Knutpunkt 2010

Dear future KP2010 participants,

The Knutpunkt website is now online, with sign up open and with answers to all your questions. So sign up now, and we’ll see you in april,

www.knutpunkt.se

Best

/Anders and Anna

Happy new year to all you great larpers all over the world. We hope you have a great larp year, with lots of good games.

This year on Knutpunkt we will have participants from Moscow, Russia. They asked us to do a happy new year greeting for their party. We then asked our friends in the writer collective “Vi åker Jeep” (We go by jeep) and they made this movie.

But just not to our russian friends, but to the rest, happy new year. The swedish larp community are currently debating whether Tobias (the maker of the film) is the new Ingmar Bergman, or just plain crazy.)

Our russian friends did a film about larp in Russia for you to watch.

As for Knutpunkt 2010 we are currently working on the homepage with a plan to release it and open sign up within a few weeks. That is what occupies most of our time now.

Lots of love and a happy new year,

/Anna & Anders

Hi,

Today, two months after officially taking over Knutpunkt 2010, we spent a creative and fun afternoon having a meeting with lots of Swedes. Together we spoke about what they want Knutpunkt 2010 to be. Our concept for the meeting was simple: We have a place, we have money and we have a theme - Show not tell. But you need to fill it with program items.

So we where doing a lot of brainstorming of what people wanted to see on the program. Some of the ideas where for example lots of allready played free-form games, a workshop on how to prepare your players and do a good pre-game, a workshop on how to do a great short game on a convention and of course lots of different games. The day finished with everybody taking ideas for program items and promising to contact the right people to host them. So hopefully a lot of people all over Stocholm are curently working on getting new program items to Knutpunkt. And we hope that you are too. Sign up for participants and programme will open in the begining of january, so beware.

But generally it was such a nice meeting and so many nice people with great ideas so we thought we should do it again. This time in Gothenborg January the 6th. So if you are in Gothenborg at that time, come and join us and give your input to what Knutpunkt 2010 should be. More info will follow here (and on facebook of course) shortly.

Right now we are otherwise mostly working with the website for Knutpunkt 2010. It will be be somewhat of a social web for the conference. There will be functions for signing up (of course), submitting items to the program with possibilities to add media files and such. It will also handle inter participant discussions and other collaboration. We can not know how well recieved such a system will be with our participants but it will, like so much at Knutpunkt 2010, be an experiment we can learn from. The website will be ready for launch in early january and if you are a gifted python programmer or css-wizard with time to spare please let us know, we might need extra fingers in the last intense days of building.

Tomorrow we will head down to Katrineholm and Fiskeboda to do some reconnaissance in and around Fiskeboda. We will check all the interesting places where you can host your activities and we will get a feel for the rooms and cabins. This will give us better understanding of Fiskeboda and all its possibilities.

Best

/Anders and Anna

I am happy to tell you that Sverok (the Swedish national organization of games) supports Knutpunkt. We where granted funding today! Paired with the support we have been granted from Framtidens kultur we are now coming along nicely. The applications work we have done the last month is starting to pay off, literally.

We also called all Swedish larpers to a meeting to brainstorm about the programme for Knutpunkt, and get ideas of new exciting activities. So the 6th of December we meet up at the office of Sverok Stockholm at 1 o’clock PM. Everybody that are around and wants to participate are welcome.

You can also follow us on Twitter, check out: http://twitter.com/knutpunkt

Best,

Anna

Knutpunkt 2010 has a date, venue and money. April 22 — 25, at Fiskeboda, a 2 hour bus ride from Stockholm, the Knutpunkt conference is yet again going to rock your boat. Fiskeboda has all the essentials: large and small meeting rooms, beautiful nature, close proximity to a lake and a sauna. Mark this date down in your calendar now. Then continue reading.

We are looking to tap deeper into that pool of collective creative power that are the Knutpunktgoers. We want you to show us what you can do—not just by playing the games, but by running them. There is at least one programme point in each and everyone of us. And now, the time has come to host it. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to happen. Experiment. Dare. Create larp legend. Or at least take the first step.

Trend-sensitive as we are, we commit to the show-not-tell theme.  We are looking for more things and shorter things, things that engage through active participation. We are inviting everyone of you to participate by performing: it can be presenting the larp and role-playing culture of your isolated pacific atoll by sampling its more esoteric games, holding a zero-gravity larping workshop or just bringing a copy of that great free-form game you played at Fastaval last year and running it on Sunday morning with your new friends. Or why not that mini-larp you ran with your closest friends last weekend? Role-playing is a patch-work of wide-ranging activities, and Knutpunkt its microcosm.

Knutpunkt 2010 will see the simultaneous release of no less than two books—one coffee-tablesque, presenting 29 iconic larps to the rest of the world, and one more traditional volume disseminating the latest and greatest in theoretical results, insights and games from the role-playing year of 2009.

As soon as the programme website it up, we will start soliciting your programme contributions, so dust off those old ideas for your amazing game or come up with new ones. Keep this channel open and prepare to be boarded.

/Anders and Anna

Hi,

There has been concerns about the books being written to Knutpunkt 2010 and their connections with the conference.

Well, this is the story. When we started organising Knutpunkt 2010 one month ago we were already producing the book edited by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola and thus considered that book to be the Knutpunkt book for 2010. This book is what has been called the Nordic book that consists of 29 iconic larps from the nordic countries 1994-2009. A coffee table book with lots of pictures from these larps.

Then Anna attended the European Larp Conference in Denmark and spoke to people who lacked a more theoretic Knutpunkt book. Elge Larson, who was there as well, said he wanted to do a more traditional one. His concept is a book that will look into the future and then back again and thereby describing larp from another perspective.

We are confident that these books will compliment each other, and therefore we see no problems with two books being written. One with a focus on previous games and one focusing on larp theory.

Neither of these books are produced by the Knutpunkt organisation.

The coffee table books is being produced by the association Fëa Livia, and you can read more about it here: http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com/

The theoretic one is being produced by the association Interacting arts and you can read more about it here: http://bit.ly/2USpgy.

We wish both of these projects all the best and hope that they together with Knutpunkt 2010 and the Nordic Week will be something really great for the larpers participating.

Cheers,

/Anders & Anna

Hi,

Last week I sent in my first EU-application. Then we had on five days gathered cooperation partners from ten different countries. Sometimes when I write applications I can feel that I am twisting the truth a bite. This was really not one of those times, we are a truly European festival and a lot of exchanges that otherwise would not happened, happens because of Knutpunkt. Just the fact that I was able to gather ten cooperation partners in five days proofs that. Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed that we get the financial support as well.

Today I also meet with one of the editors of the Knutpunkt book; Jaakko Stenros. This year it will be a coffeetable book covering the 29 most ground-breaking larps in Nordic larp history with pictures and text. The emphasis will be on the pictures, since to understand what really happened at a larp this is one of the times that a picture says more than a thousand words. Anyhow, their work seams to be coming along just fine, and it is going to be great to see the result in April. Read more about the book here: http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com/

Best Anna

Hi,

This friday we got in the car and went to look at a venue for KP. The venue had some pros, but also some cons. We will keep looking and have got some more options to investigate.

More importantly we have now decided on a theme for Knutpunkt 2010. It will be Show, not tell. This means we especially want scenarios, workshops and other type of participatory entries in the program. So create something completely new or reuse something old, everyone hasn’t played things that are old too you.

That’s all for now,

Anna and Anders

Hi,

Yesterday evening we had a great meeting about Knutpunkt. The idea was basically to discuss what we wanted KP to be, and to brainstorm ideas about what it could be. To this we invited a bunch of Swedish larpers who all got the say on what they thought KP should be and what we shall do. There where lot’s of good ideas that surfaced. This means that so on in the nearest weeks, you can expect a vision about KP10.

We have also been doing some PR. I was in Denmark at the ELC  (European Larp Convention) last week-end and talked to people from nine different countries. This was great fun, and I experienced that people where excited for Knutpunkt. They all promised to come so it will be great to see them here in Sweden in April.

Another PR-thing is what we and the Swedish larp convention Prolog talked about doing a cooperation tougher, making 2010 the convention year of Sweden, and thereby exchanging participants. We discussed if we where going to compete with each other for participants, but agreed upon that hopefully one great Con will make you want go to another. More is more. This is of course good for us in order to get Swedish participants, who might not have visited Knutpunkt before, but still would benefit from coming. And KP would benefit from getting their experiences.

Our focus at the moment is finding a place and applying for money. About places we have now some alternatives that all have there pros and cons, that we are looking at. For money we sent in applications for Sverok and for Nordic Culture found. We are now working at some new ones, but good ideas about where to get money are always welcome.

Being the Knutpunkt organiser is an exciting journey. Being the KP organiser on short notice is even more exciting. So it has been three hectic weeks. But just as much as you long for a date of KP2010, I do too. Then it will be calmer and we can start working more with the actual program of KP. But for now we all need to hold our horses, because there are a lot of things that need to fall into place with budget, vision etc before we have our venue. But we are working on it.

Best,

Anna

The organising team behind the Swedish Knutpunkt has been restructured and so has the entire event. We have divided it into two projects. The Nordic Scene week in Stockholm hosted by Andie Nordgren and Johanna Koljonen, the week before Knutpunkt 2010, and the actual Knutpunkt 2010 conference hosted by us.

Being the organisers of KP for a week has given us a very busy week. We have begun the search for a great place to host the conference in, and yes, we are not aiming for a day conference so we are searching for beds for you all. We are aiming for the  end of April as earlier planned.

The hunt for financial support has come to a flying start and we have so far written two applications and have more coming. Hopefully we will get enough money before the end of the year to be able to set a reasonable prize for the event. If anyone has suggestions on where to apply, please let us know.

As for the website, which is still, www.knutpunkt.se, it will for now be a blog where we once in a while write about what we do. Eventually when we have a date and a place it will be updated to a more usual Knutpunkt website with more information, sign up features and more. But if anyone has questions, please write us an email.

Seven months to go. We have lots of ideas for this Knutpunkt, so beware.

Let’s go,

/Anders Hultman and Anna Westerling

I had a vision about a day-conference Knutpunkt, that would open up to the world and showcase the amazing things happening on the Nordic larp scene. Many people had valid concernes about what this would do to the community aspects of Knutpunkt, and I backtracked on this vision and began to organize a more traditional Knutpunkt, with the addition of a “Nordic Scene Week” in Stockholm the week before that would show larp to a wider audience of creative people.

With me having a fulltime job at a startup in London, and my co-organizer Staffan Jonsson likewise busy with a million things, we didn’t do a great job with the very neccessary practical parts of organizing the conference, and we didn’t have time to respond enough to people wanting to get involved. In late September, Anna Westerling and Anders Hultman offered to take over the organization of the main conference, and we graciously acccepted. We want a great Knutpunkt in Sweden 2010, and it was time to hand it over to some people who will make that happen.

I will do what I aimed for in my orginal vision by organizing the Nordic Scene Week with Johanna Koljonen, where we will showcase the larp scene to game designers, film makers, theatre folks, architechts, queers and other groups we think could be inspired by what we are doing. The Knutpunkt conference and the Nordic Scene Week are now separate projects, but we are applying for funds together, collaborating and working really hard to create the best Knutpunkt experience we can make for Sweden 2010.

/Andie Nordgren