Pecha Kucha Night had another great turnout in Stockholm, with Vol. 16 packing in over 300 in a venue that usually holds 180. The event was held in a proper conference hall as well, instead of the usual night club.
In a bit of twist, the idea for the evening was to have women presenters only, although as you’ll see from organizer Ewa Kumlin’s report, an exception was made at the end:
Yvonne Sörensen, the managing director of Berns started the talks, followed by Pascale Cottard-Olsson, a French girl who moved to Stockholm and has a good design gallery here, Stockholm jet’aime. Mathilda Tham commuting between London and Stockholm talked about working with design students and sustainabillity from an intuitive and emotional angle. Ilse Crawford talked about how we have to regain the feeling and value of water. Anna Sjons Nilsson made us laugh and cry with her absurd traditional riddles and personal craft interpretations. Katrin Olina took us to her dream world, her longing for trees. Her colleague, Thorey Vilhjalmsdottir, also from Iceland — she has started a design center there — showed us how Iceland is the country where the designers first saw it coming — the finance crisis — and they have for a longer time than most of us made use of this situation, creating with more humour and with nearby, sparse, and existing materials. Marcia Harvey, a Zimbabwe-born former economist living in Sweden for 10 years now and a recent student of Beckmans, shared her personal language and her physical passion for guacamole. The last lady of the evening, who took my spot, turned out to be Jesper Larsson, the Gothenburg ambassador for Pecha Kucha Night, showing how to transform a one-room apartment into a free Creators Inn.
The next edition of PKN Stockholm is set for March 12 — a Thursday, as always — with the venue yet to be decided.
