International Festival

This spring one of my Sociology classes participated in the annual Millbrook International Festival. The festival is organized by a group of teachers and focuses on a different theme each year. Classes and clubs can sign up to participate by running booths. The festival ran during two periods on April 7th.

This year's theme was Sustainability. We could take that in many directions--economics, politics, environment, culture. The class settled on this focus question: "How will Sweden sustain its traditional culture in the face of globalization and immigration?"

We started our study of Sweden by watching a few videos about Swedish culture and reading a few chapters out of Michael Booth's The Almost Nearly Perfect People. The students split up the chapters and shared out what they learned. We were able to use these resources to build our understanding of the forces currently influencing Swedish culture. Students worked in groups to brainstorm ideas on how to represent traditional Sweden and how to address challenges. I worked with each group to develop a plan of action, and finally the students created their respective parts of the booth.

One of the 4 Squares created during our book study

What students shared out about the chapters they read

I was really impressed by the students' ideas and the products that they created. Here are the examples of culture that they used to represent the traditions of Sweden:

• Fika -- We learned that having coffee is a popular and easy social occasion in Sweden. So, we invited students to "fika" with us. The students brewed coffee, offered cinnamon bread (as a replacement for kanelbullar, or cinnamon buns), and created a menu of discussion topics.

• Pippi Langstrump (Longstocking) -- Students shared this popular Swedish children's character by displaying one of the chapter books, creating an absolutely amazing drawing of Pippi, and showing videos of the old television series.

• Swedish phrases -- One group selected a few Swedish words and asked students to match them to their English translations. They made bead bracelets with the Swedish words on then handed them out to visitors to our booth.

• Swedish meatballs -- Another group really wanted to serve Swedish meatballs. While I admittedly hated the idea of what an undertaking this would be, the students were adamant. And to their credit, they figured out all the details. All it took from me was a trip to BJ's for frozen meatballs and an order from Amazon to get the sauce and some lingonberry jam.

• Hela Havet Stormar -- To provide something more active, students also put together a game of musical chairs (or "the whole sea is storming" in Swedish). And, of course, the music was entirely ABBA songs.

To address the issue of cultural sustainability, we looked at the ways that the culture of Sweden is facing challenges. The students relied heavily on the lessons learned from Michael Booth's book for this part. With the increasing immigration and resulting multiculturalism, what it means to be Swedish is changing. Plus, global products and mass media are increasing international influence in the small Nordic nation.

Chart of immigration growth since 1950

Students selected quotes from Booth's book to represent reactions to immigration

Visitors to the booth were quizzed on who they think is Swedish. The catch? They're all Swedish. Another representation of Sweden's changing population.

My students enjoyed studying Sweden as a case study of culture, and I was appreciative of their enthusiasm and hard work. With hundreds of students interacting with our booth, I was really happy with the opportunity to represent culture and global issues to the Millbrook community.