Creativity belongs closer to the centre.
ODD started from a simple frustration: Finland has extraordinary creative work, but too much of it lives in short bursts — and too much of the knowledge inside it stays inside its own circles.
Creative work has a continuity problem. A project gets funded, produced and finished. Then the people involved often have to rebuild the next thing almost from zero: new money, new partners, a new place to work, a new reason to gather. Good work happens, but too much of the knowledge, trust and momentum disappears between projects.
There is another separation at the same time. The people working with culture, meaning, audiences and new forms of expression rarely spend enough serious time with the people making decisions in companies, institutions and public life. They live in the same society, but often in different professional worlds.
We think that distance is unnecessary. Creative practice contains expertise in imagination, taste, attention, emotion, identity, cultural change and making things that do not yet exist. None of that transfers neatly into a business method, and it should not have to. But it deserves a place in more of the conversations that shape organisations and society.
This is not an argument that culture needs a business case in order to matter. Art and culture have value on their own terms. It is also true that creative expertise is underused elsewhere — and that creative work itself deserves better conditions to keep developing.
ODD is one attempt to work on both problems at once. Not by claiming to represent or own the creative field, but by building practical places and moments where more work can continue, more people can meet, and more useful relationships can survive the first encounter.
When execution gets easier, judgment matters more.
Technology is making more kinds of execution faster and cheaper. That does not make creative expertise less important. It raises the value of deciding what is worth making, what people will care about, how something should feel, what it means, and why anyone should pay attention. Those are not new questions for creative fields. They are becoming harder to ignore elsewhere.
Finland's own creative-economy goals already assume that cultural and creative capability will matter more to growth, exports, innovation and the country's international position. The practical question is what structures make that possible rather than leaving it as a policy ambition.
Different problems need different structures.
One annual event cannot create continuity on its own. A workspace cannot create the same public momentum as a city-wide week. A good conversation does not become collaboration by itself. ODD uses different formats for different jobs.
Events create reasons to gather
ODDfest makes creative activity across Helsinki visible as one shared week. ODDference creates a deliberately composed professional room around creative expertise. Both create moments that would not otherwise exist.
Spaces give people somewhere to return
ODDspace is the everyday layer: somewhere to work, meet, host things and keep going between projects and events.
Projects and relationships let something continue
ODDagency, partnerships and the developing ODDnetwork create ways to keep working together when there is a real reason to do so. Programmes can add another layer when there is a clear need and the funding to run them properly.
The model got clearer by trying it.
ODD was not designed fully formed. The first two years were experiments in how different kinds of creative activity, professional exchange and year-round work could fit together. Some things proved stronger than others.
A shared moment can create real gravity
The first ODDfest in 2025 brought more than 2,600 participants, 350+ contributors and 70+ partners into one experiment. It proved there was appetite for a new kind of platform around creative work.
Not everything should be produced centrally
Creative Week 2026 showed the strength of a distributed model: hosts make their own programme, while ODD makes the whole easier to find and experience together. That model becomes ODDfest in 2027.
Creative expertise can carry a professional product
The first ODDference brought roughly 300 people into a programme built for business, public-sector and creative audiences. It gave the clearest signal that this question can stand on its own.
A place changes the rhythm
ODDspace moved part of the work from annual peaks into everyday life. It is still a pilot, but it gives us a real place to test what continuity can mean in practice.
Bigger production is not automatically better
The centrally produced Showcase model created too much cost and risk for the demand it had. We are not repeating it in 2027. The lesson is part of the strategy: build what people actually use and pay for, and let the rest stay experimental until the economics are real.
How we got here.
New Nordic Way rf
The association is founded in Helsinki. The idea that becomes ODD is still taking shape.
Finding the gap
The question becomes clearer: Finland has strong creative talent, but too little continuity around the work and too few structures connecting creative fields with the rest of society.
The first ODDfest
The first public experiment brings 2,600+ participants, 350+ contributors and 70+ partners together in Helsinki.
More than one event
Creative Week tests a distributed city-wide model. ODDference tests the professional proposition. ODDspace creates a year-round physical base.
A clearer portfolio
Creative Week becomes ODDfest. ODDference stands as its own professional event. ODDspace continues year-round. Projects, partnerships and a developing organisational network create further ways to work together. This is the structure we are building, not a finished system.
ODD is operated by New Nordic Way rf, a Finnish non-profit association based in Helsinki.
A few things we try to hold onto.
- 01
Make room for other people's work
ODD should create conditions for people to bring their own ideas, practice and expertise — not make itself the centre of everything.
- 02
Make crossing worlds normal
Creative fields, business and institutions do not need to become the same thing. They should be able to work together without the crossing feeling exceptional.
- 03
Participation over spectatorship
ODD is strongest when people can do something: host, make, question, contribute, build or take responsibility.
- 04
People are not the product
Creative people are not a talent inventory for companies, and companies are not simply funding sources. Both are participants with their own reasons to be there.
- 05
Good intentions need good economics
If something is meant to last, the economics need to work for the people actually making it — not just for the idea behind it.
The first ODDfest, in numbers.
2026 — The 2026 Impact Report is still being compiled. Verified numbers will replace this once it's published — nothing here is estimated.