Kainuu Region is full of stories, both old and new. But how to tell those so that they’ll fascinate people of different ages and backgrounds? How can new technologies be utilized in the storytelling? Should we increase diversity among the official storytellers? What are the stories that define the Kainuu region at the moment? Are we missing important pieces on the story map?
If we got your attention with the above-listed questions, or perhaps even to make you excited, you could be among the people that we’re looking for. Regional Council of Kainuu and Kajaani University of Applied Sciences are participating an international project called Literary Tourism Immersive Technology Acceleration (N-LiTe). In a nutshell, by tapping into the potential of immersive technology, the project offers a modern approach to Literary Tourism, ensuring businesses can reach new audiences and deliver unique experiences. N-LiTe also recognizes the need for sustainable tourism practices and aims to extend the tourism season through innovative digital content.
We need different ideas and points of views to make our project strong, and that’s where you might step in. We, of course, invite all our traditional stakeholders to participate the project workshops. Those include literature associations, cultural operators, tourism companies and so on. But there is a huge potential in involving a bit larger group and a wider perspective to the process. We need some people who have the drive and the skills to tell the stories of Kainuu and convert those into a benefit for the tourism sector in Kainuu.
Youth Participation – Our Europe, Our Voices!
Young people are an important target group of the N-LiTe project. There is a whole work package “Our Europe, Our Voice” dedicated to youth involvement on the project plan. A campaign of youth engagement will be launched later this year together with the international project partners. The goal is to give a literary voice for the youth in the project regions, through contemporising literary culture through the development of new literary responses and by using digital and hybrid approaches to drive literary engagement for new opportunities and future tourism audiences to peripheral regions.
Content will be developed with and by young people in response to the themes of people, place and periphery, climate and sustainability, identity and culture. In particular new innovative methods for content creators offered by Artificial intelligence will be explored. Youth can learn how to use these methods through to content creation workshops, and then utilize these methods to design and create virtual content for the virtual experiences in different regions. This content can then be used and utilized by the development in creation of regional virtual content.
If you are young(ish) or work with young people, we invite you to bring your ideas to the table at any time this year! Although the work package implementation only starts later this year, we aim to prepare ourselves so that we’ll be ready as the time comes. We want to plan the regional process with care, taking the youth perspective into consideration right from the start.
- Who could be the youth participants from Kainuu region?
- How do we arrange the regional work to be as smooth and effective as possible?
- What could the young people offer to the regional companies and other organisations developing literature tourism? What do they expect in return?
As we see it at the Regional Council of Kainuu, we could benefit of any kind of cooperation with students or other groups of young people. Both Finnish-speaking and English-speaking participants are equally welcome, since the working language of the international project is English, and the regional work may be modified according to language needs.
Contact Us!
Please feel free to contact us on the contact details listed below. Let’s figure out what we can do together!
