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.

The project explores how households can become more flexible in their electricity use by gaining access to information about electricity prices and power tariffs in advance, giving them the opportunity to plan their electricity consumption several days ahead. Using AI models and design methodology, prototypes are developed to show how electricity price forecasts and tariff information can be combined and presented in a way that is easy to understand and use in everyday life.

Through user studies, co-design workshops, and household testing, the project creates guidelines for energy companies and service developers who want to help their customers respond to price signals. The project contributes new knowledge about how household decisions are influenced by electricity price data, and how digital solutions can support sustainable choices and more efficient use of the electricity grid.

The results will benefit energy companies, advisors, and authorities, but also households themselves. By making open forecasts, tariff information, and design guidelines available, the project can contribute to the development of new services that make it easier for households to understand their electricity costs, plan their electricity use, and make active decisions about electricity contracts. In this way, the project strengthens the role of households in the energy transition and creates the conditions for a more flexible and sustainable electricity system.

The project is funded by the research and innovation program “Design for Energy-Efficient Everyday Life,” which is run by the Swedish Energy Agency and coordinated by SVID, the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation.

Climate change, resource scarcity, and increased demands for sustainability and efficiency drive transformation in the construction industry, where new methods and technologies are becoming crucial. Small and medium-sized architectural firms contribute with diversity and innovation capacity but often lack the resources to keep pace with rapid digitalisation. A lack of effective methods for collaboration and exchange on digital development limits the potential of new technologies, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. At the same time, evolving business models and industry structures do not always support innovation or long-term value creation.

Design technologies refer to tools and platforms deeply integrated into the design and planning process, enabling architects to develop new working methods in their daily practice, including BIM, computational design, and a wide range of AI-supported applications.

We seek to enhance architectural firms' digital development capability by streamlining workflows, exploring new business models, and improving conditions for digital innovation. The collaborative nature of the project will also foster synergies among partners during the project period to establish a long-term and growing network, which will strengthen the competitiveness of architectural firms and their ability to contribute to a more sustainable built environment with a reduced climate impact in the construction sector.

Throughout the project, we will conduct methodological development, interdisciplinary collaboration, and pilot studies with direct applications in the participating firms' ongoing work in, among other things, the reuse of materials, material optimisation, and generative design processes. Outcomes will include reusable digital workflows, a strategic framework for digital development, and examples of business models that promote innovation and sustainability in strengthened architectural practice. Knowledge exchange and dissemination will be done through seminars, scientific publications, and educational materials to enable the broad implementation of the project's goals.

RISE lead the project with the KTH School of Architecture. It involves 13 architectural firms, two engineering consultants, and three digital development companies.

The Polemocene, Greek for "The Era of War," is a project that, based on contemporary research, experiences, and reflections, explores a hypothetical future where the human-forest relationship is not only unsustainable, but the forest itself has declared war on humanity. Through an interactive future prototype, a visualization that resembles a reverse archaeological excavation not of the past but of the future, we aim to provoke reflection, dialogue, and action regarding sustainable business models, governance tools, and approaches in the forest value chain. The goal is to inspire both within and outside the forest value chain towards long-term and preventive actions in response to future and contemporary ecological and social challenges concerning humans and the forest.

Today's model of expansion, increased yield, and technological innovation to balance industrial, ecological, and cultural goals entails contradictions, conflicts, and risks. The forest is assumed to be a passive object and underestimated as an active and unpredictable force that reacts beyond human control. Everything from invasive species to zoonotic diseases and geological changes demonstrates the forest's response to human actions.

By pushing the question to its extreme, we create conditions to collectively develop new solutions. We do this in four steps: environment and signal scanning, development of future scenarios and prototype concepts, production of an interactive experience, and exhibition and dialogue. Through interdisciplinary collaboration between design, research, and stakeholders within, around, and outside the forestry sector, we design a speculative future prototype that challenges and inspires sustainable transformation.

The project is expected to lead to new strategies, business models, and governance tools for a sustainable forest value chain. Through dialogue and reflection on the future scenario and its relevance to our present, the project contributes to systemic change through cross-sector collaboration and strengthened innovation capacity in the transition towards a sustainable bioeconomy, in line with and beyond sustainability goals.

Result

Through a foresight process together with the project's reference group, with a signal scanning phase and a scenario development phase, four future narratives were developed, serving as a foundation for discussions in the project and for the project's resulting future prototype, the exhibition at the Röhsska Museum. The exhibition was designed to encourage visitors to take on the role of a speculative future international body, the Expert Committee on Polemocene Affairs, abbreviated to ECPA, and in that role, to view and reflect on a number of objects collected from an area where humans and the forest have entered into open conflict. In addition to all the speculative artifacts designed for the future prototype, both internally at RISE and by external creators, an artistic zine was also produced, interpreting the project's underlying scenario and the four future narratives created in the previous foresight process.

Participants from RISE included Marina Matteoni, László Sall Vesselényi, Patrik Eriksson, Stephanie Kawan and Martin Johansson.

The project was exhibited with two other projects for the same Vinnova call at Röhsska museet in Gothenburg June 10-12 2025: https://rohsska.se/utstallningar/designhistorier/super-o/manniska-material-och-skog

The exhibition was well attended and led to many different, both organized and spontaneous, discussions and many documented reflections.

Some of the materials from the project and the exhibition can be found on the Swedish version of this page.

Refrigerated cargo units (reefers) are an integral part of sea-borne transport, but at the same time, reefer electrical faults are also a common cause of fires. Fires on ro-ro ships pose significant dangers and extinguishing them may often be difficult. Consequently, monitoring ship connected reefers could be an effective approach to fire prevention. MoRe will develop a solution for reefer monitoring, including both hardware and a proposed human-machine interface for the engine control room. This work is a continuation of studies performed in the LASH FIRE project. The finished solution will be installed and evaluated for performance on the Stena Scandinavica. The project group brings together a mix of expertise in engineering, human-centered design and ship/cargo operations, catering for end-results with a high level of practical applicability. These results will be communicated in ways that maximize the chances for industry uptake.

Whatever age we are now, all of us are getting older. In the future, the proportion of older people will increase. Unless the system is fundamentally changed, society’s costs for elderly care will increase drastically.  

The project outcome, the speculative dining prototype worked as a pop-up display. It was designed as a 4-course dinner at a large table. The experiences at the table took participants on a journey where they got to create a relationship with their future older self. 

The purpose of the project was to help envision a future where no elderly person is undernourished and wherethe whole meal experience is a satisfying and positive experience. The work of “We are all Old” is relevant to PUSH:s mission of a food system that is promoting healthy lives for all. 

See video: https://vimeo.com/1068590785?share=copy

See publication: https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/nordes/nordes2025/researchpapers/8/