Ocean Ambassadors: The Creators Club in Malmö

The Bauhaus of the Seas Sails Ocean Ambassadors are individuals or organisations who have been given the opportunity to design and carry out activities that help people build a stronger, more meaningful connection with the sea and other water bodies.

These ambassadors come from diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds, and their goal is to engage the wider public across the Bauhaus of the Seas Sails pilot locations in developing a deeper relationship with marine life and the sea environment.

The Creators Club for the Sea in Malmö was a project led by artist Ellen Bjerborn, in which seven recurring participants met to learn about the local species of the Öresund Strait at various locations in Malmö, Sweden, in late summer 2024.

The learning consisted of both factual information and insights reached through creative exercises. Each participant was equipped with a sketchbook and a set of pens. The participants’ sketchbooks became creative logbooks of their learning curves.

The basis of the project was that information paired with creating would not only teach the participants, but also establish a personal connection to the species. This personal connection, or attachment, in turn creates a sense of care for the species, leading to more sustainable choices.

The project was immortalised in a book, Under i Öresund (Ellen Bjerborn 2025) (Wonders/Under in the Öresund), containing the same information and creative exercises that were facilitated in the Creators Club meet-ups. In the book, five species; the herring, bladder wrack, eelgrass, the European eel and the blue mussel are linked to locations in the city of Malmö and its history. The locations include the South Wharf Basin, the Öresund bridge (Lernacken), and Ribersborg beach. The book was handed out during World Ocean Day to make ocean literacy accessible and will continue to be spread around the city in the fall.

Malmö sits right by the narrow Öresund strait, in which water from the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat is pushed together to create a unique aquatic environment with both salt and brackish water layered. The strait is an important passageway for ship traffic, and due to this, trawling has been forbidden in the strait since 1932, supporting a thriving ocean floor.