Simo the Seal: Everything you always wanted to know about the Baltic Sea Region

The Youth Dialogue is held under the auspices of the Council of Baltic Sea States.  This year’s event marked the 30th anniversary of cooperation among countries in the region and consisted of three thematic clusters: Regional Identity, Reliability and Security, and Sustainable Prosperity. 

Luiza Rakhmatullina’s team prevailed in the Regional Identity category, having devised an account called ‘Simo the Baltic Seal’, who is prepared to tell all about the Baltic Sea and the cultural traditions of the countries in the region.

Luiza, how did you find out about the Baltic Sea Youth Dialogue, and why did you decide to take part in it?

Even though the Council of the Baltic Sea States regularly posts announcements of such competitions on its official website, I heard about this project purely by chance while I was scrolling through the app.

And I decided to participate immediately, for a couple of reasons:  the Baltic Sea region falls within the area of my academic interests, and, besides, I’m going to have to put together a portfolio for my master’s programme pretty soon.  Apart from the possibility of getting involved in the development of an international project, as part of the competition, they also offered three lectures by leading specialists, and I thought this was something I shouldn’t pass up.

Tell us about your team.  How did you come together?

The way we found each other was also a matter of chance, and we’re a pretty unusual team at that.  Joy Laubenheimer is German and Nadine Sippach is half German and half Lithuanian, but one way or another we’re all, as it turns out, connected with the Baltic Sea.  Nadine, for example, has relatives who were engaged in fishing, so the sea is of particular importance to her.  And for me, as with any resident of St Petersburg, the Baltic Sea is an integral part of our region and its history.  Despite our cultural differences and the heavy commitment we have to our studies, it was easy to work together.  We supported each other and tried to share all the responsibilities involved in the project.  So, I’m really glad that I’m also able to share this victory, above all, with them.

Where did the idea of creating the project about Simo the Baltic seal come from?

It was not all that easy to come up with creative ideas, since, as a team, Nadine, Joy and I had to develop something that would capture the common identity of such different member-states of the Council of Baltic Sea States, and also include youth and education.

Joy introduced the idea of a network for young people, since many of us have found ourselves deprived of social interaction during the pandemic.  Nadine proposed creating a region-wide culinary guide that would allow people to travel from country to country and sample unfamiliar dishes.

I came up with two ideas:  a children’s book that would tell about the Baltic Sea region and the shared culture, about problems that the young generation needs to be aware of, and an account.  The idea of a book didn’t come out of nowhere:  at a conference in Portugal, Tool Fair –Back to the Future, I had seen how a group of guys had turned the UN’s sustainable development goals into cartoon monsters that they used as illustrations in a book to explain these goals to children.  I thought that a first-person narrative about the Baltic Sea region could be told by a cute character, like a seal.  For us, the app was the perfect solution, since it would let us put everything together:  involvement of young people, a culinary guide, a first-person narrative, and a network.   This is how Simo the Seal’s information page was born. 

What, in your view, is the main purpose of the project?

To highlight the unity and the commonality of the Baltic Sea region – and sometimes its uniqueness.  It’s true that knowledge is power, and by mainstreaming useful information about the Baltic Sea region, you can achieve better cooperation among those who live there.

Why do you think it was your project that won?  In what way was it more compelling than the others?

I think there were two factors that played a role:  its uniqueness and the project description.

Essentially, there had never before been an information page that used a first-person narrative to tell about the region on social media.  So, it’s state-of-the-art and it’s interesting.

The second important factor was experience.  Last spring, our team and the teachers in my programme had written up a project description when we were applying for a different grant.  On top of that, thanks to the conference in Portugal that I’ve already mentioned, I had learned about Q! App, a site for working on grant applications of projects for young people.  It contains all the essential questions that you have to answer so that a description will look convincing and complete.  As a result of this experience and knowledge, my colleagues and I were able to put together a persuasive application, which certainly had a positive effect on the jury. 

How do you see the project in the future, and how do you plan to develop it? 

Of course, we do plan to develop it, from setting up a partner network and joint posting to expansion into other social networks (like TikTok, why not?).  We also plan to produce a series of interviews with some of the region’s residents and prepare material that will tell a little bit more about the experience of exchange students.  In the distant future, if we have enough subscribers, we plan to organise a networking session.