Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Finland 2020 – Slow recovery from 2010The traditional investment-intensive industry has slowly diminished inFinland. Instead of electronics, machinery, and pulp and paper, the mainexports are products from knowledge and innovation-intensive businesses,like biosciences, design, textiles, IT and education. Many companies aregeographically scattered around the world according to the availability ofskilled labour. Although Finland has succeeded quite well in transformingits economic production after the 2010 recession, the national economy isnow only slowly recovering its balance and annual GDP growth is 1-2%. Incities, there are large empty business properties awaiting alternative uses.The service sector is still the major employer. Municipal services havebeen further privatised and the demand for services has grown. The ageingpopulation needs more health services and to accommodate the need fornurses, educated nurses from Asia are brought to Finland. Finnish nursingschools offer programmes for nursing students from outside the EU thatqualify for jobs in EU member countries. Since depleting natural resourceshave raised the prices of consumption goods, demand for other kinds ofcommodities has increased: IT, cultural services, maintenance, tailoringand dressmaking, especially from recycled materials, and design.Politically, social democratic values are back after all the free marketand liberalism ‘hype’ around the change of the millennium, especiallyequality. Although the economic situation has been tough, keeping up thewelfare system has been the priority of most political parties. The socialsecurity system has been transformed, and instead of a complicated systemof various social benefits all citizens receive basic income. Since basicincome does not depend on other income, there is less of a poverty trapthere used to be, and self-employment becomes more attractive and common.This has led to a significant attitude change and empowerment of theunemployed; there is a notable increase in small-scale businesses, handicraftsshops and community arts projects. The Internet and social mediahave the main role in channelling the activities of civil society.The continuous economic insecurity has increased the role of traditionsand conservative values of the citizens. Most Finns are still members ofthe evangelical Lutheran church, although participation in weekly servicescontinues to decrease. New types of religious activity are on the rise,e.g. Volunteering in church charities and awareness-raising campaigns onChristian values, e.g. ‘no to abortion’. This has also influenced the politicalspectrum; the Christian Democratic Party, which used to be quite smallin 2010, has gained more seats in parliament, and the centre-right wingparties have turned more to the right. Similarly Muslim communities havegrown culturally and politically louder, and now there are more conflictsbetween religious and ethnical groups than there have been for decades.However, conservative, fundamental religious and racist views have stayedin the minority compared to the liberal majority.188