Studio Sonda

A Creative Studio that Empowers its Community to Play a Part in the Narrative

Jelena Fiškuš and Sean Poropat founded Studio Sonda, an independent creative studio for design and communications, in 2007. Its headquarters are situated in the idyllic town of Vižinada on the Istrian peninsula.

Facilitating creative expression
Last year, the construction of the Creative Centre in Vižinada was completed. Here, the business collaborates with the local community, customers, and partners to develop relevant brands, products, and projects with the potential for real market success, and, most importantly, connect with others to create a better society. They have, therefore, under Silvija Kovačić’s leadership, formed a team to run a non-profit organisation in charge of the Creative Centre’s programme so that they can facilitate the involvement and participation of the local community and the general public, thus developing a constructive and creative society brimming with ideas.

The Sonda Creative Centre has been recognised in the Community category because it seeks to advance the economic and tourist development of society through beneficial and educational initiatives.

“We are confident that, if nurtured and managed, creativity can be a powerful force for a community as well as a significant, legitimate economic driver. For this reason, we believe creativity should be developed across all professions and roles. Consequently, we hope our entry will encourage others to apply creative processes across all aspects of their lives”, the representatives of Studio Sonda stated.

The creativity factory
The Creative Centre’s programme includes a variety of educational activities in photography, design, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), and creative thinking, which are all designed to improve collaboration and connections with the local community. All of this is unfolding in the inspiring setting of the Creative Centre – a single-storey building with a walkable green roof, integrated into the surrounding landscape and designed according to environmental sustainability principles, with a high energy efficiency class (class A).

The benefit of conducting business through this distinctive business model comes from enabling the local community to play a crucial role in the overall story. In order to demonstrate its high efficiency, Studio Sonda has also chosen to take its daily operations to a new level by becoming the first creative studio to work on concrete, market-based projects involving the general public, thus making creativity accessible to everyone.

“Winning first place in the Community category demonstrates that we are doing things the right way and that the professional community has acknowledged the importance of such projects. It has also provided a major boost to our future endeavours. Our goal is to make in the next few years all the Creative Centre’s projects tangible and its outcomes measurable, demonstrating how a centre can impact the growth of a community and contribute to the development of design, communication, the local offer, and local brands – in the same way that one can measure the outcome of opening a factory in a community somewhere. Only, this time, it will be a creativity factory”, the representatives of Studio Sonda added.

This success story is proof that globally relevant projects can be developed and executed anywhere in the world, even in a place with only 300 inhabitants.

For more information about the company, visit: sonda.hr