Festival!

There have been many festivals in Botkyrka. From Lolipop, which was organized at Lida Friluftsgård, to the annual family festival at Fittja äng. Subtopia also has a solid festival register. Some we have had the main responsibility for and others we have rented our area to. So after digging through our photo archives and talking to people who have been there, we present them in chronological order.

Subörb (2003 and 2005)

Tilde Björfors is the founder and artistic director of Cirkus Cirkör. Her best memory from all her years in Botkyrka Municipality is the Subörb festival:

– With Subörb, we wanted to put Sweden on the world’s new circus map. You could see the best and try it for yourself. We had concerts, street dance and a skate park, but the circus was the main attraction.

Subörb was organized by Cirkus Cirkör and Botkyrka Municipality twice. The Canadian circus company The 7 Fingers came to Sweden for the first time at Subörb and Laleh had one of their first gigs. Tilde says that the collaboration with Botkyrka was important:

– We were very pro-Botkyrka! We wanted everyone who came to get a different image of Botkyrka than the one in the newspaper at the time. And the entire municipal administration was involved. The street and park administration hung red barrels in the trees as landmarks.

But it was also a lot of hard work and the weather was not always on their side. Like when the rain poured down and everyone had to dig ditches to keep the technology from getting destroyed. But it was worth it and to this day Tilde is very proud of what they achieved.

Hoodsfred (2006)

Hoodsfred was a festival that toured the suburbs of Stockholm for a few years in the 2000s and was arranged by the magazine Gringo2. Hoodsfred came to Botkyrka in 2006 and there Gringo collaborated with the municipality and Subtopia. Carlos Rojas, one of the founders of Gringo, says: – The idea for the Hoodsfred festival was hatched by Brox Worku. The idea was to have a big party to celebrate what we called Million Sweden. We wanted to create the festival that we ourselves were missing. No one from the town went to Hultsfred so we created Hoodsfred. It was not so strange that the second edition of Hoodsfred ended up in Botkyrka: – I am from Botkyrka and had an office with the magazine Epigon in Subtopia when it was still called Kulturhuset Rotemannen. It felt both urgent and great fun to do the festival in Botkyrka. Hoodsfred 2006 presented a number of artists who were already famous and who later became so. Of course Dogge Doggelito was on stage and it was one of Veronica Maggio’s first gigs. The festival included b.boys, a graffiti competition, a funfair and spontaneous football. Although the latter was a bit loose when someone forgot to pump up the football… – We were so fresh! It was mostly chaos, a thousand things at once. I was there every day but saw nothing. But it wasn’t important who played, as long as there was value for Alby and Botkyrka. The best thing about the whole festival for me was the volunteers from the area. Everyone wanted to be there and everyone was super excited and happy!

Förfest (2007)

Förfest was a three-day festival at Fittja Äng that Subtopia arranged together with Botkyrka municipality, Fittja family festival and the production company Circus Arts which became part of Subtopia’s cluster after Förfest. Wille Christiani, founder of Circus Arts (now Burnt out Punks) says:

– We were often at Subtopia. Nalle Laanela lived in a bus in the area, Cirkus Cirkör was established and we were already looking for collaboration opportunities with Subtopia at that time. The idea was that we would connect Subtopia with Fittja and anchor the festival locally. It would be more family and a local party, rather than attracting people from the city. The content was just as mixed as it gets with family parties. Ethiopian dance and breakdance, our Burnt out Punks stage with rap and hard rock, a large circus tent with variety, open stage, circus school and a hangout with barbecue and lots of local food.

Danzion (2007)

For several years, the youth association Subfuzion was part of Subtopia. One of their major projects was the Danzion festival, which presented as many dance styles as possible in one day. There was a breakdance show and flamenco performance, trying out salsa and ballet, to name a few. Cesar Fulgencio, who is the director of Subtopia’s youth organization Do It Together and who coached the organizers throughout the project, says this today:

– The most important thing about Danzion for me was to really let the young people take control and lead the whole process from ear to loaf, they got so involved and really did so well. How proud they were afterwards is a nice memory!

Subtopiafestivalen (2010)

The Subtopia Festival celebrated the opening of Hangaren with a four-day festival. The program had a total of eighty program items that would reflect all the content of Subtopia with a special focus on circus. All organizations in Subtopia’s cluster were allowed to arrange something if they wanted, so the program consisted of everything from teaching seniors about the internet to knitting graffiti. Kiki Muukkonen, head of Subtopia’s circus department, talks about the solid program:

– There was a lot of circus, fantastic performances, both Swedish and international. The group of clowns reunited in a special performance for the opening. The then Minister of Culture Leif Pagrotsky was accompanied at the festival by the comedy duo Angela Wand and Rebecca Tiger’s wonderful clown characters.

The Subtopia Festival was truly a wonderfully generous festival, but also a lot of work and in retrospect we got over our heads:

– My best memory is when my friend Thorsten Andreassen took me for a walk so I could cry out all my feelings in the middle of it all! says Kiki.

This is Alby (2013 and 2014)

This is Alby started as the Fanzingo Festival in 2011 because many young people who Fanzingo worked with wanted a stage to perform on. Over the years, the music festival has had several different partners. Subtopia had the honor of being a co-organizer in 2013 and 2014. Luis Lineo who works at Fanzingo was involved from the very beginning:

– I remember the nice and relaxed atmosphere, especially in the years when the weather was on our side. Another memory was that we arranged a disco for the younger teenagers. That was pressure! Otherwise, the good experience of giving the young people the power to do something from scratch and completely on their own but with some support from us adults is something we should do in more places.

Some of those who performed when the festival was arranged in the Subtopia area are Slag från Hjärtat, Carlito, Labyrint, Adam Kanyama and Erik Lundin (under a pseudonym).

Trä, folk & verktyg (2018)

Slöjd Stockholm contacted Subtopia with a desire to organize a woodworking festival together. Andreas Sohlberg, woodworking consultant, talks about the collaboration:

– We wanted to create a meeting place for like-minded people and, with the help of the festival, create conditions for people to find others who like the same thing. We really liked the general feeling that existed at Subtopia. The best memory is how Cesar and Elin and the whole Subtopia gang were there to help us, as part of us.