Award-winning! Smart Work 2025: Pirre’s Maid Workout
The Smart Work page presents everyday innovations and success stories developed by the employees of the City of Hämeenlinna.
Pirre’s Maid Workout is a physical activity product at the Hämeenlinna City Museum. The workout combines traditional household chores, community building, and effective functional exercise. The session is based on historical information regarding the tasks of maids and farmhands in bourgeois families. Under Pirre’s guidance, participants perform various movements (carrying water, milking, haymaking, etc.). The duration is approximately 45 minutes and includes music related to traditional housework.
The popular Pirre’s Maid Workout was held in the courtyard of Palander House eight times between June and August 2024. The event supports the strategy of the City of Hämeenlinna by offering tradition-rich wellness exercise and enhancing the visibility of Hämeenlinna’s culture and history in the media. This paid event was popular, engaging, and deepened customers’ understanding of history while promoting well-being.
Pirre’s Maid Workout is an innovation by a museum service supervisor who enjoys exercise and history, exploring how historical narratives can be told through the body while supporting resident well-being in multiple ways.
The Maid Workout can be replicated as a concept for everyday exercise by other city functions or municipalities, and it can also promote workplace wellness and enrich school tours, for example.
Different city museums can apply physical activity and embodiment from their own starting points to enrich cultural or artistic communication. Pirre’s Maid Workout was created through joy, leaving all participants with a positive feeling.
The innovation increased the appeal of the museum’s offerings—including other new products and museum exhibitions. Every workout had paying customers, and the revenue exceeded the 45-minute salary of the museum service supervisor. However, the clearest results will be measurable later in the confidence of locals and visitors in the joy and attractiveness of Hämeenlinna’s cultural and museum work.
Developer
Piritta Puomiranta, Museum Service Supervisor