Swedish Design on Stage
How are people to be brought up to become good European citizens? With this question, the article begins a discussion of how a design exhibition was used during Sweden’s presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2001, to market Swedish culture in Europe and to adapt Sweden to the vision of a shared European culture. The exhibition was produced on the initiative of the Swedish government and given the title 3D+ Swedish Design on Stage. An explicit aim of the exhibition, which toured between Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin, was to show off Swedishness in Europe. A Swedish tour was then started in Orsa. The article, which is based on an examination of the objects in the exhibition, the scenography, and the arrangers’ intentions, discusses how cultural identity was constructed at both nation and regional level. These identity constructions are related to the ambitions of EU cultural policy, which span two conflicting tendencies: the ambition to highlight a European uniformity and the aim of supporting regional diversity. The content of the exhibition is above all linked to the vision of a uniform European culture and a shared cultural heritage. The activities around the exhibition in Orsa are instead in keeping with the other approach of EU cultural policy, to support regional diversity, whereby the regions and their inhabitants are allowed to represent genuineness and fidelity to tradition. The primary target group of the exhibition was the well-educated urban middle class. Perhaps this group acquires a key role when it comes to the development of a shared European identity, in nations and regions alike. On a general level, the exhibition is interpreted as a way of schooling people in a modern European culture.
