As the semester is drawing nearer to the end, I am going to talk about some things from my placement I have missed here. In November Culture Step went on a trip to the Leibur bread factory. Many people said that this was one of their favourite events of the programme and it is easy to see why. Leibur makes many types of bread that are popular in Estonia and Finland. Estonian rye bread (leib) is dark and a little sweet, and when it is made freshly, I think it's delicious! At the open air museum I tried it with home made butter, it was delightful! Leibur also makes white bread, and even products that are somewhere between the density of rye bread and white bread. Our guide says that a variety of bread is popular in Estonia. I have certainly found that open sandwiches are available everywhere, and often when eating lunch out, there will be unlimited bread provided with your meal. One reason this trip was particularly interesting because it shows a perspective of Estonia that we don't usually get to see. This is not your usual guided tour, and by learning about how the food that Estonians eat every day is made, we can gain insights about what we can buy in the supermarkets too. This is the kind of education that is often overlooked for integration, but it is very useful. We all have to eat, and it is a good way to form connections with the local culture, know what products are local and delicious and to save money on shopping. Bread is very important in Estonian daily life, so learning about bread makes sense in order to understand more about Estonian culture. We even saw rye bread that was extremely thin, and our guide explained that this is for people who only want a tiny bit of bread for their sandwich! So even if you are not a big bread fan, Estonia has a kind of bread for you! Another very informative trip was to the Estonian parliament. This was incredibly interesting for me as I find politics fascinating and this is the place where Estonian laws and policies are made. This is also one of the oldest parliament buildings in the world. The parliament is part of a medieval castle called Toompea Castle, and more modern additions have been built on to the old walls. We were very lucky, because on the usual tours, the public are not able to go up the old tower. But we were able to go up the old tower at sun set! This was one of the best views of Tallinn I have seen, and it made me imagine what the view would be like hundreds of years ago. We then took a tour inside of the building, which was much warmer! It was interesting to see that the interior of one of the buildings is apparently built in the expressionist style of architecture. This means that it has many unusual features, most notably zig zags and diagonal lines used a lot. Annleena, who showed us around told us that these angles are meant to represent the many angles that the politicians should consider when considering issues in parliament. That's something that we need to keep in mind as adult educators too! Local politics is another important area that really helps to learn about a particular place you have moved to. This can often be a means for exclusion for newcomers, because they might not know about the different parties or issues in that country. It definitely helps to have a little understanding of this area. Actually, education in politics and citizenship education is often neglected in all levels of education in the UK. This means that British citizens are often lacking in knowledge about politics and so would find it difficult to explain to friends who are from outside of the UK. I think more awareness of how political systems work is crucial to living in a country. For us, this is not just an area that needs expanding in adult education for integration, but also in schools and community education. Finally, we had a culture step party to celebrate the first round of graduates from the programme, and I was one of the graduates! The party had some traditional Estonian folk music and we did some dances to this. It was a really fun way to finish the programme and it made me consider the links between Estonian culture and my own. The dances are similar to some folk dances that happen in Britain too! It was great to see all the people that did the culture step programme graduating, and it was like we built a family over the course of all that we learned together. This was a fitting way to finish the programme, and the community will still remain on social media, with possible meetings of alumni in the future.
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We had quite a range of seminars for the placement, facilitated by different organisations of adult education in Tallinn.
On Saturday the culture steppers took a trip to the open air museum! This museum is a short bus journey out of the city centre and I definitely recommend that you visit it. Katrin from the Estonian institute told us that Estonians love to come here and that there are many events here throughout the year! So this museum is a must if you would like to learn more about Estonian history and culture! This museum uses a few unique ways to help people discover more about Estonian history. it's great to be able to learn outdoors, and since the natural world is such a big part of Estonian culture, it makes sense that this museum combines a museum with nature. There are numerous traditional Estonian buildings, many of them are original structures from the nineteenth century, relocated to the museum. It really felt like I was stepping back in time exploring them! We split into small groups and followed an adventure using our smartphones. This had a map of the museum and various puzzles to solve once we reached the locations on the map. This was a cool way to help us to interact with the objects and also the people working in the museum! I won't spoil the puzzles for you, but I will share a picture of one of the objects we found that was part of the trail - the Lestovka, used for prayer in the Russian orthodox tradition. Later, the people working in the museum told us about some of the traditions at the Setu farm part of the museum site. As I've already mentioned, I love to learn about culture through food, and today was no exception. We got to drink some tea prepared in a traditional way, with some sugar that stays in your mouth while you drink. We also tried a traditional cake, which was apparently very healthy! There are some goats living next to the farm house, so we also said hello to them! There was a small exhibition on various cultures living in Estonia, including Russians, Armenians and Polish among many other nationalities. We were encouraged to research a particular group and then to share what we found with the rest of our party. It was really great to see that we were encouraged to learn about even more cultures living in Estonia! This was a fantastic learning experience and if you want to visit the museum I strongly encourage you to do so! I will try to go again before I leave because there wasn't time to see everything there because it is so big! The rest of the culture steppers will have another chance to visit in a couple of weeks, so I hope they will take the opportunity (I'll add some of my pictures on the facebook group to show anyone who didn't go this time how interesting it was)!
Hours this week at placement: 6 hours The last week has been incredibly busy for me, with various deadlines for courses, presentations to give and trips with culture step! I am feeling tired but happy! Since I last posted an update I have been to three events with the culture steppers. The first event was a handbell concert and the Estonia concert hall. We gathered in the lobby before the performance, a few people came up to me to ask whether I had spare tickets (because I was holding the tickets for other culture steppers), so it was definitely a popular concert! The hand bell is apparently not a traditional Estonian instrument, but this group of musicians has made it pretty popular and travelled the world playing concerts! This was my first experience of going to a concert in Estonia, and I very much enjoyed it. I noticed that people dress up very nicely to go to concerts here, mostly in the UK we are more informal. Having walked past the concert hall a lot on my way to the old town, I was glad to finally see inside. The decor is very grand, but it doesn't feel overwhelmingly big, giving it a warmer atmosphere than some other concert halls I've been to. 'I went to a concert yesterday' was another must learn phrase from my Estonian language app, and it is obviously important to many Estonians! The next event was a trip to Tartu. We were there to visit the Estonian National Museum, which is a little bit outside of the centre, but luckily we had time for a quick stroll around the sights of the city. Lea was a student at Tartu university, so she was able to tell us a lot about the history! She said it's her favourite city in Estonia, and it's easy to see why it is so popular. There is a lot of green space, and the trees were beautiful and golden with the colours of autumn while we were there. We headed to the National Museum next, which is a uniquely designed modern building and I can see why it won a 'European museum of the year' award. The museum's permanent collection is an interactive timeline of Estonian history, and alongside the fascinating clothes, books and artefacts on display, there are a wide range of multi-sensory experiences for visitors to interact with. Exhibit captions are written in Estonian, but with a special card, visitors can tap the caption and change it to their own language, allowing people from many countries to learn from the collection, but not having to show huge amounts of text, which can be off-putting. This day at the museum was special because there was a festival to celebrate the Finno-Urgic peoples. These people include Estonians, Finns and Hungarians, who have their own states but also includes groups such as Sámi, who live in the north of the Nordic countries, and Mordvins, Udmuts, Maris, Komis and Karelians who are living in Russia. But there are others too! All of these groups have languages that share common root words which are usually the early words formed in a language (nature, body, numbers, animals etc.). There are also grammatical similarities between them, and they all lack gendered pronouns or articles (the Estonian for both he and she is 'ta'). We were able to attend a concert, in which groups of people from different Finno-Urgic nations wore traditional dress, played instruments, sang and danced. I think it is great that Estonia holds this Finno-Urgic festival to celebrate the connections that run between other cultures. The museum also has a second permanent exhibition called Echo of the Urals, which is devoted entirely to the history of the Finno-Urgic people. It was a wonderful experience to see that Estonia is treasuring these traditions and languages (related to, but different to their own). I think this understanding is a very important part of my journey of learning about Estonian culture. It shows that to really understand Estonain culture, we have to realise that there are multiple cultures that are relevant and related. It is important to preserve histories and cultural memory and I am so glad that Culture Step included this festival as a part of its programme. We also shared some food together and I finally tried kefir, which I've been scared to try because I do not like milk. It's a healthy fermented milk which is supposed to be very good for your gut. It was mixed with kama, which is a healthy mix of grains and peas made into a fine powder and luckily also sugar, so it tasted nice to me! Maybe I've said it before, but I think you can learn a lot about a culture from sharing food together! The whole day was fascinating and fun and we arrived back to Tallinn tired and ready for bed!
The next day we had another event to go to, it was the time of the month for another Estonishing Evening (I wrote about the last one on this blog). How has it been a whole month already? The topic of this month's event was Estonian and Russian relations, with the provocative title 'Can Estonia become a bi-ethnic success story?'. I had already been told that this can be a tense subject in Estonia. Additionally, with my placement being an integration project, this was right up my street. I really want to get my teeth into this subject and do it justice, so I think I will write a whole new post about it later. To log my hours, I have spent 16 hours at my placement events and classes and 3 hours on work at home since I last posted. Yesterday the culture steppers took a trip to the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum! We saw the award winning exhibition 'Songs and Stories', which was a journey through Estonian music, folk stories and theatre. I definitely recommend this exhibition if you are in Tallinn! One Estonian story from the exhibition that caught my attention was called 'The Werewolf'. It was about a mysterious young girl called Tiina who was adopted by a farming family and fell in love with her step-brother Margus. Unfortunately, his other step-sister Mari also has her eye on him, and starts a rumour that Tiina is a werewolf! She ends up running into the forest and living there for a while, and Mari gets to marry the (presumably very handsome) step-brother. The story doesn't really have a happy ending, Margus ends up injuring Tiina, thinking she is a wolf, and she dies in his arms. The exhibition outlined the historical context of the time, highlighting that in the early nineteenth century, many Estonians were living in rural settings like this story took place in. In rural society, strangers tended not to be trusted, and this story can give some insight into the way of life of Estonians in the past. Museums are a great space for informal and non-formal adult learning, and a particular favourite of mine. I appreciate the chance that museums give me to go at my own pace, and to learn through different media; text, images, objects etc. Having the chance to touch and interact with things is really great too, and this exhibition certainly provided that! I also liked that the museum provided chalk boards so that visitors could add responses, which is one way to facilitate some exchange of dialogue in such a space. It was good to see culture step participants and their families interacting with his exhibition! Last week I started my Estonian language classes, which I'm hoping to give the Estonian Institute some feedback on. It has been challenging but interesting so far! Estonian is easier in some ways than other languages I've studied, it's not tonal like Vietnamese, and I can read it unlike my ability with Japanese Kanji. But in some ways the grammar is very difficult for me, I've never encountered a language with so many cases before! It's good to be at least able to say some small things in Estonian now, and it makes me feel more confident doing simple things like going to the supermarket. I will write more about my classes next time. Over the last two weeks for my placement I have completed about 3 hours of work at home, 2 hours on a trip, and 3 hours in Estonian classes. Today, I'd like to write about some of my 'online' work with my placement. Alongside going to fascinating events, I've been doing work behind the scenes too. As well as some proofreading and formatting for the Culture Step programme and emails, I helped to set up the facebook group (it's private unfortunately, just for participants!). Actually, I was surprised at how useful a tool this was in bringing people together. I have also been sharing some of my blog posts on this site for public reading. My post about the Estonishing Evenings event was even shared by the online publication Estonian World! This was a personal challenge for me, because I am not used to offering my reflective writing to a public readership. I feel insecure about what people might think about writing that is quite personal, but I want to challenge myself more, and I am already learning a lot from this process. I'm hoping I can learn more by opening myself up to the opinions of others. Thinking about this also gave me an idea for something new I can work with for culture step. I want to create a new blog that is not just my own, but that participants can submit entries to, whether it be written, images, music, film, etc. This is something I'm going to work on over the next week. It is great that Lea is very open to these ideas and allows me to work so independently! I like this style of working in Estonia, I love to be given so much freedom to work on projects! I have a complicated relationship with social media. I often feel anxious about posting my views on Facebook, and recently have used it very little. My mental health is notably improved when I minimise use of social media. However, I've realised that for me, social media is a necessary evil. Estonia is the fifth country that I've lived in (sixth if you could England and Scotland separately), I have friends and family all over the world. Facebook is the easiest way to keep in touch with those people. I can use it to 'drop in' on people who I might be crossing paths with soon. Apparently I should be posting my hours spent at placement. According to my Culture Step passport, which logs our hours spent at events through stickers, I have so far spent 18 hours at events. (Estonishing evenings, towers tour, launch and nature film, architecture museum, Lahemaa National park trip) I have also spent at least 10 hours working on my own time on proof-reading, online content development, writing this blog, etc. At the start of this project, Lea said she thought I would be spending more than my 60 hours, this will probably be the case, with more events this week and the Estonian language class! But I don't mind, even though I'm doing a lot, it's very fun too! This has been an exciting week for the organisers and participants of the Culture Step programme! I am in an interesting position, because I am helping to organise and arrange things but also getting to participate. If you're also a participant and reading this blog, I'd love to know some of your thoughts about your experience in the comments. This week we have had two events so far, and we'll have two more by the end of the week. First, we took a trip to the four ancient towers that form part of Kiek in de Kök Fortifications Museum. We met at Neitsitorn Tower (which dates back to 1370) and took a walk through the four towers that make up the museum. Kiek in de Kök is apparently the largest medieval tower in the Baltic countries. There are all sorts of ghost stories surrounding the fortifications, which reminded me of my hometown Norwich, which is also a medieval city like Tallinn, with plenty of spooky stories. Our guide, Kadi, had done some academic research into this subject, and she suggested that wherever you go in the world, people tell ghost stories! This certainly fits with my experiences of other cultures and I was reminded of a taxi driver in Singapore who spent twenty minutes warning me about the women with no legs he saw gliding around the modern city at night. When we are newcomers to a culture, it's comforting to see some familiarities (even spooky ones). Does this match with your own culture or cross-cultural encounters? Last night we had our official Culture Step launch party. We tried some traditional Estonian snacks and watched a new nature documentary called The Wind Sculpted Land. The movie has just won 'best cinematography' at Matsalu international film festival and shows the changing seasons across Estonia, documenting how this affects the wildlife's behaviour. I can see why it deserved the award, because each shot is a beautiful view of nature, some from traditional angles we are used to seeing, others providing a fresh perspective that frame the natural world like a beautiful painting. Some of the animals are familiar to me, we have foxes (rebane) and otters (sa oled) in England. But we do not have wolves (hunt), or moose (libu). Many Estonian people that I meet seem to have a deep connection with nature, with wild swimming and mushrooming trips to the forest a regular weekend activity for many. On my Estonian language apps, I was taught phrases like 'I'm going hiking in Lahemaa with my family' - 'Lähen perega Lahemaale matkama' and the word for mushrooming (seenele) very early on! Watching this film made me think about how nature can influence culture and the two can become entangled with one another. The land that we are brought up in can greatly impact the way that we view the world. Having a connection with nature changes the way that we go about our daily lives. Likewise, we impact nature, by filming it, taking walks within it, consuming (even man made things). The changing seasons here also have a big impact on how people act. Having lived in cities that do not have four seasons (Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Singapore), I can say that although winter can be sad, it means that we appreciate the warm weather of summer much more! People in those countries had not based their cultural events so much around the changing seasons, although in the case of Vietnam, and some Chinese Singaporeans, they focussed on the moon instead. Cyclical change that can be represented by the seasons or the moon is a big part of our lives, that sometimes we're more conscious of than others. Time is passing, but with the seasons it is moving in a circle, rather than a straight line. It's sad that summer is ending, but it has to if we are going to see the beautiful colours of autumn again. Actually we saw in the film that Estonia even has a fifth season, a natural flood that comes between winter and spring. We often perceive floods to be a disaster, but here it is a crucial part of the natural cycle. You can watch the trailer here. Finally, I want to think about how watching a nature documentary relates to adult education. Sitting down to watch a documentary (or any movie for that matter) is an example of informal learning that we are doing all the time. I learned a lot from this film, not only about Estonian wildlife, but also Estonian perspectives on nature. The Culture Step programme is providing different kinds of learning opportunities for participants than they may usually find in the formal space of a classroom, or in their workplace. The process of learning about Estonian culture is also opening up questions for me about my own culture, and what I might want to share with migrants about British culture (I don't want to get into that now though because I think it's a very different situation!). I hope to find out more about the cultures of the other participants too, perhaps bringing this multi-cultural dimension can be one of the ways I can help add further to the project as part of my placement. Last night I went to 'How to make Tallinn great again?', which was the first event on the culture step programme! It was an event organised by Estonishing Evenings, and there were local Estonians and people from all over the world, from Iran to Germany to the USA! This series has the aim of bringing Estonians together with those from other countries living in Estonia, to discuss local issues and share opinions and viewpoints with one another. The theme of this month's event was on how to improve Tallinn, through city planning on a government level and also what local people can do. There were talks by local speakers, and the opportunity to discuss in groups and share ideas. The facilitator in my group had brought lots of post-its to collect different people's thoughts. The venue was a place called Erinevate Tubade Klubi or 'the club of different rooms' in English, located in Telliskivi, Tallinn's exciting 'Creative city'. This room somehow manages to combine a comfortable, homely atmosphere with state of the art technology. When you arrive, you can remove your shoes and put on slippers, and there are comfortable sofas and chairs around tables. This is combined with screens throughout, and a green-screen stage. I felt like it was a really relaxed atmosphere, especially because high-tech venues are usually brightly lit and often feel uncomfortable to me. This space nurtured an informal environment for discussion and sharing ideas and enabled everyone to have a good view of the stage. Later in the evening, we had a talk from the founder and CEO of Telliskivi, Jaanus Juss. He shared some of the aims that he had in creating the spaces, and how they developed and built a successful artistic community. During the Soviet times, the buildings that now make up Telliskivi were railway warehouses and factories. They stood disused for many years, until they were bought by Jaanus and his partners. They rent the spaces primarily to creative enterprises, sometimes allowing in something more commercial to subsidise lower rents for artistic spaces. He attributes some of Telliskivi's success to the fact that they haven't accepted grants from outside investors, either from the private sector or any governments or the EU. He sees this as key to maintaining creative control over decision-making, that they do not have to answer to investors, and thus do not have to choose the biggest profits over the 'best fit' to the community. The city hosts practice spaces for bands, music venues, theatre, art galleries and much more, as well as many cool bars and restaurants. According to their website, they have nearly one million people going to events here each year. Having been involved myself with creative communities in the past, it is a truly impressive achievement, because I know there are huge physical, economic and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. There are perhaps some compromises that have to be made in an endeavour like this, in terms of corporate events. Personally, I'm more in favour of a shared ownership model, and not totally averse to local government funding. One worry I have is that governments could use a success story like Telliskivi as an excuse not to fund culture, and leave it entirely up to free-market forces. Also, most decisions are made by Juss and his team, so the city relies on their taste and view points. I wonder what would happen if they opened up creative decisions to the wider community of people who go to Telliskivi? Could it be more democratic? I want to look more into how this creative city is benefitting the local community, but it does seem like a good example of how creativity can thrive given the right nurturing. I also think another key to its success is local knowledge. It was created by people who knew the area and were able to think about ways that they could improve it themselves. Juss stands in stark contrast to corporations and outside investors who know nothing about a locality and its needs. If you are reading this and you know something about Telliskivi, or I got something wrong, please leave your ideas in the comments! This event is a great example of adult learning that can be bottom up, and be beneficial for participants and wider society. These Estonishing Evening events have made a start in creating a dialogue and building communication between wider sections of the community living in Estonia. I hope that the team will continue to run and build upon these fantastic, collaborative events and I hope that more like it will spring up.
I just got home from my first meeting with Lea, the English language organiser of the Culture Step project with the Estonian Institute. I am now even more excited about the time I will spend there!
Lea explained that there are many people living in Estonia who do not speak the language or know much about the culture. A large proportion of these people are Russians, who moved here from the Soviet Union. There are also many people from other countries who mostly moved here for jobs. The culture step programme has funding for 250 people to be able to take part in language classes, events and trips to help them to integrate and learn more about Estonian culture. They have had a massive amount of interest from people wanting to participate, which is fantastic! It looks like I will be able to help them in many ways. I will go to Estonian language classes and offer my perspectives as a language teacher, help out with some trips and events in Tallinn and around the country and do some content writing and proofreading for them. This is really great, because as well as learning a lot about Estonian culture, I hope that this means I can contribute something useful to this organisation. This is an area of adult education that I'm particularly interested in so I'm very excited to be able to be involved with these events and to see how they unfold. Lea gave me lots of resources, so I have been doing my own learning about Estonian culture. Did you know that Estonia is a 'singing nation' and had a 'singing revolution' during the 1980s to demand independence from Russia? Estonians gathered peacefully and sang patriotic songs. It goes to show that there is a huge variety of ways to instigate social change, and singing is one of them! I'd better start practicing my Estonian language skills too... Nägemist! I can't believe a year has passed already!
I moved to Tallinn last week and we have had our induction for the course. It seems like writing a blog will be an important part of our placement and perhaps other courses too. I thought I'd get some practice writing updates. I've written blogs in the past, and I've found that it's good to get into the habit of updating regularly! I found out that I'll be completing my placement at the Estonian Institute and I'm excited and intrigued about it! Recently I've been reading a lot about integration and promoting cultural exchange, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this organisation is going to approach it. I'm hoping that I will also be able to learn a lot about Estonian culture myself and meet many new people here. This is a great opportunity, I'm grateful to be able to do this programme which provides such a wide range of surprising experiences. So far, I really like Tallinn. We have been told a lot (by Estonians) that Estonian people are not too friendly, but I am yet to see this in action. People have been consistently kind and patient with me when I don't quite know the local way of doing things. I have had numerous interesting conversations with people in supermarkets and coffee shops with people keen to speak English with me. I love the Estonian snack 'kohuke', which is made from curd cheese and dreams. I can't put my finger on why, but I keep making comparisons between Estonian and Japanese culture. I'm looking forward to learning more about this enchanting country and exploring the nature here while it is still not too cold outside. |
LaurenI am an IMAESC student, English teacher and adult education researcher from the UK. Categories
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