The Maker Island: The perfect creative place?

If you want to get away from it all, there are few better places than the middle of the Baltic sea. Bornholm, a tiny Danish island closer to Sweden, Germany or Poland than it is to Denmark, is the perfect rural tourism getaway.

But the pressure for rural and remote areas  to reinvent themselves as new centres of creativity and knowledge development is also palpable in Bornholm.  As the Visit Bornholm website underlines “you can hardly move on Bornholm without meeting an artist or craftsperson.” In common with many other Nordic areas, artists are attracted by the “special light and the unique nature” found on the island.

There are ceramic artists, textile artists, woodturners, knife makers and metal crafters, including those working with silver and gold. This offers not only opportunities to buy craft objects, but also many creative tourism opportunities, including a course in braiding willow, where you can make your own baskets and trays.

Even with this rich range of crafts resources, Bornholm might have gone unnoticed if it

hadn’t attained the accolade of World Craft Region in 2017. It was the first region to get the title in Europe, and also the first island to do so. The title didn’t just fall into their laps – it was a long trajectory, which started in 2002. There was a lot of work involved in bringing the many stakeholders together, and agreeing on a strategy.

The island adopted a ‘flagship approach’, in which key enterprises and projects were highlighted to encourage others. Alongside crafts, gastronomy and other small enterprises were put in the spotlight. The logic was that by building up key players the capacity to run projects and attract attention to the island would increase.

This was linked to a change in the role of the destination marketing organisation Destination Bornholm. They used to concentrate on providing information to visitors,  charging attraction and accommodation providers to distribute leaflets, but this changed after external recognition arrived. Now there is a broader ‘placemaking’ approach to destination market, which includes engaging with residents and  attracting people to live on the island, strengthening not only the economy, but the social and cultural fabric as well.

The World Craft Region designation was transformed from a brand into a value chain.  Alongside the increased attention for craft retailing, courses were organised to engage visitors and generate more income from experiences. The income of craft producers also increased dramatically. 

The crafts centre has an apparently unlikely role in the Hephæstus  EU Horizon project, which is exploring how craftsmanship, technology, and sustainability can be integrated to strengthen Europe’s creative industries through the innovative use of robots.

The crafts centre offers courses for makers and consumers, and has generated a considerable amount of media attention. They also generate €80,000 in annual income for craftspeople.

The uniqueness of Bornholm lies in its harmony between tradition and modern design. You can visit galleries filled with original creations, watch artisans at work, and even take part in workshops to try your hand at creating applied art. This is a place where every object has its own story, and every artist shares an inspiring tale.

The emphasis on crafts also links to a strong gastronomic tradition, also based on local ingredients. The Bornholm House of Local Food Culture is “Denmark's first regional Food Culture House” where:

“you can learn more about Bornholm's cuisine. The building also serves as a gathering place for Bornholm's food producers. You will “get to work” and prepare food under the expert guidance of the House of Local Food Culture’s experts and historians during various food courses.”

This also represents an example of a more creative approach to tourism, where locals and tourists are engaged in a process of co-creation. As Trine Richter, CEO of Bornholm Hotels, argued on the first day of the Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research, people used to come for the nature, but now they also come for knowledge. That knowledge is for example embodied in the conference hotel the Green Solutions House, which is designed to be totally recyclable – every part of the hotel can be  disassembled, recycled or biodegraded, and the swimming pool has been turned into a thermal energy storage system to heat the hotel. The knowledge generation function of Bornholm was also reflected in the organisation of a PhD workshop on Tourism Impacts: Transformative Powers and Potential as part of the Nordic Symposium. This brought together students from all over the Nordic region to discuss the latest developments in tourism knowledge. This included a range of engaging presentations from students drawn from all the Nordic countries, covering subjects such as knowledge management, photography, Chinese tourists in Iceland, Reindeer herding in Norway, food tourism and destination branding for places ‘in the middle of nowhere’.

Bornholm arguably represents a textbook example of how the rural world has been curated into a series of attractive experiences for consumers from cities. This was the basis of the presentation made by Greg Richards at the opening of the Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research. He argued that the rapid expansion of experiences had created more ‘choice stress’ for consumers, who now need to be guided towards the right kind of experience for them. The proliferation of articles highlighting the ‘55 best villages to visit’ or ‘Best farm stays’ or the ‘40 most beautiful hidden villages in the Netherlands’ is a clear sign that tourism is also becoming a field in which curation is challenging marketing as a means of communicating with (potential) tourists. Bornholm, as the Maker Island, is curating itself as the ultimate rural/remote destination, where the usual rural attractions are enhanced by knowledge and creativity.