The Tartu Observer / March 2025

1 / Editor’s Invitation

2 / Editor’s Observations: A Sign of Spring

3 / Sketchy Stuff: Bicycle-Centric Tähtvere Street

4 / Culture Recommendations

It turned out that the jury of the City of Tartu culture award Kultuurikandja selected me as one of two winners in the category of kultuurikajastaja (culture reporter) of the year 2024.

As I could not attend the ceremony, the organizers kindly agreed to present the award in another well-suited location, a bar.

Here’s an invitation: If you happen to be around, you’re very welcome to attend the not-very-official ceremony at Pirogovi Lokaal on Rüütli Street on Thursday, March 6th, at 17.00.

After the award’s been handed over, I would love to chat with you about life in Tartu, its culture and linguistic accessibility, sketchingpaas’ writing and drawing, or other topics that the Tartu Observer covers.

If you’re looking for a sign of spring, this is it. The City announced a competition to find new Tartu souvenirs. Its mid-March submission deadline is set to bring new products onto the shelves by the beginning of the high season in May.

If you, too, feel you could summarize Tartu in woolen, wooden, printed, or other forms, read the open call invitation.

Although the competition’s prize fund is small from a designer’s perspective – 2000€ for buying an amount of the selected souvenirs from the winner(s) – the competition might benefit the field in different ways.

Having kept an eye on Tartu’s souvenir shelves for the last few years, I consider the offer, on average, not very remarkable. The stalls for the English-speaking Tartu visitor seem to be dominated by photo postcards, fridge magnets, and keyholders. These are products that are, in many ways, more generic.

Of course, I can imagine the low sales volumes of souvenirs in Tartu and, thereby, the low level of willingness to invest designer hours and money into developing and producing something that is not a liquid asset.

But then again, that should not stop us from discussing how to enliven the market and have a more considerable variety of products. A competition is a way to spark these discussions. As it also sparked this column.

Secondly, it is an invitation for the developers to analyze and creatively apply insights about current customer behaviour: What souvenirs are sold? How much? Where and when? I am pretty sure that Visit Tartu, Tartu 2024, the HOPP store of the Tartu Centre for Creative Industries, and maybe also private-sector shops would be willing to share the previous year’s statistics and trends.

Thirdly – and maybe we should start from this square – developing a product for the competition nudges the involved people to ask again and again these principal intertwined questions: What do we, Tartuvians, think is cool about us? And what do our various visitors find cool about us?

And I’m sure the answer isn’t always: the classicist Town Hall Square.

→ What do you think? Follow sketchingpaas on Instagram, and let me know!

→ My last year’s attempt to create new Tartu souvenirs is “The Bridges of Tartu”, which is available in the Rahva Raamat online store and at Tasku Rahva Raamat!

Last spring, Tähtvere Street (in Supilinn, not in Tähtvere!) became my top Tartu destination.

While its wooden plurality is fascinating on any given day, I was there with a special mission. As a graphic designer, I had been commissioned to create user-friendly visuals in Estonian to present the agreed-upon bicycle-centric reconstruction of this 800-metre street.

Walking along Tähtvere with my daughter in the stroller, I tried to sense the viewpoints and expectations that the locals – and other interested internet users – might have regarding the presentation.

I drew the visuals (using the City of Tartu CVI) based on the reconstruction project, essentially simplifying its very detailed technical schemes as much as needed. On-site walks helped me further clarify what details to include or exclude.

Although not a usual @sketchingpaas project, this commercial work was enjoyable because it mixed my love of maps, my UX/UI design studies, and my previous experience in public communication.

I drew and designed these visuals last year, but because the reconstruction preparations took time, my work could only be published in the Tartu City Government channels this week. I look forward to trying the new street with a stroller or a bicycle, hopefully later this year!

→ Tähtvere is one of several streets in Tartu that will be reconstructed between 2025 and 2029, focusing on pedestrian and cyclist mobility and safety.

Singer‐songwriter Mari Kalkun performs mainly in the Võro language while also being one of the most international artists in Southern Estonia. Last year, she performed in 10 foreign countries! So, it's safe to say her music translates well, even if you don’t speak Võro. On Wednesday, March 5th, Mari will give a special concert in Tartu with the Estonian National Male Choir, a top collective. They will perform her works and some heritage choral music from the legendary Veljo Tormis.

If you're into beer and sektsioonkapid, go and see Peeter Unt's exhibition “Furniture reflects the world” at the A. Le Coq Beer Museum from March 11th. What is a sektsioonkapp, you ask? It was a huge brown cupboard that covered a whole wall in a Soviet era living room, kinda like a pressed sawdust recreation of the Berlin Wall. By now, most of those have been dismantled from our homes, which is reflected in the work of Peeter Unt, who uses painted fragments of sektsioonid to create colorful geometrical art.

I was also about to rush ahead and recommend “Jan Uuspõld Goes Home”, a new Estonian film with English subtitles. It is the sequel to the cult comedy “Jan Uuspõld Goes to Tartu” (2007). But this new film has received SUCH disappointed reviews that I will not link anything here. If you like road movies and want to get to know mid-00s Estonia, and you can find subtitles for the original Tartu-related title, give that one a try!

→ Keep on exploring Tartu and Southern Estonia, find events at kultuuriaken.tartu.ee and Tartu2024.ee!