We have had problems with our card readers, and therefore we recommend everyone to bring cash. Working on fixing the problem.

Airship pirate, adventurer, or a spy disguised as a fireman on a locomotive? If you have put some extra effort into your steampunk outfit you might show it off in our costume show. As a member of the Steampunkfestival you can also sign up for the costume competition, for a chance to win fabulous, steaming prizes!

The show will take place on Saturday June 28 as well as Sunday June 29. In direct connection with the Saturday costume show our competition will take place. The participants will wear a number, and show their outfit on stage and off stage. Visitors to the museum, who are not members of the festival, will also get the opportunity to vote and decide who will win in different categories of steampunk fashion.

If you would like to participate in the show or the competition — or both — please sign up by sending an email to varga@steampunkfestival.se.

The festival will be given some extra glamour through Varietésällskapet Karneval.

Not everyone has taught steampunk at college level. Nowadays I’m one of the few who can actually say that I have this experience.

I spent one week in Karlsham, at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, lecturing and leading discussion classes for a course in game design. The course has a different theme every year, and this year the theme was steampunk.

We had many interesting conversations during this week, and I learned a lot myself. There were especially two aspects of steampunk that I saw with new eyes after talking with the students.

One was multicultural or global steampunk: to start from another point than Victorian London as the foundation for your steampunk vision. This topic led to discussions about the way we tend to place ourselves at the centre of the world, but also about cultural appropriation and how to respectfully approach the cultural heritage of others.

The other was centered around technology and power. Some come to steampunk through a kind of longing for the visible and impressive technology, perhaps even technology that you can understand by looking at it. The whole maker-aspect — people who build and construct things — is centered around taking control of your own physical belongings and surroundings. There are ideals like having personal and durable tools and objects, as a contrast to the mass produced and impersonal. On another level this is about having a relationship to your own technology, and we also got talking about things like controlling your own computer and data.

Many of the questions and themes that we touched on during this week will be considered when we make the programme for the Steampunkfestival. This will be a fun weekend mixing the high and the low, the deep and the superficial, the challenging and the entertaining. It’s my hope that we will all discover new aspects of what steampunk is and what it can be.