Ingi Thor Jonsson CEO
NICE (Nordic Intercultural Creative Events) is a creative production company specializing in developing, delivering, managing and marketing major projects across international borders and with numerous partners. We aim to develop artists’ profiles within and outside the Nordic Region and drive projects where experimentation and innovation in the creative arts can happen in a supportive environment.
We work with people with extraordinary connections and experiences. We don’t tell people what we want. We take ideas from people and develop them in partnership.
10 years ago November 2006 Icelandair started operating flights to Manchester, and in relation to that contacted me as a citizen of that great city in regards to what could be done to promote Iceland.
After some consideration the idea of a festival of all things Icelandic was born, mainly because of my experience living for 15 years in London and when invited to Nordic events one would meet only Icelanders at Icelandic things – Danish at Danish events etc……so I believed there was an opportunity to see if an interest in all things Icelandic was at hand in the North of England with not so many Nordic inhabitants as in the capital.
And so it was, we delivered our first festival in November 2007 in Liverpool as a present from Iceland to Liverpool celebrating its 800th birthday, and Icelandic music, design, visual art, literature and food occupied the city for the first time. The Ambssador of Iceland launched the weekend, and in his speech he mentioned that everybody can launch a firework weekend, but it’s the year later that matters, to see how do we continue its success. Out of that inspiration NICE (Nordic Intercultural Creative Events) was born.
I met with all the Nordic Embassies in London and their support was from day one everything you expect from a good Embassy, huge support from all. I then began building on the contacts created from our first festival both in Liverpool and Manchester, and an objective was to create a 5 year focus on all things Nordic in the North of England, creating partneships with all major arts and culture organisations in those two cities, and by doing so introducing them to Nordic partners in all fields of art, culture and funding. The rest is history, we have since then managed to showcase and deliver experiences with all major Arts organisations in the North of England and the outcome is an obvious one today 10 years later, great and strong partnerships have been created and Nordic is no longer something only associated with the Vikings and supporters of Liverpool and Man Utd.
NICE is now located in the Nordic region and still going strong, we now work very much as a consultant to Nordic cultural organisations in international collaboration and the oppportunites that come with it. We have in the past few months been focusing on Iceland Dance Company, and a major production they are creating called ´Sacrifice´ to be launched in Reykjavik in March 2017, and then touring around the world in years to follow. We are also working with Creative Tourist Consultants in the UK, looking to deliver a conference in the Nordic region in October 2017 – Nordic Cultural Tourism.
We are looking forward to some very exciting times ahead and look forward to meeting up with as many of you as possible.
