Allas Sea Pool: Crowdsourcing and new ways to build the city

LIVELY HELSINKI – FROM PEOPLE FOR PEOPLE

Allas Sea Pool Helsinki, or Allas, opened on the Helsinki Market Square in the summer of 2016. Allas is today a major tourist attraction, a new centre for urban culture and a year-round recreational oasis. Allas claims unused seaside space for the people: the area reserved for Allas is almost a hectare in size and features three large swimming pools and a spa with saunas, a beach, a small park and a Baltic Sea exhibition centre. As early as in the design phase, Allas gave the citizens of Helsinki an opportunity to say how they wanted the centre to look.

Right from the beginning, Måndag was there to help determine people’s wishes. Allas is a remarkable project, even on an international scale, and the citizens of Helsinki have been active participants in the process from the start. Allas decided to fund its building costs through a share-based crowdfunding campaign: it was a way of letting the local citizenry have an influence on their own surroundings and buy a piece of Helsinki as it evolved. Måndag was responsible for the campaign’s social media communications, also by asking people to think about why central areas of Helsinki are reserved for parking and where the historical sauna culture of Helsinki is.

At the centre of these communications was openness and dialogue, as a change in surroundings always raises criticism and questions, both of which should be dealt with and answered quickly. The target of the crowdfunding campaign was 500,000 euros, but the final investment amount totalled even more: 814,000 euros. Most of the traffic on the Allas Invesdor page came from social media links. You can follow the project as it evolves on the Allas webpage as well as their Facebook page.

From May 2021 onwards, Måndag has been working with Allas on their social media platforms, and has been responsible for planning summer campaigns and content for their websites and other platforms. Our work has included planning the marketing for summer 2021 events and building back the image of lively city culture in post-covid Helsinki.

Recently, we have also been helping Allas with its internationalization strategy and considering ways to introduce responsibility to new markets.The transition to new markets will continue in 2022 as we develop ways to adapt the concept of sustainable well-being oasis to new cities and countries.