Kymi Sinfonietta’s music videos mental health theme is the public service project of the year

27.11.2024 | The Horizons working group has selected Kymi Sinfonietta’s mental health activities through music videos as the 2023 public work project of the year.
The working group also gave an honourable mention to the Lahti Historical Museum’s Muistamo project, which opened up perspectives on transgenerational stories. The awards were presented on 25 November at the Joint Audiences seminar in Lahti.

The Public Achievement of the Year Award is given to a project, project or action in the field of culture and performing arts that has been topical during 2023. With this award, the Horizon Team wants to highlight noteworthy public works in the field of culture and the arts and to raise awareness of public work among the general public. This is the second time that Horisontti has awarded the prize.

Kymi Sinfonietta has been producing music videos with MIELI Kotka Region Mental Health Association since 2020. From 2021 onwards, they will combine the strengths of the orchestra, well-known artists and local young people in a mental health video. In 2023, the orchestra and Samu Haber made a music video of Haber’s song Sä, featuring a choir of Kotka schools and students from the Kotka Region Music College. The video has reached many listeners.

Mental health-themed social media outreach is a professionally executed project that has been particularly targeted at young people: a large number of young people participated in the design and production of the video, which allowed them to reflect on and discuss difficult mental health issues. The accessibility of the project was enhanced by its dissemination on social media channels both nationally and internationally.

The video production format has become an established part of Kymi Sinfonietta’s activities with young people. A video on a topical issue is also a channel for mental health professionals and adults of all ages to engage in discussion with young people. Similar collaborations and video production are possible elsewhere.

Honourable mention for the Lahti Historical Museum’s Muistamo project

The Horizon working group would also like to give an honourable mention to the Lahti Historical Museum’s Memory Museum project. Working on the experiences of the Mainiemi sawmill community in Padasjoki and the Karelian evacuees, the project opened up perspectives on the transgenerational stories of a key population group in the Lahti region. Using participatory methods, the museum recorded memories and obtained artefacts and photographs for the main exhibition of the Lahti Historical Museum, which will open in the summer of 2024. Through discussions, experiential experts, researchers and artists built local identities and created places of encounter. The project has succeeded in engaging the local public already in the preparatory phase, thus paving the way for a successful museum concept where dialogue is part of the action.

Horizon is a working group of cultural and artistic professionals working with the public. The working group includes representatives of the Museum Pedagogical Association Pedaali ry, the Performing Arts Audience Work Guild and the Finnish Symphony Orchestras Association’s Audience Work Forum, Tuuli Uusikukka, Pirjo Virtanen, Noona Leppinen and Annika Kukkonen. In addition to the Horizon Group, the jury has included Inka Yli-Tepsä from the 2022 Horizon Prize-winning Mun Ateneum project and Tuula Penttilä from the Art Testers cultural education programme as rotating members.