We are building a Plus-Sum Center.

Participatory Platform

Blivande as a platform is co-designed and stewarded by its members. We develop into the direction those involved put energy in. Participatory culture, events, art and design, urban placemaking and civic action-based initiatives are paths that have crystallised so far. Our intention is to remain open to future unknowns and establish a place in Stockholm that supports nascent ideas by sharing risks and providing the budding crews with an ecosystem of kind and talented professionals to realise their dreams. We want to create a playground for ideas and dialogue countering polarisation and invite national and international actors to establish collaborative relationships devoid of a competition mindset.

Glocal” Action

Our space is an independent contributor to culture, policy innovation and urban development in Stockholm. We concentrate the effort towards our immediate surroundings, working from the inside-out while staying updated through national and international partners and networks and connected with contemporary social challenges. Through enabling rapid use of our physical spaces, we have so far supported two large civic actions focused on leveraging effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and providing a community centre for Ukrainian refugees.  Blivande wants to give more and proof that a creative cluster can be a responsible and self-sustaining civil society institution. Our community network has a multitude of different resources and types of capital that can be leveraged towards current societal needs. We are creating an environment that inspires to action.

Future Prototyping

Humanity has and will continue to be facing intimidating challenges in the coming centuries. We need spaces that combine the possibility to talk maturely about our collective grief and confusion while providing avenues to channel that energy into action. Bottom-up initiatives like Blivande can complement top-down systems through providing a nest for social innovation, systemic experimentation and active hope. We believe we are not in need of a single utopian future but a multitude of realistic futures to accommodate the diverse populations of our city. This requires a great deal of imagination, openness and bravery. No organisation, individual or business can do it alone. As a collective, we support each other to dare to manifest our ideas into reality thus prototyping our version of an interdependent and responsible future.

Community Stewardship

In the spirit of participation and do-ocracy, we are currently implementing a renewed legal organisational form. We are working on an “Exit to Community”, transforming the not-for-profit company into a legal structure supporting communal ownership. Those that invest most time in developing the platform should be able to steward it. Being a steward of Blivande grants benefits, but also comes with responsibilities and sharing certain risks. However, you don’t have to be steward to influence the space. Collaborative decision making, co-budgeting and financial transparency permeate the project through various levels of involvement such as grant allocating for infrastructure developments, decision making about tool purchases for the atelier or curation of the art and culture program at Frihamnstorget.

Relationship Architects

In the centre of all the chaos and beauty, there are our people. Without that heart, we would only be a beautiful corpse. There wouldn’t be anything without all the individuals that decide to spend their time and work at Blivande. The house is inhabited by a genuine and caring crowd that constantly pushes for inclusion of the different and embraces the challenge of what that entails. This third space - neither fully private nor fully public - is becoming a home to its members and a source of meaning and solidarity for many. We like to juggle the complicated world between the professional and the personal with the aim to unravel a beneficial development of relationships, collaborations and organisations within our ecosystem. We believe that interdependence is a good complement to societies hyper-individualism and are curious to explore its implication.

Professional Punks

It is our outermost priority to stay an institution with heart and minimal bureaucracy. Over the past years, Blivande has gained a higher degree of expert professionalism having started from a small group of friends with the habit of reinventing the wheel on each occasion. Now we are at the point where our core activities are financially viable and independent. As the community reaches maturity and the organisation antifragility, we aspire to unlock the capacity for the larger core team to prioritise outreach, cross-sectorial collaborations and to be more overtly political. In what form, is yet to be seen. We hope to be contributors of fundamental rather than decorative societal change. Ideally, without stopping to be a place for weird motherfuckers.