Soita Mummolle


thank you everybody for today, really!

So today was Soita Mummolle Päivä and I must admit that the public reaction to it was mindblowing!

Many tv and radio stations, plus blogs, discussion forums, mags and papers covered the happening and so many wonderful people has shown up to the call-your-grandparents flashmob in Kamppi. I also received very supportive emails and had interesting, warm conversations with many supporters who came to the flashmob: I really felt that this time in my life I did something good and right not only for me and I had something to share with others. It was a great personal reward and I really want to thank you all for making this event possible! 🙂

I am really too tired to write anything more detailed and nicer than this tonight, but yes, the concept is: thank you! Especially thank you Teemu, Siru, Jaakko, my love Jussi, Marika, Reetta, Anssi, Dan, Anu, Minsu, Atefee, Ville, Anne, Duong, Yan, Annaleena, Päivi, Heikki, Krista, Karolina, Maija, Dhiraj, Yanhuan, Riitta, Arja, Tiina, the Agricola youth, Aalto Social Impact, plus the heart-knitters Tintti, Tea, Carol, Carola, Riitta, Lee and Akua, plus all those nice journalists that talked about the campaign and helped spreading the word! ❤

(I hope I haven’t forgotten anybody of you very helpful people; if I did it, it’s just because I need to sleep after this week!)

Stefania



only 2 days to soita mummolle päivä

It seems weird that after all these months working so focusedly on the campaign, the grand final of Soita Mummolle Päivä is already here!

The preparations went well, media attention rose enough in the last days and hopefully this will motivate more people to participate to the initiative and call their grandparents at least on Wednesday 😉 Helsingin Sanomat, Iltasanomat, Nyt and Vartti – just to name a few – covered the story during the past week, many people should be aware of what is going on by now! And I wish they will join us to raise some noise in Kamppi about it!

I still have few things to arrange, like fetching the phones from Sonera (thanks Siru!), print more Soita Mummolle A4 signs and brief the people from Agricola Church who will kindly help me in keeping the Soita Mummolle Päivä flashmob of Wednesday (thanks Teemu & everybody!).

I hope lots of people will decide to come to Kamppi and publicly call their grandparents, even if I am a bit anxious if everything will turn out well. Ten phones are not enough to have everybody calling for free, in case few hundreds people will come, so I hope this won’t piss off anybody. On the other hand, nobody – I hope – will be so stingy not to call the grandparents with their own phone. These free phones were more of a candy-treat and something symbolical, and not the goal of course. 🙂

So, as I have been repeating for all these months now, please feel welcome to join us on 11.8 and call your grandparents! These are the available options to particpiate to Soita Mummolle Päivä:

1) Join the Soita Mummolle flash-mob in Helsinki
Join Soita Mummolle flash-mob in Kamppi, on 11.8.2010, from 16:00 to 17:00! Come to call for free your elderly parents and grandparents to give a public sign of your love, care and committment. Grandparents are also very welcome to call their children and grandchildren: let’s reduce the genration gap! Free calls provided by Sonera.

Search the people with the Soita Mummolle signs and ask them to make you call!

2) Just call your grandparents and invite others to do the same!
Personal action is important! If you cannot join one the flash-mob or you are not in Helsinki, just call your grandparents wherever you are and then just post the message “olen soittanut!” on Soita Mummolle Facebook page. Before and during Soita Mummolle Päivä tell everybody you know to do the same!

3) Download the Soita Mummolle Sign, take a picture of you with it and post in on Facebook
You can download the Soita Mummolle Sign “Olen soittanut!” (and remember to call for real, of course!) from here.
Then print it, take a picture of you showing it and upload it on 11th August 2010 on Soita Mummolle Facebook page and use it also as your profile picture!



Soita Mummolle Päivä program revealed

Soita Mummolle Päivä (Call Your Grandma Day) will take place on 11th August 2010.
Even though the name says “mummo”, we are talking about also grandparents or elderly parents!
This day is appointed to sensitize people about seniors’ loneliness and to show in first person a visible sign of committment.

“What can I do to participate?”
Simple, there are many options depending on your level of availability:

1) Join the Soita Mummolle flash-mob in Helsinki (this is the funniest, dn’t miss it!)
Join Soita Mummolle flash-mob in Kamppi, on 11.8.2010, from 16.00 to 18.00 from 16:00 to 17:00! Come to call for free your elderly parents and grandparents to give a public sign of your love, care and committment. Grandparents are also very welcome to call their children and grandchildren: let’s reduce the genration gap! Free calls provided by Sonera.

Search the people with the Soita Mummolle signs and ask them to make you call!

2) Just call your grandparents and invite others to do the same!
Personal action is important! If you cannot join one the flash-mob or you are not in Helsinki, just call your grandparents and then just post the message “olen soittanut!” on Soita Mummolle Facebook page. Before and during Soita Mummolle Päivä tell everybody you know to do the same!

3)Download the Soita Mummolle Sign, take a picture of you with it and post in on Facebook
You can download the Soita Mummolle Sign “Olen soittanut” (and remember to call for real!) from here.
Then print it, take a picture of you showing it and upload it on 11th August 2010 on Soita Mummolle Facebook page and use it also as your profile picture!



Ready to be back, live and kickin’

Dear all,

my holidays are almost over and soon the final rush of the campaign will make my life very busy. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to upload to Flickr the second batch of pictures from the last Street Action, but you can see them on our Facebook Page.

11th of August, Soita Mummolle Päivä, is coming so quickly, but before that there will be still some things to do:

  • Soita Mummolle Street Action #5, on Wednesday 21.7
  • Soita Mummolle Street Action #6, on Wednesday 4.8 (be sure don’t miss one of these last two Street Actions!)
  • Knitting guerrilla on week 31: knitted hearts attached to an info flyer about upcoming Soita Mummolle Päivä will be “forgotten” on metro and tram seats… let’s see who is going to catch them! They are handmade hearts coming from supporters all over the world, Netherlands, USA, Australia

On the organizational side, I still need to define the last details of Soita Mummolle Päivä with my collaborator Teemu Laajasalo, while contracting a cooperation with Sonera came to a very good result: we are going to have about 7-10 phones to use for free on Soita Mummolle Päivä (unfortunately, no international calls allowed… sorry, my foreigners friends!) and our signs will be hanging for about 2 weeks in 2 Sonera Shops, in Kamppi and Citykäytävä.

On public relations’ side I need to seriously sit down and write the press release for Soita Mummolle Päivä. Anyway, one good result was already achieved, since – after the articles on Peppar.fi and Voi Hyvin – I will be interviewed by Vartti about the campaign next Friday. Perhaps, they will even bring their photographer along to take pictures of me, I almost feel embarassed! :O

SOITA MUMMOLLE, HELSINKI!

Stefania



Soita Mummolle Street Action #1 was a great kickstart!

Today the first of the Soita Mummolle Street Actions took place in the centre of Helsinki: thanks to the great weather and the cheerful spirit of the participants who showed up to the flash-mob the Action was the best kickstart one could wish!

One team in Kamppi and one team in Esplanadi, we collected many support pictures today, causing surprise, smiles and interest in many passers-by. You can check already almost all the pictures in lower resolution from Facebook, while on Flickr you can find so far most of the hi-res pictures from Esplanadi.
I am waiting for the hi-res pictures to be sent back to me from the other “action-photographers”, so if you want to download the photo of you we took just be patient for some more few days! 🙂

Over 70 people shown their support to the campaign in one hour, donating their picture: so, if you are reading, thank you very much! The mood was nice and some of you were so enthusiast that we got a lot of positive energy. 🙂
The other big “thank you” goes to the action-photographers of today, Maija, Ville, Yanhaun, Anne and Dhiraj: you were great and you’ve done a very good job!

For everybody who is interested to join us in the next round, the calendar of the next Street Actions is this:
2.6
16.6
30.6
21.7
28.7
4.8

I will publish soon the event page on Facebook, and you can sign up for any of this dates with this Google Spreadsheet.
Sign up, it will be as cool as today, if not more: things can only improve!

Stefania



A week full of excitement for Soita Mummolle!

This week will be – and has already been, even if it’s only Monday!- full of excitement and progresses for the Soita Mummolle campaign. Here are briefly some highlights of the good things going on:

  • Today I presented the project to the audience of Aalto Social Impact lectures. Many support pictures were collected, among which one from rapper Signmark, the special guest of the lecture! The mood was great and inspiring, and the story of deaf rapper Signmark really gave food for thoughts to everybody. Check out all the photos from the photo gallery

Signmark & Soita Mummolle

  • A batch of 2500 coloured paper sheets is ready to be soon printed and transformed in Soita Mummolle signs: be ready to see them around the city!
  • Wednesday 19.5 the 1st Soita Mummolle Street Action will take place! Already 6 people signed up for this flash-mob and I am really satisfied about this result, even though it might seem small. Our network is keeping on growing and I am sure that along these summer months more interested people will be willing to join the action with a big smile! 🙂 I am very looking forward to Wednesday, even though I am a bit nervous for the debut and I hope everything will roll out nice and smooth. By the way, you are still in time to join! For more information and the link to the subscription spreadsheet visit the Facebook event page (but PLEASE, just not mark “attending”… use the Google spreadsheet given!)
  • New partners onboard! Negotiations for cooperation with Agricola Church and Sonera are proceeding: both (hopefully) future partners have shown a lot of enthusiasm and positive energy about the Soita Mummolle campaign… I got also in contact with artist Helena Björk, whose master thesis was focused on urban knitting, so we will soon meet and see how is possible to collaborate… but more news will come later, let’s not reveal all the juicy things at once!
  • The Facebook group has been moved to a Facebook page, due to the high number of fans, and in the migration it collected already 156 “likes” in only one day 🙂 So keep on following the campaign on the new page! http://www.facebook.com/SoitaMummolle
  • Tomorrow, Tuesday 18.5, some billposting in TKK and TaiK, before the schools get completely empty for the summer

All for now, and remember to call your grandparents!

Stefania



JOIN IN SOITA MUMMOLLE STREET ACTIONS

Do you want to give a hand to the Soita Mummolle campaign in a fun and personal way?
No money needed, just a little bit of your time and your personality…
Hitting the streets of Helsinki this summer, Soita Mummolle Street Action is a collective, fun, interactive event outdoors with a good message to spread.

Dates
May: 19th
June: 2nd, 16th, 30th
July: 21st, 28th
August: 4th
Time
17.30 – 19.00 (Including intro, the action itself and the conclusion)
Meeting point
Helsinki Railway Station

A Soita Mummolle Street Action is somethin simple, in only 11 steps:

– Leave from home and remember to bring your digital camera!

– We are meeting in front of Helsinki Railway Station at 17.30

– We are given Soita Mummolle signs

– Either alone or in couples we are reaching a busy spot in the city center

– We show the Soita Mummolle sign to the passer-bys, just standing, smiling, searching for eye contact with the people

– If a passer-by reacts in some way (smiling back, laughing, commenting, asking, keeping the eye contact…) then you are going to ask “Do you think this is a good message?”.
From then you have to try to engage in a short conversation, leading to the point of: “This is a campaign to sensitize against seniors’ loneliness. We don’t want your money, but can we take a picture of you, showing this sign? Then we are going to publish it on our blog as a sign of your personal support to this cause: we are trying to collect as many pictures as possible!”

– Take the photo!

– Leave the sign to the person, telling that s/he can see the picture taken at the blog or Facebook address written on the sign

– Try to collect as many pictures as possible

– All the participants are meeting back at the train station at 19.00 and tell each other how did it go

– The participants have to upload the pictures taken on Soita Mummolle Facebook page as soon as possible, giving as title place and date (e.g. Kamppi, 2.6.2010). Join the group and you will be enabled to upload your pics!
The address of the Facebook page is facebook.com/SoitaMummolle

To sign up for a suitable date, please use this form: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEN3enpRSWQ1QWR1anpmbi03TklBX2c6MQ

If you want to take part in one of these actions, but none of these time suits you, write to soita.mummolle@gmail.com and we can arrange something together! 🙂



public knitting event?

Ideas of a collaborative “knitting graffiti” event boiling in my head… I wonder if seniors would participate together with younger knitting-fans in something like this? http://bit.ly/38yxVw

I was speaking about this with Andrew, a doctoral student in Media Lab (Aalto University School of Art and Design), and I found these practices so inspiring: soft yet rebellious, they put public authorities in doubt if getting rid of them or keeping them. It is a visible form of guerrilla art, but in the same moment is so mild and sympathetic that you would feel like a brute in tearing away the knits…

I would like to create an event that would bring together people from different ages, held in a public space, hopefully outdoors during a lovely sunny summer day, helping to fill the generation gap. I just wonder if seniors would appreciate some kind of fun, lively knitting public intervention in the city environment, or they would consider it as an act of vandalism…

Your opinions?

Stefania