Fru Form: Design and Government - Haag, Helsinki and Stockholm in 2012

Speed visit from Haag and Helsinki. Informal dinner in my house on Monday night and continued meeting in our library at Svensk Form in the morning. Ed Annink, designer and initiator of the Dutch organisation Design Den Haag, who visited us earlier in August, was now back with a concrete proposal for collaboration in 2012 with Stockholm, Haag, Helsinki and also Eindhoven on the topic Design and Government. How nations and cities work with design in communication with society. Through visual communication, architecture and public design. Products and services in society. Yesterday and tomorrow. The idea is that this project, partly founded by the EU, and partly founded by the participating cities/nations, will continue until 2018, when a report of the inventory and the results will be presented to the EU. Including analyses and proposals for the future. Better communication with the citizens through design. So far they have for instance worked with how political posters in the different countries have been used, another example was 27 different police cars, and police uniforms in our different EU countries. How do they transmit the same message service and order to us through their uniforms, cars and symbols. See more exhibitions and symosiums on their webb. Cities chosen by Ed is Haag, Berlin, London, Paris, Rome and Stockholm. Ed also brought with him his chairwoman Liesbet in't Hout, who is director of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute. Kari Korkman founder of the Helsinki Design week also came over from Helsinki to discuss the collaboration. Lively and engaged discussions in the evening and also the following days. I had invited representatives from the city and organisations such as Konstfack, Museum of Architecture, Sveriges designer etc and individual designers and persons interested and involved in these topics. Svensk Form is ready to act as a coordinator for the Stockholm part, as long as there is a backup from city and government in Sweden. EU-money will be applied for. Total budget for the 2012 project is about 6 million EUR, to be applied for jointly from EU, and individual budgets in each city. One symposium and one exhibtion. Suitable venues for exhibition and symposium in Sweden could be the Museum of Architecture and Kulturhuset. I belive there is an interesting potential in this.