Town Hall Advent Calendar

Event type
Public & Destination

Client
Bright Blue production

Sweden’s largest and most extraordinary Advent Calendar, attracting nationwide attention year after year.

Each day, as the clock tower bells chimed, a new artwork appeared in one of Örebro’s town hall windows. This daily reveal became a beloved tradition, attracting visitors, social media buzz, and national news coverage. Over the nine years we produced the event, the Town Hall Advent Calendar showcased the work of 216 artists.

“All I needed now was for someone to tell me I was mad. Luckily, most people did.”

Read the story

Running up to O, Holy Night in 2006, I had the idea of placing a choir-singer in each of the town hall’s 48 windows, since the building looks onto the same square that the concert is held on. The 48-person “window choir”’ would sing Silent Night, starting with one solo singer and growing gradually up to the whole choir, first in unison and then ending in an epic crescendo of harmonies.

A wonderful idea I thought, but it turned out that the logistics would be a nightmare. Or to put it in the words of the Technical Director, it would be a “logistical, technical, constructional and financial pain in the butt”.

So I was forced to scrap the idea. Or rather, put it in the box for later.

Around the kitchen table at home a few months later I saw my daughter opening the window on her advent calendar. Pictured was a beautifully illustrated house, with pieces of chocolate hidden behind each window. And then it hit me: I would turn the Town Hall into Sweden’s grandest Advent Calendar. But instead of chocolate behind each window there would be a work of art!

I instantly knew that this was an idea worth developing; adding to Örebros portfolio of major attractions during the Christmas season would benefit hotels, restaurants and retail, not to mention residents, artists, the region’s brand, and their offering to the market.

All I needed now was for someone to tell me I was mad, and I was good to go. Luckily, most people did.

I started developing and pitching the idea. I knew that I wanted to avoid the tiresome trap of offering artists a chance to “show off their work” for no pay. It was (and always will be) important for artists to be fairly paid and well credited.

So, as part of the financing solution, we created sponsor packages where companies and organizations sponsored a window. Each window’s original work of art was included in the package.

The Town Hall Advent Calendar premiered in December 2007. During the nine years we produced the event we highlighted 216 artists and their art, exhibited their works in the calendar and at a following museum exhibition, and sold their works to companies and organizations nationwide.

We also created an attraction that again helped to put Örebro in the spotlight. The event garnered visitors, social media posts and news coverage from across Sweden, generating an enormous amount of attention, not least when the painting of the day was unveiled in front of a live audience of 25,000 gathered for the yearly O, Holy Night show.

Richard Kennett

Footnote
Richard Kennett created and produced the Town Hall Advent Calendar from its premiere in 2007 until 2015. In 2016, the production was acquired by another company.

A theme to inspire young readers

Research showed a decline in children’s reading habits, so we partnered with Sweden’s top children’s book illustrators to create a themed calendar, featuring the call to action ‘A book under every Christmas tree.’ The theme was a huge success, so we repeated it the following year.