Bisnes and Culture seminar returns in September – keynotes Marika Makaroff and Helen Sildna

Bisnes and Culture seminar focuses on finding balance and synergy between business life and culture. Success stories and showcasing different collaboration forms provide inspiration to the audience. The seminar is held on Monday, September 16th starting with an optional networking lunch at 11am. The official programme starts at 12am in Tampere Hall’s Duetto venues. Internationally successful keynote speakers such as Helen Sildna and Marika Makaroff will be performing in the seminar. This year’s theme is How to break through with a good story. The organizers of the seminar are Tampere Hall, the city of Tampere, the registered association of Kultturikummit (Culture Godparents)  and Tampere Chamber. Helen Sildna is the founder and owner of Tallinn Music Week. Having started out as a music industry conference and showcase festival in 2009, TMW has broadened its concept further into an all-encompassing city festival, covering arts, design, technology, city space and food culture, and discussing various societal issues within its talks sessions, presentations and conference panels. In recent years Tallinn Music Week has annually hosted over 1,300 conference delegates and 37,000 festival visitors, around 2000 of them international guests. In 2018 her company also kicked off Station Narva festival is Estonia’s border town to Russia and is one of the initiators for supporting Narva for European Capital of Culture in 2024. In 2014 Sildna was awarded with the Tampere Music Award at Music & Media Finland’s industry gala for Exceptional Achievements in Music Business, in 2015 she was nominated the Citizen of the Year by Estonian Ministry of Culture and in 2016 Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves awarded her the Order of White Star of IV Class for her contribution to Estonian music life and civil society. Sildna is an outspoken member of the creative community, vocal on equal rights, diversity and internationalization. Marika Makaroff is an award-winning content creator, producer, and creative director. As CEO and founder of Gutsy Animations, Makaroff has worked in media for over 20 years with past roles including creative director at Fremantle Media and Filmlance International and CEO at Fremantle Media Finland and Friday TV. In 2016, together with Aram Aflatuni she co-founded Gutsy to create high-quality, funny, clever and meaningful content with a global appeal. One of their first projects is ‘Moominvalley,’ an animated TV series based on the beloved Moomin books, on which Marika also works as creative director and executive producer. The series is directed by Steve Box (‘Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit’) and the first season premiered in spring 2019. After the seminar at 4pm the city of Tampere holds a brief info about Tampere’s application for the European Capital of Culture 2026. See the whole programme on event’s web page (content only available in Finnish).