Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 62

60 ICELAND REVIEW
it took us more than a year to convince
them we weren’t crazy! The council
saw the old fish processing plant and
didn’t believe that we could possibly be
planning a creative center here,” laughs
31-year-old rósa valtingojer, a textile and
ceramics designer and one of the founders
of the project. “They were thinking about
demolishing the building; they didn’t see
any future for it.”
once the heart of the thriving fishing
industry, the factory was closed in 2005
when seafood company Samherji moved
its operations to dalvík, north iceland,
resulting in 32 people out of the 200-strong
community losing their jobs. The closure
of the village’s store, post office and bank
followed shortly after, prompting many to
leave. determined to do what they could to
help save the village, rósa and her husband
Zdenek paták, a graphic designer originally
from the czech republic—the pair also
run Mupimup!, a design studio focused on
post-consumerism and recycling industrial
waste—along with 13 others in the orga-
nization Sköpunarmiðstöð svf., bought the
abandoned factory for around iSk 100,000
(uSd 980, eur 700) in 2010. They then
set out to develop a platform for creative
industries and a sustainable and alternative
living environment. The project—known
as the Here creative center—aims to
create work for young people, thereby
encouraging an influx of new people and
ideas into the village.
if all goes to plan, the factory will even-
tually house workshops, studio spaces, a
venue for concerts, exhibitions and theater
performances, a café, museum and market,
as well as provide support for the local fish-
ing industry.
At 2,800 square meters (30,140ft2) in size
and the factory having been out of use for
several years, there were months of clean-
ing ahead. “it was full of rubbish. There was
no water or electricity,” rósa describes. And
it wasn’t just the local municipality which
needed convincing. oddur J. Guðjónsson,
who worked in the factory for 46 years,
remembers the state of the building when
they began work on the project. “There
was no way i was going in there without
my boots,” he says, laughing. “There was so
much oil, sand and dirt—several centime-
ters thick,” he explains.
over time, though, the team’s vision has
been gaining more and more traction in the
community. “overall the community has
been very supportive of the project—and
many people have been helping us out by
cleaning, painting, or cooking for the vol-
unteers—but it took some time for people
to see how the project would actually be
realized,” rósa says. “of course there was
skepticism. it was difficult for people to
believe that we could turn this place into
something but slowly more and more peo-
ple are on our side and are coming to take
a look,” Zdenek adds. oddur has warmed
to the project too. “now they’ve cleaned it
all up, taken everything away. it’s good that
they’re doing something new with it.”
And support from the community is key,
Zdenek emphasizes. “We really need to
stick together. We want to work with the
community and for them to be able to use
this space too,” he says. Here also collabo-
rates with the MAke by Þorpið project, an
communitY
the fish factory-turned-creative center.
“