Wellpapp Wonderland takes over the Garden Society

In August every year, Gothenburg hosts one of the largest cultural festivals in the Nordic countries, Kulturkalaset.
Over 1200 activities and around 1.5 million visitors over five days, the streets and squares of Gothenburg are transformed into a party place. Wellpapp Wonderland, one of many activities Rajapack was on site and co-sponsored. Over 1000 people participated in the creation when the Gothenburg Youth Council in cooperation with Fraktalfabriken invited to the event.

On 16 Aug 2017, Wellpapp Wonderland took place for the first time. It was a hot summer day and the Garden Society in Gothenburg was filled with people, both old and young, ready to start their creation with corrugated board as their only material. Tape, glue guns and endless building materials were on hand and fantastic ideas were created, ranging from towers to animals and costumes.

The competition was to try to be as creative as possible during the day and create something unique using corrugated board as a base material. The competition would end with a prize-giving ceremony for the most amazing creations of the day. The prizes were divided into different categories such as vehicle, costume and technical emoji.

At 12.00 the gates opened and the Wellpapp Wonderland was underway. Beautiful weather, joy, community and creativity characterised this day. After hours of creating, many had put together exciting works that would be rewarded later in the evening. An interactive exhibition ran throughout the day and everyone moving around the area stopped to watch.

Olle Bjerkås from Fraktalfabriken, co-organiser of the Wellpapp Wonderland activity, answered a few questions about the event:

How did How did you come up with the idea and why did you use corrugated board?

I was asked to do a construction project during the Culture Fair and I have seen similar activities online. Why we chose corrugated board is because it is a great material. It’s easy to use, cheap and the material is recyclable.

How many people took part and what was the age breakdown?

About 1200 people participated, both old and young. A lot of families and groups of friends, but mainly children. There were always people around stopping to watch.

Can you give some examples of what was built?

All sorts of things, there were lots of costumes and dresses being built during the day. Also a lot of houses started to be built later in the day and as time went on many people followed. There was one dress in particular that stood out very much.

Was your material enough?

We initially had 4-5 pallets with us but around 5pm our materials started to run out.
Then we had volunteers who picked up new material from leftover creations. If we are going to do this activity again, we need much more material.
The evening ended with an award ceremony and the winning entries included most believable, best invention and most spooky. Many exciting creations had been built which were then recycled, as much as 40 cubic metres. The activity was a great success and Olle is very pleased with how the day went. He also says that they will try to put together something similar around Sweden as Wellpapp Wonderland was a hit with both young and old.

Participants: youth council, Fraktalfabriken, Strawbees, Quirkbot, Olle Bjerkås & Karl Johan Sellberg.