In the westernmost part of Denmark, in a forest, You can still find the traces of what was the biggest refugee camp ever in Denmark, namely the Oksbøl-camp, which was situated here from 1945 to 1949. Only cemetery and a few buildings remains today, since the camp was demolished in the 1950’s and a large planted on the camp ground. One of these remaining buildings, the camp hospital, has been renovated and transformed into a modern museum and an audio-tour has been created in the forest, to bring to live the stories of the big refugee camp.
But the idea of the museum is not only to present the refugee-heritage of the area, but also to tell the overall story of refugees throughout history – and today. The museum gives a voice and a face to refugees worldwide. It captures their universal challenges, emotions, drive, and stories. The exhibitions use personal stories to put a face to the history and abstract numbers, and to show the connection between the local history of Oksbøl and today’s refugee crisis. The search for refuge and the tensions that come with it are of all times, and it’s something that could happen to anyone.
The Museum FLUGT – Refugee Museum of Denmark is part of the Vardemuseerne, which is a state-recognized museum in the municipality of Varde. The Vardemuseerne is the organization, that for the last 20 years have been collecting the stories and objects for the museum, and that has developed the idea, raised the money and raised the new museum.
The idea of the museum
FLUGT - Refugee Museum of Denmark opened in summer 2022 and has three overall objectives:
1: To tell the story of the big refugee camprk, that was situated here by the end and just after World War II, when 250.000 civilian refugees came from Germany to Denmark.
2: To tell the story of refugees throughout times: Wy do people flee? How do they flee? How do they set roots again and how does being a refugee for a period affect the rest of their lives?
3: To create a meeting place for democratic conversation - for the general audience and for groups including school classes.
Thus, the success will be measured on different scales: The number of visitors; The number of school classes using the facilities; Events such as speeches, debates and meetings. And finally on the impact: how can we affect the public debate on the issue of "refugees"?
Challenges
How do you best tell the complex story of refugees through the last 100 years? How do you deal with issues that are considered highly political today? And how do you best use 600 acres of forest and an old hospital to do so? We restored the hospital, created an immersive exhibition in it and an even more immersive audio tour in the forest to give the visitors the experience of being in the refugee camp in 1946 and being guided by a nurse from the hospital. The indoor exhibition is a combination of scenography, screens and projections, original objects, artwork, interactive elements and audio guided storytelling, where personal stories is the main element. The outdoor audio tour is on one hand a walk in the landscape but on the other hand a theatre piece going on in your head. The audio tour is complemented by a few subtle elements placed along the route in the forest. The authenticity of the place is both in the building and the atmosphere of the forest and are combined to an experience for the visitors. Telling the story about refugees today can be a politically difficult task. But telling the story combined with the story about WW2 refugees helps the visitors to see the many similarities between refugees now and then.
The working with both sensitive personal stories and complex politically questions of course raised a lot of questions in the making of the museum. But the very trustful cooperation of the staff of the Vardemuseerne and the experience designers from Tinker Imagineers was the main reason for the project to succeed. It takes a lot of trust, to deal with sensitive topics.
The approach
The personal stories of the refugees are brought to life with visual highlights, soundscapes, animations, interviews, and original film material. Visitors experience what refugees had to deal with then and still have nowadays. They put themselves in the shoes of the refugees and get to know them. Outside, a huge and notable model of the former camp, made of concrete and Corten Steel, indicates its scale. Here, visitors can start an immersive audio walk through the forest. This offers visitors a realistic experience of what daily life in the camp was like. The cemetery and an old barrack can be visited as well.
The judges said:
“This is the first museum in Europe at least, to be dedicated to refugees. To approach such a task is difficult and risky, for cultural and political reasons, and our Danish colleagues have had the courage to couple refugee-heritage with refugee-today – their perspective is not limited to the past. But to put this in another way, they focus on present times because they start from history, from heritage. Escaping from war is a contemporary reality. The museum places itself on a national level: it is a museum on the history of refugees in the history of Denmark connected to the whole world. A worthy winner". When we began talking about making a refugee museum 15 years ago, we were highly warned by colleges not to do it. They where sure, that the topic was far to political to be dealed with in a museum context. Today I am very happy, that we didn’t listen to the warnings. Flight and refugees is of course highly debated politically. But it is also one of the major problems of the world today, as more than 100 million individuals are on the flight. And museums should deal with important topics. Even if the topic is difficult to handle.