Developer Squad

Aims

The aim is to make arts and cultural services more accessible and safer for everyone, in line with national cultural policy guidelines that emphasize the role of culture as part of social and health services and as preventive work to reduce loneliness and segregation.

Artists and arts and culture professionals, as well as cultural venues, will gain essential multidisciplinary expertise and a new operating model for anti-stigma and anti-discrimination work through the project’s training package. This strengthens the vitality of the arts and culture sector, creates new income opportunities, and builds resilience needed in times of change.

The project offers concrete solutions for strengthening collaboration between the creative industries and the social welfare and wellbeing sectors and for developing new operating models, supporting the goals of the creative industries growth strategy. The project embeds the competencies developed through the Developer Squad model into the everyday practices of the participating wellbeing services counties, ensuring that art and culture can play an even stronger role in promoting wellbeing. The aim is to open up new employment opportunities for arts and culture professionals in a changing operating environment.

What is Developer Suad?

The project pilots and develops the Developer Squad model and creates concrete steps for anti-stigma and anti-discrimination work in the arts and culture sector.

A Developer Squad is a multidisciplinary team led by an arts or culture professional and includes a social welfare or wellbeing professional as well as a (trained) expert by experience as an equal, salaried expert.

Four open training programmes

We will organise four open training programmes in different parts of Finland in cities that are part of the Kaikukortti network:

• Kokkola (Central Ostrobothnia)
• Kuopio (Northern Savo)
• Rovaniemi (Lapland)
• Espoo (Western Uusimaa)

The trainings are aimed primarily at arts and culture professionals and focus on anti-stigma and anti-discrimination work within the arts and culture context. Each training emphasizes one of the project’s themes: poverty, neurodiversity, mental health challenges, or loneliness.

The Developer Squad model piloted in the project includes local training, a related reflection workshop, and the testing of remote clinics for arts and culture organizations. In addition, each participant commits personally to carrying out at least one concrete anti-stigma or anti-discrimination action during the following year.

The Developer Squad is responsible for the implementation of the trainings and the anti-stigma action steps. The artist or arts and culture professional in the Squad facilitates the trainings.

Outcomes

As a result, the project will produce a nationally impactful Developer Squad operating model and concrete anti-stigma and anti-discrimination steps created through co-creation, and the model will be embedded into the practices of both the arts and culture sector and the social welfare and wellbeing sectors.

Project coordination

The project is implemented by The Culture for All Service (Kulttuuria kaikille -palvelu)/ The Association or Culture on Equal Terms (Yhdenvertaisen kulttuurin puolesta ry).

Partners

Project partners include the wellbeing services counties of Western Uusimaa, Lapland, Central Ostrobothnia and Northern Savo; the cities of Espoo, Kuopio, Rovaniemi and Kokkola; and Autism Foundation Finland, Mielen Association,Kulttuuriyhdistys Suomen EUCREA ry - Cultural Association Finland's EUCREA, an association for and by disabled artists, Glims & Gloms Dance Company, EAPN-Fin – European Anti-Poverty Network Finland, and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.

Contact us

Mira Haataja

Project Leader
mira.haataja@cultureforall.fi
tel. 040 213 6339 (Country code +358)

Outi Salonlahti

Training Coordinator
outi.salonlahti@cultureforall.fi
tel. 04039908 (Country code +358)