Living Creatively

A NEW SERIES of web videos, or webisodes, from Fiskars Craft [of the famous orange-handled scissors and many hundreds of other craft products], shows exactly how committed the historic Finnish company is to design and creativity.

The Fiskars Cinema Series focuses on the company's unique rural artisan's colony in the company town of Fiskars, about 100kms from Helsinki. Originally established in 1649, it produced everything from steam engines to fine cutlery, but the town was in decline by the early 1990s when factory production there stopped.

That's when Fiskars executive Vice President Ingmar Lindberg had his brilliant idea on how to revive the dying town. He woke up in the middle of the night with the realisation that they had to get new people into it, and decided to invite artists and crafts people to live and work in Fiskars, creating a dedicated arts colony. The idea was embraced and the town is now a thriving design centre. In 2007, it won the Royal European Destination Award for Sustainable Tourism.

In ‘From Iron to Art: The Rebirth of a Company Town', the first of three documentary-style webisodes in the cinema series, you see the picture-perfect town of Fiskars in late summer with its trams, red barns, lakes and the pretty countryside, including fields of sunflowers, which surrounds the town. But mostly you get to meet the men and women, the artisans and designers of all disciplines, who make up the colony's population.

There's Karin Widnas, a ceramicist, Camilla Moberg, a glass designer, Erika Kelter, an interactive artist, Kristian Saarikorpi, a jewellery designer and Barbro Kulvik, a graphic designer. They talk about how much they love the town and how they benefit from its creative atmosphere, the interaction between each other and the 2,000 square metres of permanent exhibition space to display and sell their wares. They’re proud of the town and talk of staying there forever.

Says Ingmar Lindberg, "Fiskars is our home place, this is our holy land and we are very proud of it."

In Issue Seven of Living Creatively, we'll tell you about the second webisode in the Fiskars Cinema Series. It focuses on some of the artisans who live and create at Fiskars. And in Issue Eight, we'll review the third webisode in this fascinating series. It is devoted to Olavi Linden, chief product designer at Fiskars. He's an extraordinarily talented artisan whose relentless design philosophy is, simply, 'most things can be made better'.

Fiskars says this series is just the beginning in its web story-telling venture. With a history going back more than 350 years, it has a wealth of stories to tell. If these first three webisodes are an idea of what's to come, future productions will be something to look forward to.

And in the meantime, you can always visit Fiskars Craft website and tune-in to Fiskars TV, its fortnightly web TV show hosted by Suzanne Walker and featuring craft trends, projects and special guests. Or try Fiskars Australia’s fabulous blog for some Australian flavoured projects http://fiskarscraft.typepad.com

By Carolyn Ford