Gällivare Narratives – a powerful collaboration for an inclusive socie

Gällivare Narratives – stories as tools for social transformation

Gällivare Narratives is a three-year collaborative project that explores how mining communities can be developed into attractive, inclusive, and sustainable places to live and work. The project is run by RISE in collaboration with Boliden, Gällivare Municipality, and Medskapandebyrån, and is part of the national program Swedish Metals & Minerals – Impact Innovation.

The project is based in Gällivare – a place with a strong industrial presence and rich local engagement, but also with complex social challenges such as depopulation, lack of diversity, and a one-sided labor market. By combining place-based knowledge with design research, inclusive system innovation, and relational ethics, Gällivare Narratives is developing new methods and prototypes that strengthen people's sense of joy, optimism, and belief in the future.

The goal is to create concrete tools and working methods that can be used to support social development in Gällivare and other similar regions. The project focuses on understanding and further developing local initiatives, and identifying levers for change that can contribute to long-term social improvement.

Method and working methods

Gällivare Narratives works in three research loops where local actors gather around specific community development initiatives. By collecting stories from residents, industry, and civil society, a common understanding of the current situation is created. These stories are analyzed using norm-critical and ethical perspectives and form the basis for the development of prototypes—such as meeting places, services, visualizations, or events—that can give new expression to optimism and inclusion.

The project combines the concrete (e.g., physical initiatives and forms of collaboration) with the intangible (e.g., feelings of belonging and meaning), and is based on theories of change that emphasize the importance of creating new combinations of what has been and what is happening. By working in the space between the past and the future, new opportunities are created in the present.

A project with the potential to change

Gällivare Narratives is more than a research project—it is a movement to reinvent community building with people at the center. By listening, co-creating, and experimenting with new forms of collaboration, the project contributes to shaping the sustainable communities of the future—in Gällivare and beyond.