Håkki™ is an art project that merges with business. Its main focus is the survival of a community identity in a small town of Ljungaverk in northern Sweden that has suffered some negative consequences of an increasingly globalized world. The majority of the people living there emigrated following the closing of the local factory plant in the late 1990s. Håkki™ is an interesting piece of social design that utilizes a traditional business approach, but because of its insisting on preserving a local focus also serves as an original artistic and social reinvention of community identity.

In practise the project consist of two shop outlets in cities in Norway that sell t-shirts with motifs that attempt to express the identity of the small town. The garments are produced and designed in cooperation between the residents of Ljungaverk and the projects initiators Bjørn-Kowalski Hansen and Mats Mourier Stenslet. The motifs on the shirts illustrate features of the particular community and show it to the world. Reversely the profits of the outlets are reinvested into Ljungaverk and have so far bought ping pong tables for the local youth club, uniforms for the local girl football team, helped finance the local sauna and made sure that the town’s residents receive free hair cuts every year.

An interesting feature of the project is its use of identity as an instrument to create change. The initiative consistently keeps identity at the centre of the stage, and thus appears as a discussion of local identity versus globalism. In this way the social, as well as the practical and economic, issues are elegantly addressed. Håkki™ aims to raise a new sense of self-esteem and a strengthened belief in the future of the town for its residents. And the project has indeed succeeded in facilitating a new development that strengthens both the internal identity of the small community and its place in the awareness of the surrounding world.