In 2009 a new Kouvola municipality was formed together from 4 smaller municipalities. The people in the city were fighting with political issues and people needed something to unite them. That is where Piia Kleimola and her organization stepped up to help. They made a project and built an adventure route within the Kouvola region, which went by all the 4 municipalities. The route was travelled by bus, which stopped by at historical monuments. In the monuments, passengers met actors who played local people, who would live in the area in the 1800s.
The success of the project started instantly, when the core group met. Piia Kleimola mentioned that they invited people to participate in planning the project openly in a local newspaper. Around 25 people showed up at first and they made a strategy for the project openly together.
The project was a success in the local scene and it attracted around 500 people. It was also a good example on how to build a connection with local companies in a creative way. 75% of the local companies were creative industries entrepreneurs.
One of the biggest challenges with the project was marketing. It was surprisingly hard to sell new kinds of events to Finnish people. Despite this, the project team survived by discussing how each project worker could spread the word to their networks and asked their contacts to spread the word further.
Read more about the project here.
