Sugar Walks

Sugar Walks builds on the artistic research project The Sugar Games: New Perspectives on Gothenburg’s Colonial History Through the Handling of Sugar (Lagerström, Swedish Research Council 2023–2025). Taking as its starting point a diary from 1836, the Sugar Games maps six locations in Gothenburg where raw sugar from slave plantations in the Caribbean and Brazil was refined and handled, contributing to networks, wealth and social structures that continue to shape Gothenburg today. Gothenburg’s extensive urban transformation makes colonial structures increasingly visible and reinforces them in an already segregated city.

Drawing on maps, diaries, archival material and stories from the research project, different perspectives are explored at Brunnsparken, Liseberg, Lilla Änggården, Postgatan, Majnabbe and the Klippan area, including the old sugar refinery and its surroundings.

The purpose of Sugar Walks is to present and further develop the research project’s mappings, stories and findings through a series of public walks aimed at a broad public and school groups. The goal is to evaluate and communicate the research findings in a critically engaging and innovative way. The walks function as a method for both examining and communicating research findings by locating new historical knowledge directly in the urban landscape.

Literally walking through Gothenburg’s colonial traces develops the practice of guided city walks while offering a new approach to research communication (see the article about the project, New Approaches to Research Communication, Curie 2026). The method raises questions and encourages discussions about how the city’s colonial past affects the present and future transformations. Through a series of “walkshops”, the research findings and the city’s complex geography have been explored in greater depth at specific locations, in collaboration with around 20 artists, researchers, master’s students and upper-secondary school pupils.

The value lies in locating both new historical knowledge and contemporary issues in the urban landscape, at sites where events connected to sugar and colonial structures can be traced.

We simply enter the city as an open, living and constantly changing archive, where our movements trace side paths, detours and diversions through different layers of time. With one foot in the past and one in the future, a complex geography emerges, comprising colonial traces, suppressed histories, everyday experiences in the present and conflicting visions of the future. Power relations “set in stone” are made visible, allowing them to be challenged and reinterpreted.

Follow-up and results

Together with the Jonsered Seminars¹ at the University of Gothenburg, a Sugar Walk was held in which ideas developed through collaborations and “walkshops” were tested and discussed with a wider group.

Educators at the Museum of Gothenburg, who have participated in the working process, have developed their own Sugar Walks as part of their regular activities. The walks are aimed at the general public and school groups.

The results of the Sugar Games and Sugar Walks are presented in a public exhibition at 3:e Våningen in the Klippan former sugar refinery in October–November 2026, accompanied by Sugar Walks during Kulturnatta, Gothenburg’s annual Culture Night.
More information about the exhibition and walks is available on the 3:e Våningen website.

In a concluding anthology of art and research, to which participating researchers and artists are invited to contribute, the Sugar Games and Sugar Walks are presented through maps, images and texts analysing the potential significance of the research for Gothenburg’s future.

The development of Sugar Walks has been carried out in close collaboration between Cecilia Lagerström, research leader of the Sugar Games and Professor of Performance Practices, and artist and researcher Monica Sand, both at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg.

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¹ The Jonsered Seminars bring together representatives from academia and wider society to discuss current societal issues and jointly formulate ways of understanding contemporary thinking and challenges.