You have to hand it to her
Björköby residency — Blog #3
Putting strangers together in an unfamiliar location gives rise to connections and behavioral patterns that would not manifest so easily in more familiar surroundings. Every social scientist setting up a scientific experiment on human behaviour knows this. Taking people out of their comfort zone contexts, will make for unusual experiences.
Surely, the SmåBUS international children’s book festival is no scientific experiment, but it is remarkable to witness how swiftly genuine connections are formed between the writers and illustrators present — of themselves not really the most social creatures on the planet to begin with, and all from different cultures and speaking different languages. Pidgin English is the lingua franca of this three-day book event, but in the hallways a lot of Swedish and several varieties and accents of Dutch can be heard, too.
The workshops and lectures are as diverse as the participants to the festival, but they all have one thing in common: the focus is on books for children and young adults, a segment of the literary profession that has been rowing against the tide of prejudice from all those concerned with ‘serious’ literature for a very long time, a genre that at times even seems eligible for the lable ‘threatened with extinction’. But the colourful bunch of attendees don’t let the often unfavorable conditions of their every day existence get them down. The love for children’s books and young adult literature is radiating from the very walls.
And in between the busy festival program happens what many consider to be the real work. Portfolio’s are looked at, contacts are established, new friends are made. There are oeuvres to be discovered, but more often, people. Someone can pull the smug old carpet from under your feet with a well-placed remark, and there are surprising moments of connection and mutual trust.
The summer camp feeling lingers, and I am not the only one to joke about it. Peak moment is the second morning. We are expected at breakfast at seven a.m. (artists! up at 7!!), in order to get on the bus at 8 o’ clock sharp (did I mention that the SmåBUS-festival sometimes also hinted at being a detention camp?), with Joke roll calling all the participants in alphabetical order, before they are allowed to board the bus — in that order. Just making sure she’s got all her fledgelings under her wings, that is. It’s heart-warmingly hilarious.
Destination of the bus trip: Astrid Lindgren’s Näs, the museum grounds and gardens that have been built around the birth home of the most famous Swedish author ever. You could call it a pilgrimage for children’s book makers. Few writers have influenced our image of children and the stories they can read so deeply as this tough old Swedish lady.
We attend the festive opening of the exhibition focusing on Lindgren’s book The Children of Noisy Village, with work of all the illustrators present. We attend a lecture, make a stop at the lovely but oh so dangerous gift shop, visited at one’s own financial peril, and wander through the truly splendid gardens.
In small groups, we get a guided tour through the author’s birth home, permanently open to the public but still inhabited by her family, too, where Lindgren has tried with loving but painstaking precision to make her idyllic childhood live on in every piece of furniture and every single decorative object.
Before we are allowed back on the bus home we are counted not once but twice, and once we’re safely on board there is yet another roll call. Joke is ruthlessly consistent. You have to hand it to her.
But what one also has to hand to her, Joke Guns, is her skill for bringing people together. This kind of organisational talent is a rare gift. She goes about it as only she knows how, in the most natural way, warm and welcoming, and so genuinely enthousiastic that people are willing to make a day-long journey to participate in something she has spent the last two years bringing into existence through bucketloads of love, blood, sweat and tears. She knows her writers and illustrators, she is sensitive to their characters, knows what people need or what they can’t take at a particular moment, she works triple shifts on short nights of way too little sleep. The symbolic gift she is offered during the final dinner by all the writers, and that is presented to her in one of the linnen SmåBUS bags, decorated by all of the illustrators, is no less than she deserves.
Everyone who was present, hopes that this festival is going to know a follow-up in two years. And in the mean time, several pairs of writers and illustrators have voiced the intention of applying for a joint international residency here next year.
It is proven yet again: the best seeds are sown in unexpected soil.
