PICNIC Art Family Encounters

PICNIC is a series of regular meetings for families with children in Helsinki metropolitan area. The encounters are planned to provide chances to meet and for peer support between newly-arrived families with small children, especially those with babies born during the pandemic restrictions.

Although Ninho’s professionals guide the families to create and organize these gatherings and the complemental activities, the goal is that communities can be born and supported by the families themselves.  

Our starting point has been Spanish and Portuguese heritage languages, but since 2023 the program supports other heritage languages too!

In 2023, we did an Open Call to find artists working with small ages, to reach communities with Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Ukrainian as heritage languages.

Here are the Selected artists for 2023 sessions.

Picnic wants to strengthen a sense of community as well as to provide a safe, accessible, plural, and participative cultural space for children and their families in Helsinki and metropolitan region.

PICNIC Autumn 2024 | Encounters for Spanish-speaking families with children

Right now, we have two Spanish-speaking groups gathering every week at Pasila Library: PICNIC-Babies and PICNIC-Walkers. These groups are designed for Spanish-speaking families with children from newborn babies up to 6 years old.

PICNIC-Bebés:

This group is perfect for families with babies between 0 and 1 year old, approximately.

 Every Tuesday, until 17. 12. 2024.
 10:30 am – 12 pm
 Free entrance
 Pasila Library – Children’s section, 1st floor.

PICNIC-Caminadores:

What do we do in the weekly encounters in Spanish?

At PICNIC, you can meet other families in Spanish, play, sing, learn together, and enjoy a safe environment while exploring the Spanish children’s literature collection at Helmet. Families bring also food to share when possible, or organise visits to other spaces out of the Pasila Library.

The main goal is to create community and allow children to socialise and enjoy culture in their own heritage language.

Culture in your heritage language

Depending on funding, over the years we’ve included free of charge artistic workshops, led by cultural workers in their own heritage language. This cultural program has complemented the series of self-organised family encounters.

For instance, in 2022 more than 150 attendances enjoyed a program full of activities, like an easter egg hunting, visit to Tram Museum, Friday afternoon activities in Leikkipuisto LINJA, a concert by MeNiños band, Storytelling in Spanish by Mexican author Adolfo Córdova, dance, circus, capoeira workshops…

What are the benefits for artists?

While organizing the artistic activities, we have incorporated talented artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, who face social, cultural, or employment-related challenges. This support to newly arrived immigrant professional artists, has enriched the inclusivity and diversity of Ninho’s initiatives, and Finnish children’s cultural sector.  

That’s why PICNIC becomes an important chance for children’s culture newcomer artists to step in the sector, use their heritage language, and mingle with their own community.

Furthermore, we have supported and disseminated HELMET guides to use other language collections such as Portuguese, Persian, Arabic, Ukrainian, and Kiswahili, in collaboration with the educational and cultural workers who emerged from this initiative.  

How to join the PICNIC community?

If you want to join any of the 2 weekly groups, there’s no need to register in advance. Just come along! You’ll find us in the children’s area of Pasila Library on the specified dates. 

And if you want to create PICNIC in your own heritage language, just contact us! Although the spirit and main goal of PICNIC is that groups can be self-driven, you can get the experience and support of the professionals of Kulttuurikeskus Ninho.

Contact us at info@ninho.fi of fill the form below.

Support PICNIC

There are lots of ways to support PICNIC and its communities!

• Maybe you have a company and want to contribute with money, so we can organise more cultural activities. With this support, you will help the families and the cultural artists.
• If you are a student, you want do your internship with us.
• You can volunteer by organising activities, or just simply reading a story.

If you have more ideas to collaborate, just fill out the form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!