Prior to coming to Finland, we were all given a brief to create a digital video about us, our cities and university... and in true MINE style there was very little information given in design or structure! This resulted in all the videos being totally different, and yet all very informative, capturing what it was like to live and work in each country. Focus from each video weighed onto different aspects of daily living, for the Danish video, there was a lot of information about the university and the hospitals, the London lot focused more on what living was like... basically we just wanted and excuse to go sightseeing. And the Finnish video, was... well you could see that Pori is a very small place, and you need to come up with creative ways to amuse yourself here!
The videos were a great way to not only introduce our universities, hospitals and cities, but it also gave us an idea as to who we were about to spend two weeks with. For this aspect, the videos were a great icebreaker, it automatically gave us something to ask the person sitting next to us, it put a name to a face, that until now we could only really do on Facebook and it lightened the mood, a lot of laughing went on there!
From there, we set up our European Market. We Brits went for cheese and pickle on crackers, marmite (naturally!), loads of cadburys' things, Scottish shortbread, Ale of some description, Victoria sponge, pork pies and probably a few other bits! The point of the Market is not only a social activity, but each country can show off it's best food-y bits... I have to admit, I am not sure that marmite fits into that category, but it had to be done! Each table had something new, and unique that forces us to interact... after a couple of drinks from the Czech table though and we were all great friends... some better than others!
The Market stands also had information about the universities and cities again. London underground tube maps and Maltese fliers seemed to be all over the place, I came back with a goody-bag full of things from the Finnish table... I don't think that I will be out of alcohol hand gel for a while!
I thought the country videos were really good this year too, and worked really well. It is also a good starting point for thinking about how to develop your digital stories, and judging from the country videos we can look forward to an excellent student conference ;)
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