Cultural research at the Kopli pilot area in Tallinn

The final quarter of 2021 was very fruitful for ACCESS Tallinn team. We organized all our SSA events within this time: two cultural pop-up days, hosted a joint cooking event with traditional area recipes of Kopli and a youth street-art event using stencil-technique to a public wall in North-Tallinn. Even though it was a pleasure being at the very heart of these events, our main goal with these events was to get in touch with residents to interview them about their needs and preferences for local cultural events and services.

The research

Overall we had 30 personal in-depth interviews and two group studies with students from both Estonian and Russian speaking schools.The goal for the research was focused mainly on . Bearing in mind the physical, financial, and time-consuming aspects. The word “culture” was left undefined so the participators of the research could go as wide as they’d want with describing local “culture”. This left room for focusing on various activities such as visiting the theater, opera or museums, contributing in the community, being in the nature, doing sports etc. All gathered interviews and the results are used as input for Tallinn’s cultural action plan.

Main conclusions of the research are:

• The residents of Kopli are generally positive and hopeful about the future of the area. Both the natural environment and the historical heritage of the region are highly valued, and should be protected, introduced, and exhibited more than before.
• Almost all respondents rated the opportunities to move to cultural objects and events of interest to them as good: this is favored by good public transport network and free public transport for citizens.
• The most popular way to spend free time is outdoors, this includes cycling, walking, health sports, spending time in the parks, coastal areas and in the nature of Paljassaare peninsula. Public spaces are seen to be evolving in a positive, more beautiful and safer way, but some residents still have concerns about the decline of the natural environment, silence and privacy.
• Expectations for libraries seem to have changed. The pandemic situation has taken people to their home offices, so the library of the future could also offer rented jobs, co-operation opportunities and meeting rooms as services. However, the residents are generally satisfied with the current conditions of the libraries – the selection of books is good, the premises are renovated and equipped with computers.
• A bigger problem seems to be with the information about Kopli’s events. There was a consensus that too much information has been moved to social networks, but information about the events and other activities should also be available on paper, such as in the district newspaper, on billboards, at bus stops and on notice boards in shops.

We are extremely grateful for these interviews and to everybody who participated and helped to conduct the research.
All of this has a great value and helps the city to be more while planning relevant actions.