Documentary Film of Kouvola City

Students from Kymenlaakson ammattikorkeakoulu (University of Applied Sciences) are making a documentary film of Kouvola. I was interviewed for that video today and so was Tuomas Kunttu, information specialist in Kouvola City Library.

We were asked a lot questions about Mediamaja and the library: history, activities and services, users, staff, funding and the importance of library for the city. I wrote a text in preparation of the interview. The last three sentences make up the slogan for Mediamaja that I had to come up with at the end of the interview – aren’t we cool or what?

Mediamaja

Mediamaja is a project, which started in January 2009. It aims at creating better services for the young, young adults, immigrants and people with foreign background. Official opening was in May 2009 and everything was in full swing by September 2009. Funding comes from the European Social Fund and it ends in December 2011.

We offer courses, workshops, exhibitions, concerts and gaming events. Our strengths are sound, video, music and animation production, social media and creative writing.  We are open every weekday but our opening hours are a little different from the rest of the library. In the morning and in the afternoon we teach groups from schools, and in the afternoons Mediamaja is open to all. We usually end the day by six o’clock in the evening.

We are mainly in the main library of Kouvola but our work can be mobile: we go to schools, colleges and different cultural events. We use a lot of social media; you can find us in Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

All activities are free of charge:  all the services Mediamaja provide, four members of staff and their expertise and  state of the art equipment -  computers, programmes and video cameras. We arrange activities in co-operation with educational institutions, youth and immigration services.

It’s important to offer meaningful services to our target groups; we need to offer people equal opportunities to gain knowledge and improve their skills. This is not traditional library work; we have no books here. But, as far as public libraries are concerned, they need to adapt to changing times. We need to have these new services alongside the more traditional services.  Mediamaja is about promoting diversity, creativity and self-expression. We also want to bring people together, let them show off their talents and improve themselves. Mediamaja is also a place where you can just hang out and play games; it’s like a public living room in the heart of the city!

Even though this is a project and funding ends in 2011, we aim at making these services part of the basic services of Kouvola library. We’d also like to extend our services to all clients.

Mediamaja is the coolest place in Kouvola. Come and enjoy! It’s fun, it’s free!
 

Filming is about to start!