The Peek into Espoo book, created in cooperation with children, presents the city through drawings

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Peek into Espoo is a picture book presenting the city centres of Espoo with the help of illustrations. Published in January 2021, the book is a gift from the City of Espoo to all 4-year-old Espoo residents.

“The population of Espoo grows annually by approximately 4,500 new residents. The city considers it important that the new residents form an attachment to Espoo, discover places that are meaningful to them and learn to see the special characteristics of their own residential area,” says Cultural Manager Tiina Kasvi.

The book, illustrated by Carlos Da Cruz, has no text. The purpose of the illustrations is to inspire children to tell meaningful stories about their own everyday lives in Espoo, their home town.

Peek into Espoo was created in cooperation between preschool groups and Da Cruz. The children had the opportunity to comment on sketches and make requests for illustration contents. The Tapiola foam pit and the duck park in Suvela are examples of locations added to the illustrations based on the children’s suggestions. Some of the preschool groups who participated in the illustration work toured the illustration locations and discussed the importance of the surrounding environment. In connection with the book project, the participating children’s thoughts were also collected for the purpose of updating of the city’s strategy, the Espoo Story.

One of the city’s four cross-administrative development programmes for the 2017–2021 council term is Participatory Espoo. Within the framework of this programme, the involvement of Espoo residents has been promoted by boldly utilising new tools and methods.

“We wanted to take into account the children’s perspective in the development of resident participation. The support of the Participatory Espoo development programme has enabled us to highlight in the book project the expertise of preschool-aged children in their own residential area. The book has been an exceptional project that has utilised means of participation, cooperation and cultural education in completely new ways,” says Kasvi.

The book will be distributed to all Espoo children born in 2017 and 2018 during their fourth-year visit to the child health clinic in 2021 and 2022. In addition, the book will be delivered to all preschool groups, municipal early childhood education groups and libraries.

The book launch will be celebrated virtually on Thursday 28 January 2021 at 2 pm. The event will be open to all and organised through Teams.