Aisti Sport's new slogan is: We all have a dream

Text: Markus Tihumäki, club communications and marketing

Video: Aisti Sport ry and Tuukka Remes Official

"Finland lives for football – Finland catches fire for ice hockey"

Finland is a sport-mad nation that loves a sporting occasion. Many feel a sense of belonging and pride when Finland succeeds in sport. Plenty of us feel a shiver run through us when a performance sets off sheer joy. Sometimes, in our minds, we dream ourselves into being an elite athlete or a global star in front of a huge crowd, just like our idols. We are excited by dreams. We want to move and to take up a sport.

"Finland values para sport"

The standing and visibility of para sport has recently grown into an ever larger and more significant part of sport in a society, and a world, where equality and equity are strong values. A person who is born different, or who becomes disabled later in childhood, adolescence or adulthood, is every bit as entitled to take part, to experience and to dream as a person to whom disability or illness is completely foreign. Despite that, it is understandable that for someone living with a disability such as a visual impairment, it is not easy — or even possible — to take part safely in activities where the equipment, the other participants and the environment have all developed to suit the majority. Because we at Aisti Sport feel the same emotions and dreams as the majority, we also want to make them genuinely possible for those of us living with a disability.

"Become an elite footballer – Develop into an ice hockey player – Grow into a goalball star"

With a visual impairment too you can take up a sport and, if you want to, grow into an elite athlete competing at the biggest events, right up to Paralympic stadiums and arenas. We want you to be able to take part in popular sports at your own level as a visually impaired person, and to feel yourself part of the conversations society is having. When friends at school talk about training, we have just come from training too. Our friends take part because it is fun and it draws you in. We take part because it is fun and it draws you in. With us, visually impaired and sighted people can take part safely together. That is what inclusion is.

"We all have a dream"

At Aisti Sport we want everyone, whatever their disability or limitations, to have the chance to take part, to play sport and to dream. Simply because everyone has dreams. Dreams come in many forms, and we want dreaming about sport to be more real too. Our new slogan is: "We all have a dream".

Behind the video

The video was created by Aisti Sport with project funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture, to develop opportunities for visually impaired children and young people to take up sport, and it serves as promotional material for our activities. The original script was written by Markus Tihumäki and shaped into its final form by Tuukka Remes. Tuukka Remes built and shot the footage and edited the video. The voices on the video are the instructors and coaches familiar from our Aisti Games children's sessions: Akseli Makkonen, Juuso Utriainen, Noora Talvala, Carmen Pekkarinen and Miika Honkanen. In addition, Tuomas Törrönen — the voice of para sport commentary, familiar from television too — speaks the lines about the value of para sport, while Niilo delivers the slogan on behalf of the children.