Laurea Porvoo International Intensive Week 11-15 April 2011

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Students as entrepreneurs – starting one’s own business

Eighteen student-established companies were recorded in Laurea in 2010. This number of companies can be seen as a good result even by international standards. Laurea was acknowledged for this achievement in an international research, development and innovation evaluation published in 17.3.2011

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Encounter Art

Encounter Art is a new concept in Finland which aims for art-based methods to be used in social services and health care among the professionals and clients. Encounter Art’s development is based on the Japanese Clinical Art and its Finnish application called Active Art. Clinical Art’s general goal is to bring positivity and joy into the lives of the participants by means of meeting and creating art. In Japan, the groups are lead by a Clinical Artist cooperating with assisting coordinators. Like Clinical Art, the Encounter Art means working in groups where the joy of doing and strengthening one’s own capabilities, supporting self-awareness development, and reaching goals are essential.

Encounter Art in Finland has been developed from year 2006 in cooperation with Laurea University of Applied Sciences, the city of Vantaa and Japanese Tokohu Fukushi University. The appliers and developers of the Encounter Art program say that the results are promising. The research and appliance work is still continuing and needs strengthening through investigative examination and the power of cooperation with the other Universities of Applied Sciences and Aalto University’s School of Art and Design.

Learning process

Encounter Art specialisation studies comply with the Learning by Developing (LbD) model, which sees students as active developers while learning new things and evolving into experts in their own field of work. Teachers participate as developers and support the learning and professional growth of students. The studies are implemented by integrating work, learning and developing. The activities of Laurea University of Applied Sciences are based on learning and on an operating model, which integrates students, teachers and workplace experts in a number of cooperation projects, including Encounter Art activities. Laurea's LbD model, roughly meaning investigative learning in development projects, refers to developmental and investigative learning through work. In line with this new model, learning and teaching are increasingly pragmatic and take place in the context of the workplace. The LbD model is targeted at new, effective learning and multidisciplinary competence. Students can grow through authentic, evidence-based projects from having basic competence to being developers of the world of work.

The Green Motorway

Construction work of the E18 motorway from Helsinki towards east is seen with green prospects and with many ways of developing environmentally friendly traffic. The development would enable travelling from Helsinki to St. Petersburg with low emissions but it would also consider the needs of sparsely populated and rural areas. The basic research phase of the green motorway project is almost done and soon can be seen whether the also Internationally applicable concept will be implemented.