Through a major renovation and extension of the space for visitor experience, The Workers Museum has developed new ways of engaging with the past, present, and future of democratic participation in the framework of the history of mass organization and cultural engagement of wage workers. In combination with a new strategy and re-organization of the institution, the renovation consolidates and re-positions The Workers Museum as an inclusive and multi-faceted heritage institution centered on social justice and cultural equality. In 2023, this effort was awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize.
A major renovation brings the voices and values of the assembly building alive
The Workers Museum is located in the former Workers’ Assembly Hall in central Copenhagen, the oldest existing workers’ assembly hall in Europe. The building was originally set in 1879 up as a multifunctional and cooperatively run meeting place for political, union, educational, social, and cultural activities for the emerging working class, and functioned as such until the early 1980s. In 1982, the Workers Museum was set up in the building, turning af number of former meeting rooms, union offices and flats rented out to union officials into exhibition rooms. However, the part of the building complex housing the largest meeting halls was never included formally and continually in the museum space.
The renovation has brought the central meeting hall, adjacent smaller halls, and access area back to its striking historic appearance. Decorations hidden under layers of paint have been re-established, testifying to how the architecture was intended to affirm a sense of pride and community among workers. Through new exhibitions carefully integrated in the rooms, the history of the assembly building as a multi-functional gathering space around the central values of liberty, equality, and solidarity is made accessible to a broad audience. Most significantly, soundscapes take over the central meeting hall several times during the day to provide an immersive and sensuous experience of the kind of activities that has filled the room, all with a focus on dialogue across cultures and the struggle for social justice and the community building of workers’ organizations. Less visible but equally important, the renovation includes a new heating system and technical upgrading, both improving the sustainability of the building and making it a multifunctional space for a variety of activities according to present-day standards.
The new exhibitions highlight that while the assembly building in Copenhagen may be unusually well preserved, it is only one of thousands of such workers’ assembly buildings that have existed in Europe and across large parts of the world. These buildings are the most manifest testimony to the process of mass organization and education to democratic participation of workers during the late 19th and early 20th century. The renovation thus turns draws attention to the status of these buildings as heritage and to their architecture as expressions of will to democratic participation of the labour movement.
Democratic dialogue is the foundation of the building - inclusion is central to the museum
The importance of the new addition extends far beyond the renovated part of the building. The history of the building and the guiding principle of the renovation provided an axis around which the development of the public value of The Workers Museum will turn in the coming years. The identity of the building as a space for democratic dialogue, education, and community, condensed in the main meeting hall, both consolidates an approach to museum work refined by The Workers Museum over recent years and provides the value-based guidelines for the future of the institution. Central to this is the contributions of individuals and communities to the development, implementation, and evaluation of activities at the museum. The intention that the building should enable people to take part in democratic processes and promote dialogue across social divides rather than primarily communicating knowledge moves beyond traditional understandings of what a museum is and how it can be of value in society.
This re-orientation of The Workers Museum was founded in a new strategy and re-organization of the museum in preparation for the opening of the renovated parts of the building. The Workers Museum works from a mission statement “To strengthen the will to an equal and just society through engaging meetings with history”. This, we believe, can only be achieved if the museum more focused on taking part in dialogue and less on taking control of the product. The front-of-house department was merged with the exhibition, educational, and public programming department to organizationally emphasize the importance of dialogue with actual and potential users of the museum in the development of the visitor experience. New projects are developed and executed with the cooperation of representatives of groups and communities, and an ongoing group of young “Museum Rebels” contribute to the development and programming of public activities.
This commitment to an inclusive approach to development flows from the strategic aim to combat social inequality in museum visits and the access to heritage, with a special view to people with shorter educations who are underrepresented among museum visitors in Denmark. Cooperation with schools across Denmark is a central activity in this respect. The museum actively engages with the social challenge that very few young people choose vocational education. Again, the history of the building as a meeting and source of professional pride to skilled and unskilled workers provides a unique basis here.
An atmosphere of belonging to a larger community
As a museum aiming for cultural democracy, we try to be sensitive to the invisible doors keeping some parts of the population out of cultural institutions. We aim to create an atmosphere of belonging, ownership, and empowerment for all visitors. But in our aim to create such a space, we have also encountered the most important challenges of the project. How do we combine the ambition to be a versatile organization open to many different uses of our building with the needs of more tradition museum audiences which still make up a large part of the visitors? Perhaps, this is an example of an interesting fundamental dilemma facing many heritage institutions, not least because it was clear to us that the private foundations critical for financing the project were at least as interested in developing the identity of the institution as a popular gathering place as in the identity as a cultural historical museum.
In the same way, in their motivation for awarding the Council of Europe Museum Prize 2023 to The Workers Museum, the jury and committee members were clearly interested in the prospect of revitalizing the museum and the building as “a beacon of activism”, drawing on the rich heritage of the labour movement and the communities created by workers. It is a vision for the future that we will pursue. And with the amazing physical surroundings now available to us, we have a unique possibility for making a clear impact in service of society.