hOLAnDA-2005 Latin American Design: a report of all activities

hOLAnDA-2005: Day to day report of all activities

What actually happened during hOLAnDA 2005

Building up

Building up was a lot of work. LADF had volunteers from our families (who were pushed), friends, Dutch, Mexicans, Argentineans, Greek, Italians and Germans. All of them put their time in supporting the promotion of Latin American Design. Many people drove cars, built mamparas, carried boxes, implemented lamps, painted walls, made lunch, watched our kids, prepared the show, the music, the food and some just carried the beers. It was a lot of weeks without sleep, without good food and all organizers were about to kill each other because they were so tired...but then, it suddenly seemed ready!

The opening

The opening was great! Jose Jeroen Nas from the board of LADF had the honor to kick off to tell something about LADF. Gabriela Bustamante, chairwoman of LADF, told something about H2005, talking about all contributions from designers and volunteers who made this possible. The Mexican Ambassador in the Netherlands, Sra. Sandra Fuentes, made an impressive speech about what this Latin American Design could mean for Europe and the world. At the opening were a lot of visitors, so the church was full, and the Corona’s, Sol’s and botana’s offered by the Mexican Embassy were going around very well. Mexican Newspaper "Reforma" called in for an interview, as was a Dutch television channel later in the weekend. Beautiful Barbara Ceron got everybody quiet with her singing along a harp, later followed by some more energetic duets with her partner.

There was Argentinean and Chilean wine, and visitors were enthusiastic about all products exhibited, partly because the selection had been quite strict to ensure only high qualitative, and highly distinctive design with a story. During the opening ceremony, the Latin American Design Awards were handed out.

The visitors

During the four days, H2005 was very well visited. Around 4,000 people came to watch, around 14,500 people visited the website, and with all publicity, around 265,000 read something about Latin American Design because of this exhibition. All this, just in Holland alone. Internationally, it was even a lot higher, because H2005 is listed in many Latin American websites and blogs, listed in many European sites and in the famous coolhunting.com, which also created a lot of visitors. Read more facts here.

The dinner

The absolute highpoint of the exhibition was the Latin American Design Dinner. After a short introduction speech, an opera singer filled the church in a magical way with sound. Some people mentioned they had cold shiver on their back of beauty. During this moment of magic, the fashion show started, while people enjoyed their Mexican food provided by Mexican Restaurant Los Pilones. After some beautiful models showing clothing and jewelry, it was also time for the ladies to gasp at the male model, who impressed all females and other interested with his muscles. During this, two Mexican musicians (Jose Luis and Rafael) made pre-hispanic music, with many sounds of nature, on great instruments. After three rounds of modelling, more food and mojito’s, DJ Pepe took over the space, filling it with some more sound effects and great music. Café was delivered by Café de Origen, creating the attention that was necessary for the Tango demonstration and lessons from Claudia and Jorge (Tango school Si o Si). All your products were showed with as much of cultural context as could be created, and this really worked! A story makes a product alive, and the fun and passion around it makes it part of an experience that people associate with the products, just the way it should happen.

Kids

Kids like the products, but they also liked the pinata party with candy and toys very much. The parents that came with the kids could look around and admire. That was the whole thing. We feel sophisticated about this.

Designers sales

This was the first LADF exhibition in which we tried to enable designers to sell products. For many of them, this is of course an ultimate goal, and only by trying this, we can find out if it works in the european market. Latin American Design products cannot be offered easy because of their high price (mainly because of transport costs) and relatively low profile, which does not (yet) provide an extra premium to justify their price. Yet, building up that profile has to start somewhere, and H2005 seemed a very good place to position the products in a high quality environment, making sure they could be sold for a fair trade price, which enables enough margin and turnover for designers to function. This did not generate profit in this exhibition, but when it will, this profit will be partly spent in LADF, to promote design and design projects.

Therefore, LADF decided to support the launch of a fair trade Design Label for the European market, which functions as an umbrella of Latin American Design: Metro Sur. Metro Sur must become a brand that indicates a high quality design selection from Latin America, which offers the audience a taste of all these wonderful things integrated and together, and not just a plain product. Our first impression is that this works well. We will have to do a lot of work to make this happen, and will do this together with the Latin American Designers that want to be involved in setting up this project together. First, we will try to build up an audience that will come back more often. Most difficult so far are the prices. Because of transport and small quantities, these are high, and the European audience is very price sensitive. Besides that, competition from Asia and Eastern Europe is strong. Next steps are meetings with designers, logistics experts and all embassies from Latin American countries, to see if we can design smart solutions for that. For now, the tourists did the best buys. Christmas preparation.

Breaking down

Breaking down the exhibition, as always, was harder than expected. As usual, many volunteers focused on building up, so at a certain point we were only with three people breaking down, which caused some panick. Some visitors were seduced into becoming volunteers…and families and friends were pushed again to come and help, resulting in a small hard working group, trying to meet deadlines on monday, december 5, the day of the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas.

Besides paint on a church floor, heavy Brazilian couches on our backs, homeless attacking the free coffee and activists starting 70's like discussions on Latin American Dictatorships, heavy rain, 45 bags of garbage, missing tools, 200 left dirty coffee cups, breaking mirrors, missing curtains, falling curtains and dirty curtains, nothing went really wrong that day. The last activities were finished around 2 in the morning. In the weeks after H2005, products were send back, bills were paid, designers were contacted for orders, press was approached for publications and these pages were made. hOLAnDA 2007, we're ready! Come back in two years!