David Sparrow takes Via Dolorosa to Sweden

David Sparrow reports on his visit to Växjö in Sweden with the Via Dolorosa project …

During the first weekend in June 2010, I was privileged to show Art Beyond Belief’s Via Dolorosa project to the Swedish Church at their Världens fest, a festival of mission, and much, much more. I had no idea the Svenska Kyrkan was so involved in so much of the cares of the world. The event was held in the city of Växjö, in the south of Sweden.The highlight of the weekend was a meal for 1700+ people, and it was here that I sat with Bengt and Birgitta Sibbmark. I had to apologise for my lack of Swedish (coming, as I do from the UK), but this was taken in good part by B+B who spoke excellent English. I learned so much that evening, with gracious answers to every question (and I had many) but with good humour too, so there was never any thought that I had never met them before. Brilliant. All the food for that sumptuous feast came from the area of Växjö, and it was superb. I have visited Sweden before, but to Gothenburg or Stockholm (my first visit was to Gothenburg in 1969). Going inland was a new experience for me. I travelled by train from the airport at Copenhagen, so got to see a lot of the countryside which was a revelation to me. My presentation was of an interfaith look at the Christian Stations of the Cross, which involves artists of eight different faiths, who interpret (or relate to) fifteen different events on Christ’s journey from the Roman Governor’s residence to the place of execution outside the city walls of Jerusalem. This project is in multimedia form, and we have called it the Via Dolorosa, after that street in Jerusalem.The presentation was received well, and there was a lot of interest in using it to develop other initiatives locally, something I would be delighted to get involved in.On my last day, I visited the glass museum in Växjö, which had some fantastic examples of glass based art. But that’s another story …