Archive för Blogg

As one of more than thousand developers from all over the world that attend the Filemaker annual conference I can choose between over 80 sessions in little more than three days. Unfortunately I can´t attend every session I find interesting; there are just too many going on at the same time. Today at nine, just after breakfast, I have to decide whether to attend a session named Improve Quality, Reuse Code, and Program Efficiently or another named Speaking the Same Language. Understanding Your Client and Helping Them Understand You. Two very interesting topics but I have to choose one before the other. The first one is compelling but the second is more what I need, to be honest.

The main theme this year Connect with your world is well mirrored in the schedule and you find sessions on PHP, SQL and ESS but, again, Filemaker Go is the talk of the day. With Filemaker Go on an iPhone or iPad you can reach your Filemaker solutions from any place but the office. That makes sense. I bought an iPad and I am impressed. It’s way better than I expected it to be. In Sweden you have to wait until fall to get a piece but when it comes it will be a big hit. I am Sure!

I attended a very scary session called File Maintenance and recovery: tools and Best Practices. The speaker was Alexei Folger and she was awesome. Really bad stuff can happen with files but there are some good techniques and strategies to prevent a disaster. But it was a bit creapy to here in a theatrical voice ”…and then you are in big trouble!”

Devcon is an International conference with developers from different parts of the world but the typical attendee is American, actually. At least you can say it’s an Anglo Saxon world. I have seen or talked to people from Britain, Australia and New Zeaand but not from the Latin world or Asia. There is a lot of attendees from Japan.

Its´s striking how big Filemaker is in the US. I learnt that Filemaker is used in schools, universities, really big coorporations and in govermental offices. On a high percentage.

Tonight we enjoyed a dinner at the USS Midway in the San Diego Harbor. The ship was on duty as late as in the Dessert Storm. Dinner was served on the actual flight deck and during the Californian sunset we listening to live music zipping a drink or could hear docents telling stories how it was once up on the time… One of the best moments so far.

This morning I finally got my suitcase from the airport. It was lost in Frankfurt during the stop over and I had to buy new clothes every day while waiting for the trunk to arrive to my hotel. The downtown hotel, by the way, is something extra. Its very old with an interior like those in a horror movie but with a very helpful staff.

To morrow is my last day in San Diego!

Written by Christian Stensöta

Christian Stensöta is a colleague at Nätverkstan in charge of database and Filemaker solutions for the cultural and civil society field. He is visiting the Filemaker Development Conference 2010 in San Diego, USA, August 15-18.

Devcon:
http://www.filemaker.com/developers/devcon/

Filemaker Go:
http://www.filemaker.com/products/filemaker-go/for-ipad/

Horton Grand Hotel:
http://www.hortongrand.com/

An over the rim full plenary in the bastion of the trade union Landsorganisation i Sverige (LO) could on Saturday 14 August listen to Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, who invited by Broderskapsrörelsen (Swedish Christian Social Democrats) (!) talked about the latest development around his news agency. Or what ever you should call Wikileaks, which has gotten both Pentagon’s as well as right-wing leading editorials disapproval. Is Assange an archivist, investigative journalist or Internet activist (he has been called many different things)?

He himself prefers to resemble himself with a lawyer in public service: one who publishes documents and let citizens themselves consider the content.

The interest of Assange and Wikileaks is huge, not least thanks to the sensational revelations of 90.000 documents around the war in Afghanistan. It is a paradox that a lot is mysterious both around Assange’s person and Wikileaks. Assange states that the organization only has five full-time and around 20-40 project-based employees. In addition around ten– perhaps hundred thousands people work voluntarily for the organization.

Undoubtedly Wikileaks represent a new phase, not only in the history of journalism but also in actual public life. The question is how long the operation can go on in protection of (not least Swedish) Principles of Public Access? There is no doubt many states as well as security and intelligence agencies which would like to see Wikileaks close down. Will established media jealously guard their information monopoly and submit to mudslinging Wikileaks, or will they let themselves get inspired and cooperate? What position will citizens, civil society and their organizations take?

Wikileaks raises a lot of exciting and fundamental questions. We hope to be able to discuss these with Julian Assange in a big seminar coming up in Göteborg shortly.

So keep eyes open!

Written by Mikael Löfgren

Mikael Löfgren is journalist and cultural critic, and also colleague at Nätverkstan. Translation from Swedish by Lotta Lekvall. Read former posts on digitization, public sphere and IPR here,  here and here.

Jan Inge Reilstad was together with artist Jörgen Svensson curating the art project Neighbourhood secrets during Stavanger European Capital of Culture in 2008. In the project eight artists from different parts of the world were invited to be in dialogue with Stavanger and Sandnes over a period of twenty months. The results were eight very different art projects as intervention in public space and part of city development.

Using art in city development raises questions of the role of the artist. What is your role as an artist? Can the result of a social process be called art? Jeanne Van Heeswijk, one of the artists in the project, was matched to work with Stavanger Hospital. They did a TV-soap, directed and performed by the staff at the hospital. The artist’s role was mainly to role the wheel chairs, taking care of ad hoc practical matters.

Nicholas Bourriaud puts forward in his essay Ustabile Forbindelser (Unstable Relations) in the book describing the Stavanger projects, a change in this relational and social art. A change that was set to the specific date 9/11. After the attack on the twin towers, he reasons that the art went from relational to more radical.

Within the EU, the discussions are going warm on how to make cities and regions more creative. In the Green Paper on the potential of the cultural and creative industries put forward this spring, ideas and incentives are put forward on how to do. One suggestion is: Read this book.

“Nabologashemmeligheter. Kunsten som byprosess ” (forlagetpress.no), edited by Jan Inge Reilstad. Look into Koro, Public Art in Norway. And for more ideas on city development and art look here.

“The war is over” says our driver and tourist agency owner Darijan Markotic “now we are looking forward, to the future!” He only very reluctantly wants to answer my questions of what happened during the war in Croatia. “I can speak about it to you, but otherwise it’s forgotten. We have to go on,” he says.

He was only a young boy during the war, aware of the crises, but not closely affected by it. Although everyone knows someone who was hurt or killed, he tells me, as we drive up the coast along the beautiful scenery of the Adriatic Sea towards Krka National Park. We want to see the waterfalls and the nature in the park that we heard so much about. But it’s inevitable to think about the war driving this way.

Krka is very close to the city of Knin, during the war a Serbian area and part of the (internationally) unrecognised Kingdom of Serbian Krajina, and also held by it’s own Serbian leaders Babic´and Martic´, both sentenced for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. On August 5, 1995, Croatian troops took over the area in forms described as pure massacre and ethnic cleansing of the area. This was only one of several such stories, horrors committed by all parties in this very cruel war. Trying to understand the conflict is difficult. One question is pondering the head, as we drive along peaceful and summer warm roads, and after reading pages after pages of what happened: How is it possible that we only fifteen to twenty years ago had such a horrific war in Europe – how could it happen?

Croatian journalist Slavenca Drakulic´wrote the Balkan Express during the war. It’s a set of small personal essays and reflections of what it does to you as a human being, to your senses in the every day life of a war. How it affects you and changes you in ways you could never foresee or understand.

But now it’s different, Darijan Markotic tells me optimistically. Tourism is the future of Croatia, with a coastline starting from Dubrovnik in the south all the way to the region of Istra and the boarders of Slovenia in north, with small villages, tourist places, boat-life and swimming in the clear waters of the Adriatic Sea. He started his business some years ago and it goes slow, he thinks. Bureaucracy around starting a business is time-consuming, it’s heavy with the investments in the beginning, and then of course – the customers have to find you. The tourists have to come.

The book Lonely Planet Croatia states that around twenty percent of GDP comes from tourism. Tourism has changed Croatia, people tell me. Before the rich people lived behind the hills, away from the coastline, which during centuries have been taken over by different conquerors and settlers. Only the poor lived by the Sea. Now it’s the other way around. Rich people by the sea, poorer in the olive-tree covered landscape behind the hills. It is by the beautiful coast the hopes for a prosperous future lies.

Read more posts on tourism here.

At the Summer Academy “The Art of living on Art” starting on June 14 eleven participants from fields of music, film and visual art gathered to develop their future ideas and what steps to take to find ways to live on their art. The Academy is an initiative started by Academy of Music and Drama in Göteborg together with Nätverkstan, this year involving teachers from the all different artistic faculties.

Workshops are combined with lectures and examples of artists finding their way to live on what they do. One of the latter is the amazing guitar duo Gothenburg Combo. David Hansson and Thomas Hansy met during at the Academy of Music and Drama in Göteborg where they studied classical music, started up a band and is now touring the world playing acoustic guitar – one of the hardest instruments to try to make a career of, we are told.

They started during the education by setting up scheduled jams every Friday. No excuses were allowed to skip these sessions. No matter how you felt, if a nail was broken (they use their nails when playing), family reasons or whatsoever were reasons enough to cancel a session. You showed up and delivered something. The thought was simple: In working life you have to deliver. This was a good schooling into what that means.

They say that there is no miracle formula to reach success. It’s about delivering the best you can at every session. To work hard. Traditional marketing has not worked, they found, it’s difficult to plan and do a market strategy. Instead other things has shown important, such as networking and always work on reaching high artistic quality. A collection of many small steps in a mixture has been a way to work and, it showed a way to success. A mixture of sending material to possible partners and concert arrangers and playing at large and small concerts around the world. One example of how they work is on the tours around the world where their motto is to always come prepared, so they do not, like many other artists, have sit and practice in the hotel room into the last minute before the concert. They use the time to network, meet possible new contacts, jam with other artists for inspiration or just connecting with other musicians.

“It’s all or nothing.”

“We have created an urge for our music.”

The Summer Academy “The Art of living on Art” is a ten week university course for professionals within the artistic professions. Read more here.

She absorbs the room by her mere presence. As she walk up the stage to sit down on her chair, an excited murmur goes through the room. It’s evident that many have read and highly respect the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the most prominent thinkers within the research field of postcolonial theory. It’s merely impossible to refer to her talk with John Hutnyk, Professor in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University. She combines stories from her past and present with well-thought theories and a deep knowledge and concern for society and societal processes.

Göteborg is at the moment full of researchers, thinkers, professors and artists from all the world. Everyday an interesting talk is going on, the coming weekend will be full of music events with musicians travelling to Göteborg to perform. The event is part of the Clandestino Festival. The talks part of the cooperation Clandestino Talks:: Border Reverb, the last being a cooperation between Clandestino Festival in Göteborg, Goldsmiths University in London and Interarts in Berlin.

The festival is run by Bwana Club, a group of cultural producers, djs, and authors who through different forms like seminars, exhibitions, and actions aim to work across borders and with specific aim of democracy in the globalized world.

Below a talk by Spivak at University of California, Santa Barbara found on youtube.

Today’s news of the Israeli attack on the humanitarian flotilla, Ship to Gaza, on international waters is a terrible state of fact in the world since 9/11, where everyone of us at any time can be accused of being terrorists.

Ship to Gaza is a humanitarian project and a grass-roots initiative to send supplies of building material and medical equipment to the people of Gaza. It’s a peaceful action from people-to-people to help people in need. Engaged in Ship to Gaza, and now on the ships, are parliamentarians, professors, artists, journalists, film makers, and many others.

The news are now spreading of nineteen people dead and several injured in the Israeli Military attack. An attack on peaceful demonstrators in peace time and on international waters.

Words are not enough to express the despair this creates.

Wagner is said to have stated that if everything is destroyed, the nation clinging on to art will survive. A nation ignoring it’s art ends being a nation.

Arvind Lodaya’s thoughts of cultural innovation and democratizing culture seem to begin with the same standing point. Culture, art, innovation is done in everyday life among ordinary people – i e all of us. Without the social capital – all those things that count for most in the daily lives of people (to use one of the definitions put forward) – we will be poorer. And we seemed to have lost track of this.

Civil society is mentioned in every policy document now-a-days, from local, regional, and state level in Sweden to EU. We have to cooperate with civil society, we are told. Definitions vary and no-one seem to fully understand what it means. Another fact is that policy documents rarely reach ordinary people, Arvind Lodaya argues. “Temples of Culture” are built and nurtured; artistic and cultural institutions whose existence only gather a few initiated and seem to exclude others. It’s dilemma not only of policy makers and politicians who put a lot of money into sustaining our cultural institutions. It’s something  also pursued by artists themselves, artistic universities, and cultural and art organizations.

Cultural Innovation is about art and culture found in our ordinary lives, is the message of Arvind Lodaya. This is where the driving force for cultural change takes form. The Indian context where he takes his staning point is also like a melting pot of cultures, languages, and people. Small-scale cultural entrepreneurs are found in every corner in the urban India; tailors, fabric producers, crafts, design, game, IT-experts, writers and so forth. In Europe cultural entrepreneurs are also small-scale, although working in a different fashion and structure. It’s in this small-scale environment innovation and new ideas start growing. How can cultural institutions facilitate everyday cultural innovation and what does the interface between an institution and social capital look like? What could policy makers do to support innovation within culture?

Arvind Lodaya’s answer is clear: Innovation needs to be nurtured rather than strangled. One way is to stop reducing people to only being customers and from policy level regarding them as much more complex than this.

See the slideshow of Arvind Lodaya here. A film of the seminar will be available on Internet soon. The seminar was held in cooperation between School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg, Region Västra Götaland, Encatc and Nätverkstan on May 24 2010. More on Arvind Lodaya can be found here and under cateogory “India” on this site.

“The Era of Information Protectionism”.

This is how you could describe the time we live in, states Lars Ilshammar’s, Director of Labour Movement Archives and Library. What was before part of the public domain is today productified; knowledge becomes a product. How, for instant, he questions, is it possible that all the old heritage of the written documents, photos, films are hidden in the basement of the library and not accessible for the public? And then, when it’s decided to make old material public and documents, where the copyright is no longer a limit, are scanned to be digitized – a new copyright is created. Why not let this be what it is – owned by the public domain?

His suggestion is that a policy on Memory is done from political level, giving the guidelines on how to handle all the cultural heritage in, what from Swedish could be translated to Memory Institutions, referring to all institutions dealing with our archives and libraries.

Eva Hemmungs Wirtén, Professor in Library and Information Science (Bibliotek- och Informationsvetenskap) at Uppsala University, takes us back to the Bern Convention from 1887 where the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) first took form. And the interesting evolving process to the modern IPR, where apparently Stockholm – the place for today’s seminar – were hosting a discussion on the IPR in 1967 that showed to be a complete turn in the Swedish position. The Bern Convention was set up by the exporters of culture, i e those who produced culture, and those who imported. Sweden was at the time of the Convention mainly an importer and argued for free IPR. While countries like France and UK, the old colonizing countries, where producing culture arguing for stricter rights for the creators. It took until 1967 for Sweden to change position.

The IPR’s where in the beginning about the creator, author, artist, and not until 1960s did it also include the investors or producers. These two are often mixed in the discussion, and it’s necessary, PhD in Civil Law and Legal Informatics at Stockholm University, Katarina Renman Cleason states, to find a balance between on one hand protection and the other accessibility.

The right of the individual is a base in a democracy; Publicist Arne Ruth begins with, and continues, as is the right to the commonage. What will this look like in the future?

The seminar, held in Stockholm on May 24th, was the second step in a three-step process of discussing the public domain and IPR. The first was a report written by Cultural Journalist Mikael Löfgren. The third is a seminar on September 22 where Google is invited in the discussion. The seminar was arranged by Nätverkstan, National Library of Sweden, Göteborg Book Fair, Foundation for the Culture of the future, and Region Västra Götaland.

As part of the project Linking Initiatives, a project between Region Västra Götaland and Karnataka, Arvind Lodaya from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore will be a visiting scholar for one and a half month in West Sweden. His main project is to look into the notion of Cultural Innovation and explore this further with partners from different areas. Due to this a seminar is held on May 27th. Read Arvind Lodaya’s discussion note here: arvindlodaya_discussionnote.pdf.

School of Film Directing at University of Gothenburg, and has just come back from another visit in Bangalore to continue and be a partner of the start of a Film School in Bangalore for film directing and artistic film making. Also this is part of Linking Initiatives. Read about the results here: FH/Bangalore201005.pdf.

Read more under the category “India” or the tag “Bangalore”.

Shiva Subramanian is a cultural entrepreneur. He has a business degree, which he doesn’t use, he says: “That’s why it works”. His view is that businesses put up so many barriers, so finally you can’t be human.

He has set up a row of different small companies and run different ideas and initiatives. His idea is to just get going, build on a social network and “no paperwork!” He owns the Sona Towers on Millers Road in Bangalore, and has put up a space on the fifth floor for other entrepreneurs such as internetradio, an architect, a lawyer, graphic designer. What is the key factor for success we ask? The informal setup, his social network and culture.

“This wouldn’t work if it wasn’t within the art.”

Indian Institute of Management, along Bannerghatta Road within a green garden domain, would love an entrepreneur like the ones on fifth floor. On the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning the idea is to work within three areas: Research, teaching and training entrepreneurs, and incubator. In the incubator they look for unique and scalable ideas and a passionate team. During “punchwhole meetings” they judge and try to punchwhole the idea and see how the entrepreneur respond to this. One challenge is to get the person focussed on the idea; a start-up work seventy percent with other things and not with the idea.

Alternative Law Forum is a collective of lawyers starting in 2000 with the idea that there is a need for an alternative practice of law concerning social and economic injustice. They have run several campaigns for sexual, women and civil rights and questions like: How do minorities get access to their rights?. The eleven laywers connected to ALF cover a large variety of issues, do research, campaigns and publish articles.

Running a perfume business these days is hard. Globalization has changed the market completely, and being a smaller business you just can’t compete with the large ones. The international connection is asked for by customers who would like to order a new perfume, and for a small business it’s just not possible. They have instead accepted to be in the second layer, Mr Vijayakumar explains, when he with love for his profession explains how it works.

The perfumery is one part of what they do at Vijayakumar Farm. The farm is named after the family name, where they have over the past few years planted over 250 species of plants and trees; endangered species, the sainted trees, spices and other things. One part is the breeding of a rare cow, which we are told, is both intelligent and has feelings. We also get to see a wonderful dance performance by Raadha Kalpa and the story behind traditional dance.

One sentence stay in your mind, said by one of the entrepreneurs: “In India if you don’t succeed you die.”

The visit is part of the exchange program Linking Initiatives, an initiative between Region Västra Götaland and Karnataka in India. Read more under tag “Bangalore” or category “India”.

Another buzzword in Europe is “Innovation”. A word making the eyes of policy makers, economists and others shine with expectation. Last year in Europe was dedicated to the year of Creativity and Innovation and the creativity around how to get the attention from the EU Commission was interesting to follow.

As was said on the Forum of Cultural Industries in Barcelona recently, cultural and creative industries are still high on the priority list among cultural ministers in Europe. And with this also the question of how you could foster creativity and innovation within art and culture.  KEA European Affairs was commissioned last year by EU to do a study showing with facts how culture in itself had an impact on creativity.  Interesting, but is culture and art necessary always creative? And for the concept of innovation we are often stuck with the classical understanding of the word; as an invention you get patented, often found within medicine and technique. Structures are built to support and foster creative ideas within these fields, often together with technical Universities.

How does that apply on cultural products and artistic expressions? Very few of these can be patented. What would be innovation in a cultural and artistic context? What is cultural innovation? Where is the driving force for (cultural) change in society? How does cultural innovation happen?

On a meeting last week with one of the finance and support structures for SME’s put up by the Swedish state, two things were evident. They had never given finance support to cultural entrepreneurs as they could remember, and on a discussion on innovative ideas, art and culture was not on the agenda.

In May and June, Region Västra Götaland will host Arvind Lodaya, Senior Faculty and Dean, Research at Sristhi School of Art, Design and Tecnology, and an artist from Bangalore (India) as a visiting Professor. His working place will be Nätverkstan and his main focus is cultural innovation. Two seminars will be held in Göteborg to explore the topic together with participants.

Download the invitation here: Cultural_Innovation.pdf . You can also download a discussion paper by Mr Arvind Lodaya here: arvindlodaya_discussionnote.pdf. More can be read of Arvind Lodaya and Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology here. and here The residence is part of the programme Linking Initiatives, a cooperation between the state of Karnataka and Region Västra Götaland.

There is a lot of talk about Google in Sweden these days. Well, it has been since they started the process of digitizing books on Internet and the question of Intellectual Property Rights that followed. The Swedish Publishing Houses are one of the parties in this being furious. But now the buzz is due to the Swedish journalist Andreas Ekström who just released a book on Google (Google-koden), which has been reviewed in the papers recently.

The overall question seem to be: Is Google a threat to publicity?

Nätverkstan and Journalist Mikael Löfgren are, together with National Library of Sweden, Göteborg Book Fair, and The Foundation for the Culture of the Future, arranging two seminars this year on the topic Publicity and Intellectual Property Rights. The first will be in Stockholm in May, the second during the Göteborg Book Fair in Sweden – and as invited guest and speaker to this seminar will be Santiago de la Mora (read an interview here) from Google.

The thought is simple and as can be read in the invitation to the seminar in Stockholm (my translation):

“The digital development affects society with a force we can only see the beginning of. The technical development detonates all efforts to with legal system or commercially encircle it. The business models of which through history has created the infrastructure of the modern society is in the middle of a crisis. This infrastructure has, in turn, been the base for the democratic emergence”

The questions of the publicity and intellectual property rights concern not only the different art forms, legal system, business models; it concerns everyone, all citizens.

First seminar in Stockholm is in Swedish, second one in September with Google in English. Download the invitation to Stockholm here: inbjudanO&U.pdf. One of many seminars on the topic of new busniess models for arts due to digitizing can be read on this site here.

There is a unison tone on the European Forum on Cultural Industries in Barcelona. Cultural and Creative Industries are seen as the driving force of economy in Europe. It’s among the top priorities. Figures presented show that this field employ 15% of Londoners, between 2000-2005 creative industries grew by 10% in Europe which is more than other industries, and holds 3,1% of GDP in Europe. Everyone is here; ministers and bureaucrats from all around Europe and from all levels from European Commission to state, region and local level. Civil servants, University lecturers and professors, and representatives from cultural companies to the business field. And they all agree. Creative Industries hold a potential of economic growth in Europe. This has to be part of the European 2020 strategy.

Spain holds the presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2010. And they have chosen to organize the Forum in cooperation with European Commission and Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona. Perhaps it’s not so surprising. Barcelona has fostered many famous Artists, as Pablo Picasso who grew up here as young, and of course the home of Gaudi, the famous architect and foremost Artist in Art Noveau tradition. Around the city you find Gaudi’s architecture, but also sculptures and Art works done by many other Artists in a mix of modern and traditional. The Catalonian State has put culture high on the agenda and are proud of their Artists.

Perhaps significant of the Forum is the lack of insight among the ministers and bureaucrats of what the creative industries consist of. What it is. The risk of EU putting money into the wrong incentives, and in all good intentions write new declarations that never reach the actual field is large. The expected evaluation of Mike Coyne, Director of Centre for Strategy and Evaluation Services, might be helpful in throwing some light on who all the creators are and their effects on local and regional structures. Also the expected survey by Giep Hagoort, Professor of Art and Economics at Utrecht University and Utrecht School of Arts, this spring is promising. His message being, which is also our experience from the work we have done at Nätverkstan and backed by several reports of this field from among others UK; it’s a field run by Artists within in different Art forms, organized in small-scale, micro and nano businesses and freelancers who work in networks and informal structures. When putting forward incentives and supportive structures in the cultural field, these have to be as complex as the field is.

Also significant is the lack of small-scale Artists in panels and as keynote speakers. They are there, but not as many as you would wish for.  Instead you find some of them outside in an alternative forum, campaigning for the freedom on Internet, led by well-known comic Leo Bassi. Government is promoting a “download law”, which many Artists are protesting against. Inside, at the Forum, several of the Cultural Ministers and other representatives on the contrary put forward the necessity of strong Intellectual Property Rights.

The Forum ended with six of the Cultural Ministers (we missed the Swedish Minister) giving their comments from a parallel meeting where creative industries has been discussed and with the aim of presenting a Green Paper on Culture. A Green paper released by the European Commission is a discussion document, which hope to stimulate debate and be a process for consultation on a topic. It usually comes before the White Paper, which is a more formal document. This was never presented; it was still too unready, but expect the Green Paper coming during spring.

And outside business were going on as usual among our cultural entrepreneurs; street musicians, living sculptures, painters, and other Artistic professionals.

If you take highway E20 from Göteborg towards Stockholm you will, after around two and a half hours, drive through the Municipality of Gullspång and the small city of Hova. If you happen to sneeze right there, look down, or don’t pay attention, you will have passed the turn into Hova and also the significant sign of the city: The small tourist office looking like a knightly castle on the left hand side.

Hova has quite a few things they are very proud of. It’s well known for the medieval week, with the largest knight parade and tournaments in the Nordic Countries celebrated in July in memory of the Battle in Hova in 1275. It was also the town where the songwriter, manager, composer, and the launcher of Abba, Stikkan Andersson, spent his youth, and where famous Swedish soccer player Andreas Andersson was born.

The Municipality of Gullspång has a total of 5300 inhabitants and one of Sweden’s smallest municipalities. When the present Mayor, Hans Andrén, took over a few years ago the municipality was completely bankrupt. With thirty years of experience working as a Mayor in different municipalities, this was the first time he could not pay salaries to people in his staff. Other struggles are a changing base for employment from agriculture and industry to more self-employment and small-scale entrepreneurs, inhabitants of a high middle age (in Hova we find two undertakers, but only one pub), and a daytime life without young people as youngsters from around 14 years spend there days in the larger city of Mariestad where school is.

The challenges were many and the question was: What could be done to change negative trends and again make inhabitants feel proud of being part of the municipality? Reports of the role of culture as a factor for growth had reached the office and in 2006 they started Gullspångs-modellen (The Model of Gullspång) led by the Artist Staffan Hjalmarsson. The idea has since start been to use culture as part of the strategic plan in developing Gullspång as an attractive place to live in. Different projects and events have taken place, both on a strategic level and events like when the mobile exhibition hall from Riksutställningar visited Hova. Artists have been involved regulary, like poet Linn Hansén and now Artist Johan Malmström, working with concrete projects involving people living in the area.

When telling this story, the Mayor and also Staffan Hjalmarsson talk about other values, not measurable, more intrinsic values. But how do you make people understand the value of something so abstract? Staffan Hjalmarsson puts it in relation to life; you can’t describe life, it’s bigger than all we know, it’s immeasurable. Culture is part of this; Gullspångsmodellen is just a small part of everyone’s life. But hopefully it makes a difference. A change that can be measured is that the Municipality now has a plus on their account. And the discussion of what culture is has never before been so debated and discussed.

The visit to Gullspång and Hova was part of a study visit done by the group Art&Politics, set up by the Region of Västra Götaland and led by the Artist Jörgen Svensson. The group is a creative arena and working group of politicians and Artists in the region.

Did you know that in India hand movements are an important part of traditional and contemporary dance, expressing abstractions giving another dimension or parallel understanding to a story or performance? In European dance-tradition feet and foot movement have a central part, we are told. In a dance studio on Oskarsgatan in Göteborg today, dancers and choreographers from Bangalore (India) met professionals from Göteborg (Sweden) in a three-hour workshop. After warming up; experimenting with movements, traditions, experiences took place and ended in a twenty-minute lunch performance for invited guests.

The Bangalore-based Centre for Movement Arts, Attakkalari, is in West Sweden for a tour visit, and started with a full-length performance of Chronotopia at Vara Concert Hall. This was followed by a seminar on their research project and short performances of the choreographers and dancers at Museum of World Cultures in Göteborg. Then workshops with young dancers in Vara, with theatre students at the School of Music and Drama. And now they met with professional dancers and choreographers from Dansbyrån, a production platform for dance based in Göteborg run by the three choreographers Moa Matilda Sahlin, Marika Hedemyr, and Paula de Hollanda.

The idea of a Young Choreographers Platform where choreographers and dancers meet to work and build something together is an integral part of the work at Attakkalari in an ambition to continuously explore and experiment with movements and expression. A sort of lab of movements easily set up with dancers and choreographers from any part of the world if you just have a studio to work in. As Jay Palazhy, Artistic Director at Attakkalari once put it: “The beauty of collaboration is that it’s not about rationalizing. You don’t have to speak so much, just do it”.

The visit of Attakkalari is part of the agreement “Linking Initiatives” between the region of Karnataka and Region Västra Götaland. Read former posts of the exchange project under India on this site.

The two women at Print Design in Lidköping are keeping very busy. They do prints for porcelain and when we visit they are about to start working with gold details, something that takes patience and precision. The knowledge they have is rare and they have kept their aims high. Their small business have had a fairly steady stream of orders since the start in 2006 when Rörstrand closed down the porcelain factory. Now it’s particularly busy. Print Design got a large order to do all the prints to the porcelain for Swedish Crown Princess Viktoria’s wedding in June and also the memory porcelain sold to the public.

The story is not un-known of these days. Rörstrand started their business producing ceramics and porcelain in 1726 in Stockholm. They grew quickly, got well-known for the quality porcelain and from 1936 the main office was placed in Lidköping together with the factory, employing around 1500 people (about 25.000 inhabitants in Lidköping) in the beginning of 21 century. In 2005 the owner, Finnish Ittala, decided to close down the factory due to the heavy investment costs of new ovens and move the business from Lidköping. All employees lost their jobs. For the small porcelain-town Lidköping, situated right at the south end of the lake Vänern in Sweden, this was of course a disaster. The porcelain factory and the shop attracted around 450.000 visitors each year. Closing down meant a catastrophe. The municipality got cold feet and the landlord stood with thousands of square metres empty space.

Gunnar Hansson, who had been working at Rörstrand, got the question if he would try to do something with the empty space and started slowly building on what today is a cluster of small-scale businesses, small production space for ceramics and porcelain, education in ceramics and a porcelain Museum. To have a platform to work from, he started the development company, Rörstrand Kulturforum with the aim of developing Rörstrand’s factory area to an attractive area for ceramic production. They started from scratch where people who had been working for the same employer as long as twenty years, were suppose to become entrepreneurs and needed education in things like how to do a budget, how the selling process worked. They also wanted to start the production of ceramics again, but where was the market for producing ceramics to a reacenable price? If you produce more than 30.000 cups you make them in Bangladesh, Gunnar Hansson tells us, and 30 cups you can produce in your own home-oven. What about producing 3000 cups?

Maybe that’s a market share they could take. In these changes Print Design started, where the two women had a very specific expertise, but had never run a business before. Now they do prints for the Royal Family in Sweden. With a combination of education, creators and Artists, business, small-scale entrepreneurs and new ideas, Rörstrand factory area has managed to keep the attraction. What is the key to success? “We have lubricated where lubricate is needed”, is Gunnar Hanssons simple reply. One such grease is, no doubt, money.

Look also at the small Art and design studio In Every Tree, Stockholmbased, but they also have a studio in the old porcelain factory in Lidköping. See a former blogpost from Biella, Italy, where the textile industry met the same destiny. The visit was part of a study visit with a think tank on creative industries in Region Västra Götaland.

This sunny day in Stockholm, people from the music industry gathered at Hotel Rival for the Creators Conference arranged by Swedish Music Information Center, The Swedish Society of Popular Music Composers and Society for Swedish Composers.

The focus was added value in the digital world, the attempt was to lift the question from Intellectual Property Rights to look broader; which way might we go in technical choices, what new business models might we see in the future, and what is the role of the middleman within the music industry? Mark Fischlock, the moderator for the day, early on stated that we seem to have underestimated the digitalization and we have for a long time tried to impose old models in a new system. He got a lot of agreeing nodding from the eight-headed panel, and American Intellectual Property Law Attorney, Bennett Lincoff, was quick in hooking on to this, saying that we need a completely new business model for the music industry that can deal with the challenges imposed by the Internet.

Other things said was things like “We have to find solutions where money goes directly to the Artist”, “People are willing to pay if the money goes to the right thing”, “How do you get a fair deal between the producer and distributor?”, “There is no interest in pipes, you are interested in the content they are providing”, “The real problem is the lawyers who seem to be stuck in old structures”, “Let’s face it: We are all cutting and pasting, we have to be less focused on IP”, “It’s a difference between free or feels free on the Internet”. Many points were made by legendary manager Peter Jenner (Pink Floyd, The Clash and others), who stressed that the industry needs to change and money go directly to the pockets of the Artists. The distributors, like the record-companies, publishers, just grab too much of the pie and this will, and has to, change. Another important point made was the lack of political interest in digitalization as a whole in Sweden.

A bit of a sad remark is the reminder that the music industry in Sweden has to take a serious look at the equality question. Are we to believe that the talented, brilliant, famous musicians, singers, composers, and directors of organizations in this field are only men? In today’s Stockholm paper Dagens Nyheter an article put the light on the music industry being very male-dominant, while among the theatre institutions things have changed. A few years ago a survey showed theatre institutions to have almost only men as directors, something that now had changed to a 50-50 percent men and women in top positions. For everyone who read today’s paper and then went to the conference, sadly got the situation in the music field confirmed. In each panel of eight people, only one in each was a woman. Maybe the Internet and new models in distribution may have an impact on changing this male domination, letting young talented women find alternative ways?

Surrounded by many of the larger banks in the financial district in London, you find the new non-profit contemporary Art exhibition centre Raven Row. It’s quite anonymous; you easily walk by the low building with the white front, but finding it is rewarding. While the banks and financiers are busy dealing with the recession and building trust, the current exhibition at Raven Row is dealing with other processes in society; the disobedience, subversive cultural ideas, the Art that is often on the edge of what is accepted by society.

“A history of irritated material” is curated by Danish curator Lars Bang Larsen, who explains the title as referring to the relation between Art, and social and psychological reality. Video clips of protest marches, freedom fighters, witness stories, and trials are shown in a set of TVs, works of the New York based Group Material is exhibited together with Artists like Swedish Sture Johannesson. His famous poster from 1968 of the naked woman with a hash-pipe in her hand (Hash Girl) is significant for the exhibition. The poster was done for Lund Art Exhibition Hall (Southern Sweden), but the exhibition was never shown. It was accused of being drug romantic and Sture Johannesson himself stole his controversial posters that made politicians see red from the exhibition hall. The Director at the time, Folke Edwards, was accused of being sex and drug romantic just by showing this work of the well-known Artist. It all ended with the Director leaving his job just after a short time on the post.

Perhaps less subversive, but definitely not mainstream were two concerts at Union Chapel the previous night. Two Swedish bands played in the church, built in 1876 to 1877, from 1991 used as a venue for cultural events (combined with worship, baptism, weddings). The two-people-band The Tiny, and then First Aid Kit, two young women of 17 and 19 years old, inspired by the hippie and country movement of the 70s combined with new sound. Both wonderful bands that manage to form Artistic talent into their own music, their own thing. Funny we have to go to London to see them.

A walk by Tate Modern also leaves traces. The Polish contemporary Artist Miroslaw Balka and his piece “How it is” is both overwhelming and scary. The work is a gigantic container placed in the big open hall at Tate. Walking around the container you feel small, yes, tiny, and in one short-end you enter at a large ramp and walk towards the darkness inside. A chill along the spine as scary film-clips of Holocaust where people in masses walked in to uncertainty come to mind, yet when we are walking we are safe. We know that, but still…What will we meet inside? The exhibition keeps itching and irritating the mind the rest of the day.

And among these visits, we do study visits to discuss social entrepreneurship with Ian Baker at School for Social Entrepreneurs, cultural leadership with Venu Dhupa and Nicola Turner, and the development of the workshop “The Art of living of Art” together with Sian Prime.

Read this text by Lars Bang Larsen on social liability. Some links in relation to School for Social Entrepreneurs are found here, here and for reports and evaluations here. Most photos are taken by Helena Persson, a few with Iphone.

We sit right above the swimming pool, in a former swimming hall, for our meeting with Kate Oakley at City University London (UK). The changing lockers are still on the side, but now used as storage of books and documents. It’s nice, somehow. Nothing can be changed in the hall, Kate Oakley tells us. So if you remove the floor the swimming pool is still there. Now neatly covered and transformed to one of the meeting points and reading rooms for students. Kate Oakley is a writer, policy analyst, and now visiting Professor at Department of Cultural Policy and Management. She has followed and written a lot about creative industries and the new British independents, i.e. the small-scale entrepreneurs. We meet her to talk about the Cultural Leadership Programme at the City University and also creative industries. Where is it going?

UK is the cradle of cultural and creative industries, introduced about a decade ago by the Blair Labour Government and their Creative Industries Mapping Document. But what will happen now with the notion of cultural and creative industries? Kate Oakley says, after some thinking, that she sees a division in argument between on one hand “creativity”, and the other “innovation”. This means that you will find those who argue stronger for the Arts and Arts Policy, and those who enforce innovation in the more narrow sense where aesthetics are used to raise value in more traditional businesses. The creative industries managed to show the practice and everyday life of culture and cultural entrepreneurs, something that tends to get lost in this division.

So, where is the question of creative industries in UK nowadays? 2010 is election year and it’s always a time when not much will happen. And it does seem like the question has slipped from the Labour’s priorities. The Conservatives, on the other hand seem to show more interest in cultural heritage than creative industries. Maybe the recession has forced other priorities in focus, maybe not enough advocacies and lobbying from cultural politicians on fellow politicians in other areas has been done? An experience from a project in Western Sweden with Artists and politicians show that many cultural politicians feel a lack of arguments in relation to other political areas.

We also meet Nicola Turner at the Arts Council and discuss Cultural Leadership and the Cultural Leadership Programme. Quite interesting.

At Creative Choices website you find After the Crunch, a book trying to put light on these issues, and also thoughts about “So what’s next”. Terry Flew and Stuart Cunningham wrote the book Creative Industries after the First Decade of Debate, and in 2008 you could listen to many of the leading researchers within cultural and creative industries at a one-day symposium at Milton Keynes, “The Creative Industries: Ten Years After”. Nätverkstan was there, read about it here. This facts file from UK Department of Culture, Media and Sports from 2002 might be useful: ci_fact_file.pdf.

The visit to London is part of a study visit done by Kulturverkstan, the two-year Project Management Training Programme, run by Nätverkstan. Photos taken with Iphone.