TaikaBox receives the 2025 Pirkko Award

The 2025 Pirkko Award is granted to TaikaBox and its founders, dance artist Tanja Råman and video artist John Collingswood. With the Pirkko Award, the Oulu Culture Events Association seeks to highlight a person or organisation that has advanced the position of culture and the arts, fostered collaboration in the field in the Oulu region, and brought broad visibility to northern culture and art.

The award ceremony took place on Tuesday, 7 October 2025 at 15:00 in the café of Cultural Centre Valve.

TaikaBox’s significance in the Oulu cultural scene far exceeds the size of the organisation itself. Råman and Collingswood serve as an inspiring example of how visionary activity and value-based choices can influence not only one’s immediate surroundings but, through technology and international engagement, extend much further.

Pirjo Yli-Maunula, who selects the Pirkko Award recipients, emphasises TaikaBox’s versatile, open and community-oriented approach in the cultural field: “TaikaBox reaches out in exemplary ways towards other artists, audiences and partners – not only locally, but also nationally and internationally.”

TaikaBox was originally founded by Råman and Collingswood in Wales. After moving to Finland in 2015, they established an association for TaikaBox – which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary.

“We are truly honoured by this recognition. It is especially heart-warming to receive the award in such uncertain times. It helps us to keep going and to continue striving for art and culture as a bridge-builder across geographical, functional and ideological boundaries,” say the TaikaBox duo.

“Our future goal is to find permanent premises where we can further develop collaboration with artists, communities and businesses.”

The Pirkko Cultural Award is a wooden sculpture, a telescope to the future – crafted by hand in Oulu at the workshop of Jonathan Gomez. It is an object through which one can see beyond the ordinary, from many perspectives. The award has previously been given to dance artist Pirjo Yli-Maunula (2022), screenwriter Venla Aakko (2023), and cultural journalist, dance and theatre critic Eeva Kauppinen (2024).

With this award, the Oulu Culture Events Association wishes to showcase activities in line with its mission in northern Finland. The association’s purpose is to promote access to culture and the arts in the Oulu region and to strengthen the operating conditions of local cultural actors. With the award, the association also aims to encourage wide-ranging cooperation in the cultural sector, bold boundary-crossing, and visible activity.

The award was established for a five-year period, on the journey towards Oulu’s European Capital of Culture title in 2026. The special award was inspired by its first recipient, dance artist and Artistic Director of Flow Productions, Pirjo Yli-Maunula. Yli-Maunula determines the award recipients for 2023–2026 according to the criteria set by the Oulu Culture Events Association:

• The recipient may be a person or an organisation.
• The recipient has advanced the position of culture and the arts, as well as collaboration in the Oulu region / northern Finland.
• The recipient has brought wide visibility to northern culture and art.
• The recipient has demonstrated vision and broad-mindedness in the cultural field.

Photo: Johanna Suutari