The Fine Arts students Martta Tuomaala and Essi Laurila were awarded at the SEE YOU festival in Dortmund 16-19 September for their project "Speech Bubbles@city". The project was awarded the international RUHR.2010 Young Europe Award. The SEE YOU festival, which showcases children's and youth culture, is part of the 2010 European culture capital events around the Ruhr area, and it gathered hundreds of projects from all over Europe, all of which were aimed at youth.



"Speech Bubbles@city" was developed in the Fine Arts programme for over a year, and the first version was on display in the "Promoting Changes" exhibition in Werstas, Tampere. The project called for young people to realize cartoons about subjects that the young couldn't or didn't dare to do. The cartoons were presented on the brick wall in the Plevna area in May-June 2010.

In their review, the SEE YOU festival jury paid particular attention to the public presentation of the project and how the implementation happened on terms of the young. At the invitation of the festival, Martta Tuomaala also organized a cartoon workshop where young Czech music and theatre students participated.

"Speech Bubbles@city" was one of the rare projects at the festival, in which the young were approached on their own ground. Czech youth focused in their comics to tell about their happy future, whereas the youth from Tampere had done their comics about the need for freedom of speech and the problems in the community and society.

Photo: Pictured the Czech youth who participated n the Speech Bubbles@city workshop. From left to right  Zdena Horackova, Petra Novakova, Daniela Drozenova, Monika Nemeckova, Edita Valaskova, Jan Holinsky and Martin Kriz.

Picture: Martta Tuomaala