…I used to wander around in the factory and around the forests, when I was kid. There weren’t any farms, just 2 mill sites, with water mills here since 1510…
Thus begins an ‘episode’ of Joaveski SaunaFM, a framework of telling, recording and replaying local stories that Team EAD added to a pop-up sauna in the village of Joaveski. The sauna appeared a few years ago when yoga summer camp visited the place, and the sauna structure was left as a gift to the locals.
Since sauna is a significant place for Estonians – in addition to multiple health benefits the sauna serves as a space for dialogue, both introspective and social –, then Team EAD chose Sauna Talks as the creative impact tool for SMOTIES.
The idea was to bring people together in a sauna to share stories. This would create extra value for not only the people in the sauna telling the stories but also for future visitors, since a speaker next to the sauna will be playing the ‘episodes’ quietly 24/7. Recorded stories will be curated and edited where necessary and potentially shared also on the Internet in the future.
What proved to be difficult with the tool was the recording part – obviously it’s difficult to use any devices in an environment that at times reaches temperatures near 90 degrees. Fortunately, the walls of the sauna are made of plastic, hence the recording device was placed just outside of the sauna. During the whole process we can say that people who think they know each other quite well can still be surprised to find out new perspectives about each other in an environment which demands to reveal oneself.
During the Tallinn Design Festival in September 2024, visitors from mostly Tallinn took part in a tour in Joaveski and those who wished could also let off some steam in the sauna. Visitors approved of the idea of retelling local stories and Enn, the caretaker of the premises, encouraged people to come back to Joaveski and bring their friends also for a ‘sauna retreat’.