Published 06 June 2017 • Inter IKEA newsroom

IKEA to explore food and music at Copenhagen's HAVEN Festival

Every year we make thousands of home visits around the world to better understand life at home. As the home extends beyond the four walls, IKEA will explore new ways of meeting people, starting with festivals and events. HAVEN Festival in Copenhagen 11-12 August 2017 will be the first.

People’s needs, dreams and thoughts around the home is the foundation of our product development. But the world is constantly changing. According to the IKEA Life at Home Report, today 42% feel more at home outside their actual residence. As living gets more crowded, people turn to other alternatives meaning that the home is extending outside the four walls. With these insights as a starting point IKEA is curious to learn more about the life at home outside the home.

“At IKEA we are doers and know how important it is to meet people if we want to make things better. We are curious about people’s life at home outside the home, but we are equally curious to learn more about what makes the perfect party. To do so we need to experience parties with people and a festival feels like the best place to learn,” says Dennis Balslev, Country Retail Manager for IKEA Denmark..

During the HAVEN festival in Copenhagen, IKEA will set up a lab, putting Democratic Design to the test for making food and music. We will do it together with other festival participants such as The National, Teenage Engineering and other artists like Bon Iver and Iggy Pop. We will invite festival visitors to join us and experience, touch, feel and try what IKEA is curious about right now when it comes to food, music and products. And what they think of it.

“We want to explore new ways of meeting and interacting with people, learning about their needs and dreams. With two of the core ingredients when throwing a party; food and music, we want to explore how IKEA can enable the many people to throw more spontaneous parties. And we think it’s perfect to do that at an event like HAVEN,” says Michael la Cour, Managing Director at IKEA Food.

HAVEN is a festival for the senses, merging music, arts, food and beer. It is intimate, personal and the city location means it is more of a street party than a traditional music festival. The festival is curated by Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner from The National, and Claus Meyer and Mikkel Borg Bjergsø from Mikkeller.