Thursday August 27 we saw the birth of a new kind of festival of design. Was it good? Bad? Enough content? Here is the full story of Arkad.
Haven’t heard of this design festival yet? Don’t worry. Here is your chance to catch up. It started in March and grow into a fantastic event in August.
The new design festival arrived with something of a mythological backstory.
I first heard about Arkad just a week before 3 Days of Design in Stockholm. My first thought was: Wait. Someone is starting a new design festival in my hometown and I don’t know about it?
Intriguing.
Then came the second observation. The exhibitor’s list was not exactly modest. Montana, Swedese, Asplund and around 60–70 Swedish and international brands were apparently on board.
How had this happened without me noticing?
More importantly, how had it happened without almost anyone else noticing? Pretty much every other person I met in the design world seemed equally surprised. There was no big build-up, no endless stream of LinkedIn announcements, no obvious industry fanfare.
It felt almost like a stealth operation.
A design festival moving under the radar.
And then came the third reaction: Oh, I want to join.
Except you couldn’t. Arkad was already fully booked.
This was perhaps the strangest part. An event that very few people seemed to know about had managed to fill its roster with some of the biggest names in Swedish design. At a time when many traditional design fairs are struggling to fill their halls, there was something almost mesmerising about a new event that seemed to have done the opposite.
The story continued to grow.
There were free drinks. Free tattoos. And rumours that around 3,000 people had turned up.
At this point, Arkad was starting to feel less like a design festival and more like something you had either discovered — or somehow missed.
Which, of course, made you want to know what was actually going on.
So Thursday last week Arkad opened it’s doors. Democratic and raw exhibition space. Everyone got the same size of space, and no walls or barriers. Plain human contact.
DJs and pizza. And conversations.
The Kasthall rug designed by Louise Hederström placed straight on the concrete floor.
The festival was not necessarily about news. Of course you can see a new thing like this chair mainted in sustainable coat by Toniton. But again. We were here to have fun.
Me and the team behind Designcirkeln (Johan and Viktor) managed to do session where we talked about three different kind of chairs in a design therapy session.
As a summary. Wow. New, fresh, amazing. Winner’s feeling. Can it grow? Of course. I wouldn’t mind having it two days. I get you have a full festival feeling when it is only one day – but it was soooooo much fun. The event continued with dj and afterparty until 02.00.
The only critical comment I have seen is that the beer was expensive at the bar. But the entrance was free of charge. So… it should be ok.
Ten out of ten points. Best initiative in Sweden in a long time.