Anna Rygard, Program Director of Swedish Pavilion gives  an interview to K M Rehan Salahuddin, editor of Sortofopinion.com.

Can you tell us something about the theme "Spirit of Innovation"?

Because we think it need certain spirit to create innovation. And when we investigated that what we are going to show in this expo we found that innovation from Sweden are strong theme and we related these innovations with our pavilion, for example, Zipper & Skype.

The theme of this expo is "Better City, Better Life". How the theme of Swedish pavilion is connected to this theme?

To create better city, better life you need innovative thinking and you need smart solutions and I think we are trying to combine the idea of our spirit of innovation with the better solution for better city, better life as a whole and for the individuals.

Could you tell us about some of the highlights of the Swedish Pavilion? What is special about it compared with other pavilions?

The exhibition of our pavilion itself its quiet creative, we want to emphasize on the playfulness. You can play the slides, or you can try the lights or you may touch the images. Interactive images in a very low tech mode. We tried to be very basic and easy to understand and not to much high tech. We have high technology in Sweden but here we want our visitors to personally experience the whole pavilion naturally.

What do you hope that Swedish Pavilion can bring to people? How enthusiastic the people of Sweden about the Expo?

We are very small country with only nine million inhabitants, very far distance from China and we don't expect people to know much about Sweden. We want visitors to know the basic about the country Sweden but we are humble in attitude. We know that China is a huge country and this world expo is really nice and Swedish people are very enthusiastic about this expo. We are receiving many delegations and visitors from Sweden everyday.

"Climate Change" a very common topic, what type of environmental protection measures feature in the Sweden Pavilion?

The concept of our pavilion itself is supporting environmental protection. We have two main elements; one is the wooden construction of the entrance hall, where people can see how to make a large hall only with wooden glue lamp. China and Sweden are having a lot of forests and we are trying to show the usages of wood in a sustainable way. Also tetra pack is a part of our pavilion. We have mineral waters in tetra pack not in plastic bottles, which surely supports the environment.

How many visitors you've already got and what was your target at the beginning?

When we have started surely we had a number or a target about the visitors. But more importantly we want to ensure the quality of the visit for each and every visitor enters in our pavilion. We don't want to squeeze people in our pavilion and let the visitor count jump high. We want visitors leave the pavilion with a great experience and have happy feelings. We have guides inside our pavilion and almost everybody may have a guided tour. Because, the guides are zonal, which means wherever you go there is a guide waiting for you. For every zone we have guide to describe the part of the pavilion.

Would you like to say a few words to our readers?

We want the visitors remember our pavilion and remember some of the Swedish innovation at the end of the day. We believe that if visitors do something actively here inside our pavilion and take part in interactive activities then they will remember us in a better way. That's why we have arranged the whole exhibition with interactive actions.

Interview taken by, K M Rehan Salahuddin, Editor, Sortofopinion.com

Thanks to Anna Rygard, Program Director, Swedish Pavilion