In the Bruksort 2.0 initiative, Hagfors Municipality, local businesses, and residents collaborated to strengthen attractiveness, mobility, and innovation. The work was based on co‑creation, where residents’ shared stories about the future were used to formulate future visions. The final report is now complete.
The project resulted in the Hagfors Model—a model that captures the power of place and shows how stories, trust, and creativity can become drivers of sustainable development. Through co‑created poems, sculptures, and narratives about the future, residents themselves have given shape and expression to what future transitions may mean in an industrial town.
Jenny Karlsson and Linda Ryan Bengtsson at Karlstad University – can you give examples of what the project led to?
– In Hagfors, residents, industry, the municipality, and civil society have co‑created future visions that carry both heart and action regarding how mobility, work, culture, and everyday life can be shaped together. By working with future visions, it became clear that the future is not something that ‘comes’ to us, but something that can be created through shared decisions, priorities, and practices, says Jenny Karlsson, researcher at Service Research Center (CTF) and lecturer in Business Administration at the Business School.
– One of the most prominent future visions was the need for physical meeting places that support local engagement, collaboration, creativity, and interaction across generations – beyond digital forums, says Linda Ryan Bengtsson, Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Karlstad University.
Bruksort 2.0 has become the first chapter in a larger story about how the soul, creativity, and strength of industrial towns can form a model for sustainable development – where collaboration, culture, and innovation create a vibrant ecosystem for the future.
– The process highlighted a strong awareness of what it means to live in the periphery and how prevailing ideas about rural areas shape people’s self‑image, says Linda Ryan Bengtsson.
– It also revealed a clear desire for change and initiated important conversations about the future and the shared responsibility needed to create it – not least the potential of industrial towns to play a key role in the transition, says Jenny Karlsson.
