People at a music festival making heart shapes with their hands, enjoying a live performance on a stage with colorful lights.

Diversity jury: Ruissiraati Case Study

Ruisrock is one of Finland’s oldest and most prominent festivals, offering a music programme from many genres as well as high-quality food and drink services. 

Including new generations

Staying relevant to the young target group is a constant challenge for the more than 50-years-old festival. “Until 2020 Ruisrock had been doing quantitative research for over 10 years. We were getting a lot of quantitative data from the audience surveys but were missing deeper insight into the new generation of audience,” says Ilona Numminen, producer at Ruisrock. “At the same time, it was clear that our team and the colleagues around us were getting older. We realised it would be necessary to somehow get a better understanding of Gen Z.”

For Ruisrock, it is of utmost importance to make an event that represents the visions and desires of its audience. This is why in 2020, the festival created Ruissiraati (English: “Ruisrock Jury”), a panel of 16- to 24-year-olds from all over Finland that are actively involved in the festival. Ruissiraati helps convey the opinions and attitudes of the young generation directly to the festival, leading to new ideas to implement at the event. “Ruissiraati gives the festival actual and up-to-date knowledge about how the potential young audience sees the world and what is important to them. It enables us to see the value and attitudes, the future trends and develop a relevant festival for young participants,” Ilona says.

Crowd of people walking at an outdoor festival with large tents and a bright sunset.
© Riikka Vaahtera | Ruisrock Festival
A group of young, diverse people calles Ruissiraati posing together on a beach under a colorful, floral-themed wooden structure, with bright sunlight and blue skies in the background. Picture taken at Ruisrock Festival.
© Riikka Vaahtera | Ruissiraati at Ruisrock Festival
Concert stage with pyrotechnics and a large crowd at night.
© Riikka Vaahtera | Ruisrock Festival



Its members take part in the festival, carry out small tasks and participate in the action on site. Their experiences are used to improve the festival in workshops in the fall after each festival. In these workshops, Ruissiraati and members of the festival team create and develop ideas for the various elements of Ruisrock. The jury has the right to bring their own topics to the table, and together, the Ruisrock team and Ruissiraati decide which areas to develop. As a result, innovations at the festival are created bottom-up, not top-down. The jury members might also help in their implementation.

Diversity and active youth participation are keys to this practice’s success. Ruisrock selects a diverse profile of participants each year to ensure a variety of realities and perspectives are represented in Ruissiraati and to avoid automatic group thinking. Previous knowledge of Ruisrock is optional. To make sure that anyone can afford to become a member of Ruissiraati, the jury members receive payment for participating in the workshops.“Ruissiraati helps us create a more diverse and inclusive festival as a whole, and it is a concrete way to take people with different backgrounds into account,” Ilona explained. A tangible output relating to diversity and inclusion that came out of Ruissiraati is the Ruisrock Festival Etiquette that the festival has been using in its communication since its release in 2021. Its main goal is to make the festival a safer space for everyone.