Story Caravan

Please read more about this project at https://storycaravan.wordpress.com/about

Åsa Lönnqvist and Ylva Rancken-Lutz, both born and bred in the small Swedish-Finnish town of Ekenäs on the coast of the Baltic sea, came up with the idea of The Story Caravan. Annabelle Antas, who grew up in the UK, has joined the project as photographer.

The idea of creating a story project grew out of what we perceived as the lack of methods for inklusive community planning and an ongoing conversation about visions of the future for our home town Ekenäs. We believe a good way to start this conversation is by talking about specific commons in the town, its maritime and migration heritage and how that has shaped the town and its inhabitants.

The future storytelling is planned to be an interdisciplinary place-making project which aims to deepen local engagement, place identity and co-governing through the arts. Our aim is to develop alternative method tools for a democratic dialogue between community members, cultural institutions, educational institutions, artist and policymakers through place-based storytelling. We want to encourage engagement with and analysis of Ekenäs as the place we call home and encourage an on-going dialogue about pasts and futures related to Ekenäs. At the same time we want to inspire a critical debate about city development, culture, commerzialisation, diversity, democracy, migration, transparency and accessibility.

We have received funding from The European Cultural Foundation for a R&D project and later money for a sister project Ekenäs StoryWalk from the Local Leader group.

We are now working on finding funding to continue with our placemaking initiatives and collaboration with other projects in the Nordic countries.