Leticia and Laura preparing the smart screen for their Interactive Film Show

Story: Laura Quintana and Leticia Martin
When you come from Spain, Finland sounds far away… and sometimes, Tampere doesn’t even sound. “Where have you been those five months? – people now asks to us – Tampere – we answer – Oh… great… emmmm… good place…”.


And then we have to look for a map and show exactly the place where we have been, “Oh! So it must be cold”. Yes, it was cold, but it was more than that. It was the place where we discover that we were able to draw in an arts school every Wednesday from 17 to 20. We come from a Communication Career, but once we were in Tampere, the important was not where we came from, but what we wanted to learn.

Model drawing was one of those things we wanted to learn. It is true that we were sharing class with “real” art students, and our draws in comparison, could have been done by a five year old child. But at the end of the semester, our draws had maybe achieved the ones of a twelve year old boy, and that was awesome.

One of Laura's and Leticia's projects was the video installation for the Megagagaa art exhibition

We are sorry we stayed only 5 months

Your own improvement is what counts in TAMK. The competition is between you, and yourself. Also in Animation class we started from zero. Just for the new exchange students: don’t be scared, don’t be afraid. Sometimes it seems that you could never do anything like this, but then you try, you became part of a group that has the same fears than you, and together, you make this fear became an acceptable animation. Maybe not the best… but for the best, maybe you should have been the whole year. Because we are quite sad we choose only stay for five months… otherwise we could have done much more, especially related to personal projects.

In TAMK, projects are never “personal”, they can be yours, but you will always find people that can help you or join to your project, students or teachers, they are involved in the same way.

So, If your first day you enter in Finlayson, looking at your tutor like he was crazy, because your university cannot be there. Don’t worry, it’s normal. If you go on walking, and by mistake you go inside Fujitsu offices, it’s ok, really, you won’t be the first student that does it.

If after opening the door, you think you are in a kind of workshop or factory… well, maybe you are not that wrong. And after all, if when they give you the school key, you meet your coordinator that asks to you, what do you want to learn, what are you interested on… you feel more important than ever, well, welcome to TAMK, welcome to Media and Arts Career.

We count on that as one of our best experiences ever, and although once we are back in Spain, we are appreciating the sun and the beach more than we have ever done, when we look back to the past, we cannot help smiling remembering all our ERASMUS in the most strange, far away, cold in Winter but at warm in Springtime.

This are our few word about studying in Tampere but it was just a quarter parts of what we could experience there. From spending time in the Sauna in winter to swimming in the lakes in Spring, all that happened in between is something that you have to live.

The authors are students of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona who made their Erasmus exchange period at TAMK last spring
Laura and Leticia were extremely productive students. At our Tampere Art Factory festival they presented the two projects pictured with this story.|||