The entire report for Oulu can be downloaded here.

Conclusions and recommendations for Oulu2026

The Panel acknowledges the progress and preparations made by the Oulu ECoC 2026 team and appreciates the team´s plans and strategies for tackling the newly emerged challenges such as steep inflation, the ongoing pandemic, and the war in Ukraine.

The Panel would like to offer the following advice and recommendations to the Oulu team:

● Whilst the Oulu 2026 team has initiated several capacity building initiatives, the Panel would like to underline the utmost importance of raising capacities overall within the Foundation and for collaboration partners in order to ensure the highest level of quality and efficiency in the implementation of Oulu 2026.

● The Panel enquired about the main points of the city strategy "Cultural Climate Change Now!". One aspect as explained by the Oulu 2026 team is aiming at alluring young people to stay in the region and for others to be attracted to move to Oulu, but the Panel still needs to understand more clearly the correlation between the city strategy and the ECoC goals. The Panel therefore encourages the Oulu 2026 team to make this aspect clearer ahead of the next monitoring meeting.

● Some projects and collaborations with other ECoCs are in the planning, which is encouraging. However, the European and international dimension of the Oulu 2026 programme could go deeper. The Panel recommends engaging much more intensely with the plethora of European cultural organisations and networks in cooperation and co-creation projects, artists in residences, hosting of international meetings, conferences and workshops of European cultural organisations and networks as well as exploring cooperation with meaningful partnerships outside Europe and beyond the EU-Japan fest. Quite specifically, the Unesco regions of Gastronomy could be a useful network. European Capitals of Culture 2026 Oulu - First monitoring report 14 September 2022

● While the Oulu 2026 team had many ideas on how to attract audiences from abroad, the Panel recommends creating a coherent strategy on how to attract international and European audiences.

● The Oulu 2026 team is planning to develop a communication strategy for children and youth and the Panel recommends advancing such strategy into a Europeanwide children-focused communication strategy. Given the challenge of inflation and the tough decisions that have to be made on re-prioritising aspects of the programme, it is vital to have such strategies in place early on in the planning.

● While it is obvious that visiting Oulu from most parts of Europe and beyond will inevitably involve air travel, the Oulu 2026 team needs to be mindful in the communication of the apparent contradiction of their ECoC´s sustainability theme on the one hand and the cooperation with airlines on the other hand. The team's plan to offset the carbon footprints caused by air travel could be one of several communication lines. It would also be interesting to highlight European wide the inherited knowledge of the Sami people on sustainable living. The Panel recommends learning from other indigenous communities around the world on how to communicate their uniqueness worldwide. The Australian aboriginal community is an excellent example that would be worth looking into.

● The Panel recommends establishing a clear communication strategy internally within the Oulu 2026 team as well as externally between the team and partners, sponsors or supporters. Ensuring clear and regular communication on common goals as well as programme content internally and externally is essential for building a team spirit and for delivering unitedly and in line with the objectives and programme of the Oulu 2026 ECoC.

● Employing an international coordinator as well as international staff members to work alongside the national team members would strengthen the efforts of developing a stronger European and international dimension of the Oulu 2026 programme as well as strengthening capacity building. In line with that, the Panel recommends extending the calls for recruitments in order to attract international applicants.

● In light of the financial challenges due to the uncertainties of private sponsorships combined with the rising inflation, the Panel recommends applying for EU funding as soon as possible once projects and partners have been defined. Further, the European Capitals of Culture 2026 Oulu – First monitoring report 15 September 2022 Panel recommends paying close attention to the scoping of the programme to match the financial challenges.

● Whilst efforts are being made to ensure sustainability in all projects given the energy crisis and steep increases in costs overall that could challenge this objective, the Panel would nonetheless like to stress the importance of ensuring that this objective stays at the core of the programme to correspond with the motto of the Oulu 2026 ECoC. In conclusion, the Panel would recommend creating a strong storytelling that clearly communicates how Cultural Climate Change is key to all the work and cultural programme of Oulu 2026.