welcome to Estonia (like Teder stated). Professor Lauristin also stated that for Russian minority groups it’s simply not acceptable to be a part of a dwarf-group so therefore they connect themselves to the Russian community.

John Abraham Godson, the first black member of Polish Parliament, put the seminar in a nutshell.

He stated there is a big difference between intercultural competence and racism because intercultural competence is based on stereotypes and lack of knowledge, racism occurs when you know the other culture and decide to resist it.

To sum it all up – great seminar with inspiring speakers, made me realize there is still quite a long way for Estonia to go in the tolerance field but as this seminar shows, we are taking first steps towards the long journey being open for opinions and trying to retain our identity for tomorrow.

By Natali Kilk

 

Estonia’s Road to Tolerance

Estonia’s Road to Tolerance – seminar organised by British Council Estonia & British Embassy in Tallinn, 10^th March 2011 (8 speakers, moderator Edward Lucas).

Tolerance in the sense of smooth integration of different nationalities into Estonian society, tolerance in relation to discrimination, tolerance in connection with immigrants and minorities living in Estonia. I was very surprised when Viktoria Korpan, amongst other interesting statistics, told us that there are over 120 different ethnicities living in Estonia! All these people are here for different reasons, come from different backgrounds and have different views and values in life, and for us all to live in Estonia together in peace, we all need to be tolerant of each other.

The general consensus amongst the speakers was that tolerance is a two-way road, something that needs to be worked on from both sides – the host country needs to be welcoming and helpful, and the immigrants and minorities need to do their part in respecting the host country’s values and culture and make their contribution to its development. John Abraham Godson, the first black Member of Parliament in Poland, rightly said that openness is reciprocal – that the effort and desire to integrate into a society has to come from the host country as much as the non-native nationals themselves. Indarjit Singh used the example of Great Britain to show how, when both sides are willing and open, integration is entirely possible – look at all the different nationalities living together in Britain in relative peace and harmony! Evhan Tsybulenko supported that view and used the example of his fellow Ukrainians in Estonia to show how successful integration can be and how successful minority nationals in Estonia can be if they wish to do so, that despite what some people say, they all do have the same opportunities and possibilities. He highly praised the Estonian government’s level of support to that effect. I really liked when Tsybulenko said that Estonia is like a mirror – if you smile at it, it will smile back at you – that the non-native Estonians just need to take a more positive attitude towards their host country and they’ll be taken in with open arms. I won’t deny that sometimes Estonia has to be the one to make the first step as well, to be the one to welcome the minorities first, smile at them and they will also smile back. As a start to that, we can take Indrek Teder’s proposition, that children born in Estonia be automatically granted citizenship (currently, parents have to apply for it) – that would be a sign from the Estonian government that we welcome all children to our country. (And everyone knows we need children here!) Indeed, integration starts from children, and often children are much better integrated than their parents. Now, if an adult wants to become a citizen of Estonia, they have to take special exams, in language, in the Estonian constitution.. I don’t know the details, but I’ve always thought they’re gruelling and extremely difficult exams – I for example have very little knowledge of our constitution, and I’m sure some Russian nationals know the ins and outs of the Estonian language much better than I do. But Marju Lauristin made a valid point that the whole process of becoming a citizen, the work that a person has to do for it, acts as a kind of a tool for filtering out for us the more ambitious and more motivated people of the minority population.

Finally, I’d like to briefly discuss discrimination – a thing that Estonia has been regularly reprimanded for (mainly by the Kremlin and a small but loud group of Russian-speakers in Estonia), especially after the Bronze Soldier crisis in 2007. The speakers all shared the opinion that discrimination, especially on an institutional level, does not exist in Estonia. There might be some personal discrimination, but that’s something that exists in every country to an extent, and that’s also a part of what this seminar is trying to tackle and also what the project Diversity Enriches aimed to tackle – by increasing tolerance through creating a debate. Kari Käsper, one of the leaders of the project, pointed out that at the moment, there’s a perception of discrimination in Estonia that is not actually there, and so if actual cases arise, they might go unreported. Tsybulenko likened this to the story of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ – that there are so many speculations about discrimination that when a real problem arises, it will be treated as simply white noise – a worrying concept to think about, really. Further, in relation to discrimination, Abdul Turay did an interesting comparison between Estonians and the black people, suggesting that we’re actually very similar. For example in our histories, that the black people, just as Estonians, were oppressed and invaded by other nations for hundreds of years, he even used the word ‘enslaved’. His opinion was that perhaps Estonians should be more worried about being discriminated against abroad rather than discriminating people here. My 8 years of experience from living abroad disagrees with that, but the feeling of being discriminated against is probably a very personal one.

I would like to go back to the beginning and finish with something that rang through from all speakers’ presentations – that in order for integration to really work, the parts involved have to both feel confident and secure in their own identities first, that in order to be able to respect others, you need to respect yourself first. So I think that what we really need is to find a way to respect each others’ differences while realising that we actually also have a lot of similarities that allow us to understand each other and live together in harmony. There are areas where Estonia as a state and as a people has as much room for improvement as do the minority nationals living here. Tolerance is a two-way road.

By Liisa Toompuu