KÜSK AH21: Developing the communication capabilities of the Institute of Baltic Studies

The starting point of the KÜSK development project is IBS’ wish to increase the impact of our studies and other activities, or in other words, support decision-makers in making decisions based on facts and the needs of the society. The precursor to this is that the knowledge created by IBS is more widely used by groups influencing the development of the society. Thus, the aim of the project is to increase the capabilities of IBS to communicate its activities and created value to strategically important stakeholder groups and to engage these groups more to ensure IBS’ work meets the needs of the society.

More specifically, the aims of the project are:

• Increase the visibility of IBS among different stakeholder groups.
• Learn to better engage target and stakeholder groups.
• Learn to coordinate discussions between different parties that share similar obstacles and areas of interest.
• Expand and strengthen IBS’ cooperation networks both in Estonia and in the Baltic Sea region and Europe.
• Improve IBS’ communication and dissemination skills and create suitable channels and formats for disseminating information.

To best achieve these aims, the development project entails several activities which can be divided into four types:

• Trainings and the support of our development expert to develop our team’s skills (ca 4 all-day training days in the fields of co-creation and engagement, content creation, service design and information visualization).
• Communication and networking with different types of partners, including better involvement of our target groups and increased cooperation with both local and international partners.
• Developing and testing IBS communication channels and formats, including creating a new visual identity in cooperation with young artists and updating IBS webpage.
• Integrating our new skills and communication formats into IBS’ everyday work, including updating and using an updated communication plan.

The project is supported by the National Foundation of Civil Society (Kodanikuühiskonna Sihtkapital) with 19 745,07 euros.