A Cultural Plan for Floda (Sweden)

Over the past five years Lia Ghilardi has been working with local stakeholders (led by private developers Floda Torg AB) to map the cultural distinctiveness of Floda, one of the small centres of the Greater Göteborg metropolitan area. The mapping process led to the launch of an Ideas Competition for solutions to the high street’s lack of vibrancy and the general lack of attractive meeting places. The solutions proposed where then tested out in a programme of local community engagement. The result was the piloting of a niche retail strategy (through a BID), an inter-generational housing project, and a series of art-based public realm interventions designed to attract newcomers to live and work in Floda.

Subsequently, Lia worked in the surrounding towns (for example in Grabo) with architect and planner Tinna Harling on a series of cultural planning implementation mentoring schemes, whereby local stakeholders from both the public and the private sector (housing companies) tested out partnerships and schemes to bring back services and new cultural infrastructure into these peri-urban areas of Göteborg.