city of copenhagen culture and leisure policy 2016 … the principles are fundamental values...

City of Copenhagen

Culture and Leisure Policy

2016-2019

CULTURE AND LEISURE POLICY 2016-2019

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CITY OF COPENHAGENCulture and Leisure AdministrationNyropsgade 1, 3. floorDK-1602 Copenhagen Vwww.kk.dk

Cover/back cover photo:Ursula Bach

Photos on page 2-3, 12-13, 14 (it course), 15, 16 and 17:Ulrich Jakobsson

Photo on page 4-5:Thomas Rousing,Copenhagenmediacenter.com

Photo on page 6-7:Claus Randrup,Copenhagenmediacenter.com

Photos on page 8 and 18-19:Christian Lindgren,Copenhagenmediacenter.com

Photos on page 9 and 14:Adam Mørk

Photo on page 10-11:Ty Stange, Copenhagenmediacenter.com

CULTURE AND LEISURE POLICY 2016-2019 CITY OF COPENHAGEN

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Copenhagen has three times been hailed by an international magazine as the world’s best city to live and work in. Among the many good reasons for this ranking is that Copenhageners are friendly and tolerant people, that the city has an active cultural life, and that there is a balance between public governance and the freedom of the individual.

Copenhagen must remain an attractive city, but it must also challenge the status quo and meet the challenges of the future. Copenhagen is experiencing a positive development, and the city’s population is rising. This requires more space and greater funding for a rising number of users of culture and leisure offerings.

The culture and leisure life in Copenhagen must meet current challenges and requirements as well as inspire new ways to use and develop the city. Since the best way to develop the city is to do so community-based, the users and stakeholders must be met with interest and respect. The City of Copenhagen has already adopted this approach in its concept for ‘City culture’.

The City of Copenhagen Culture and Leisure Policy for 2016-2019 is to embrace these visions of Copenhagen as an experiment-seeking and diverse city that furthermore acknowledges its own distinctive character.

The policy balances the expectations held by the City of Copenhagen Culture and Leisure Committee and the City of Copenhagen Culture and Leisure Administration in regards to which direction the city is to develop within the area of culture and leisure.

The City of Copenhagen Culture and Leisure Policy is a comprehensive framework for municipal culture and leisure initiatives. The policy reflects three levels:

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In order to bring the political visions to fruition and meet future challenges, the implementation of the policy is to give special emphasis to financial management to allow as many people as possible from a cross-section of user groups to benefit from the new facilities. The city’s growing population creates a need for greater resources and requires that existing funding is utilised effectively so that as many people as possible benefit from the investments made in facilities and activities.

A comprehensive vision for Copenhagen under the heading ‘City culture’.

Principles that govern initiatives and actions within the area of culture and leisure.

Areas of action set to become focal points in the years to come, i.e. areas where the policy is to be turned into actions on the ground. These undertakings are very much those with which the stakeholders can identify and in which they can recognise their own visions.


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The vision

City cultureThe ambition of the City of Copenhagen is to be an attractive city, offering quality of life and a sense of ‘edge’. Copenhagen should be a city where not everything is planned and decided upon in advance; a city that dares to think afresh and adopt new approaches so to achieve its potential, and to do so without losing its identity. Partly, this is about making conscious choices about what to preserve when developing the city.

Copenhagen is a city that should offer sublime cultural experiences as well as underground culture. The citizens are an asset in the development of the city. There needs to be room for grass-root activities as well as entrepreneurs and professionals. And there must be scope for activities that are experimental and free-spirited.

The framework the city offers must constantly reflect the needs of its citizens. The citizens must be met with open dialogue, one that instils courage and desire to partake in the city’s culture and leisure life.

Copenhagen must also retain its big-city buzz and remain a place that offers a diverse palette of culture and leisure facilities. This is how Denmark reaches out to the rest of Scandinavia, Europe and the world.


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Principles

The principles are fundamental values supported by the City of Copenhagen Culture and Leisure Committee.

1. Inherent value of cultureThe city’s culture and leisure life has an inherent value, which is reflected in the desire among its citizens to become active players in the city’s urban life. The city’s culture and leisure life also offers added benefits that include the nurturing of cross-community bonds, health benefits, lifelong learning, and the development of creative skills and entrepreneurship.

2. DemocracyCopenhagen’s culture and leisure life builds on democracy. There is transparency, and citizens should weigh in and have their say and become co-creative. There must be room for everyone and it should be easy to get involved in the planning and execution of culture and leisure activities. User and citizen involvement is a quality in itself, both locally and citywide. Information must be accessible and easy to comprehend, and getting informed about different institutions and platforms must be easy, too. The voluntary associations should be supported for their role as wellsprings of community values, and user involvement is to enjoy a special place in the cultural life of Copenhagen.


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3. QualityThe culture and leisure life of Copenhagen must be characterised by quality. When it comes to culture, the City of Copenhagen always aims for the best in order to – sometimes – achieve the sublime. The city’s Culture and Leisure Policy offers a framework for policy initiatives. The policy also involves a unique focus on children and the young as well as socially disadvantaged groups.

The many new citizens in Copenhagen are a gain, and we need to create the necessary scope to allow them to become active users of the city’s culture and leisure activities. This also means that when the political objectives of the policy are to be realised there needs to be a focus on economic sustainability so that as many as possible benefit from the new culture and leisure facilities, and that a cross-segment approach is adopted in relation to user groups.

The city’s culture and leisure life enjoys a good architectural framework and reflects an international outlook. The city’s culture and leisure activities are nurtured through a collaborative approach that aims to create new and surprising offerings and opportunities.

Professional players within e.g. music, the performing arts, visual arts and sports provide unique sports and cultural experiences and contribute to an overall improvement of the quality of the city’s cultural and sports events.

A special quality of Copenhagen’s culture and leisure life is the ambition that everyone should be actively involved. Indeed, providing a broad palette of offerings means that there is something for everyone. There is furthermore a special ambition to support the involvement of citizens in the development of the city’s culture and leisure activities, since a collaborative approach encourages and challenges the city’s culture and leisure activities to provide new and surprising experiences.


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4. Freedom of expressionCopenhagen celebrates the freedom of expression and everyone must publicly be able to express their opinions about culture and leisure activities, whether or not their opinions are considered mainstream. In Copenhagen, there is scope for diversity, and an open debate is seen as supportive of democratic decision-making. The freedom of expression is not only to be understood as the opportunity to express yourself in speech and writing, but also to express yourself artistically. The artistic freedom of expression allows you bring expressions as well as content into play that has not been seen or heard of before.

5. DecentralisationMuch of Copenhagen’s culture and leisure life is locally based, and such local undertakings are to reflect local realities, which is primarily the case at many of the city’s decentralised institutions, such as libraries, sports facilities and cultural centres. Decentralisation gives citizens the opportunity to engage themselves in their local area as well as in other areas they find interesting. This supports the principle of democratisation by moving decision-making closer to users.


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Copenhagen is a unified city, which means that major events are to be evenly distributed throughout the city over the course of the year. This is to happen in a dialogue between the municipality and stakeholders.

6. Inclusiveness and equal accessAll citizens should be able to use the city’s culture and leisure offerings regardless of sexuality, religion, ethnicity, age, disability and social conditions. The City of Copenhagen supports equal access to municipal culture and leisure activities. Equal access must therefore also be supported by the design of the facilities and be reflected in the city’s committed support to citizens with special challenges.

A key focus area is that disadvantaged citizens are to enjoy the appropriate support to empower them to also become initiators of cultural activities.


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The target areas define the direction the city’s Culture and Leisure Policy initiatives are to take over the next 4 years.

FacilitiesTo sustain a vibrant culture and leisure life there needs to be a framework for such activities. Copenhagen’s culture and leisure facilities, whether indoor or open-air, have proved a unique asset in ensuring that people spend more time in the urban space. With a growing number of citizens there is also an increased demand for facilities.

To deliver on the demand for a vibrant culture and leisure life it is essential that areas in new urban developments are reserved for culture and leisure activities and that the funding for the construction of such facilities is allocated. Furthermore, the municipal departments must work together to create facilities that appeal as widely as possible and which meet local needs.

Additionally, it is a prerequisite that the existing culture and leisure facilities are renovated so that they still appeal to the citizens. The facilities must be accessible to everyone and must be robust enough to withstand more intensive use, including extended opening hours and self-service access.

When the City of Copenhagen undertakes new projects there needs to be a cross-sector approach to creating facilities that can be used by many user groups, which involves economising on space and construction costs. Both new and existing culture and leisure facilities must appeal across generations, including the very young as well as senior citizens.

In a dense city, Copenhagen Harbour offers an opportunity to expand the city and meet the need for more space. This applies to former industrial docklands as well as the waterways. Temporary facilities are also an option where culture and leisure initiatives can help generate activities and innovation.

There also needs to be room for experimental culture and leisure activities, which can be supported by the temporary use of land and buildings that are available for shorter or longer periods as well as by establishing creative zones for creative industries. Additionally, the best of the temporary facilities should be retained when an area undergoes urban development to ensure space for an experimental growth layer, for instance. This can be done by restoring existing buildings so they can continue to host the special cultural activities. Alternatively, these cultural operators should be considered in new developments to as great a degree as possible.

The ambition of being a creative and vibrant city with room for everyone requires constantly rethinking the approaches. Greater options are offered by unconventional approaches, which is particularly true with alternative venues such as bunkers, cellars, derelict industrial property, disused technical plants and waterways. These types of projects can often be realised by rethinking the boundaries between institutions and players such as housing associations, private companies, the state and the various municipal administrations.

These solutions are answers to current needs, and with the learning offered by an experimental approach we can ensure a better development of the city’s urban space.

The city is to offer a diverse range of options. The scope has to be wide and embracing in every sense. There must be room for everyone both indoors and in the open air.

The development of digital technology has paved the way for self-service access. Where possible, there should be access to culture and leisure facilities both day and night. The offerings must, in general, be expanded and developed. Booking and using the city’s culture and leisure facilities should be possible around the clock and it should be easy and accessible to do so.

The facilities must be designed to provide access for citizens with disabilities.

Target areas


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EmpowermentCitizens must be empowered to use the city, and wherever it makes sense to offer self-service access this should be established. The municipality will provide targeted service that ensures that those citizens who are most in need will be offered assistance, while others are given a good self-service framework that grants them access to municipal and library services, general facilities and much more.

The libraries are to embrace self-service, and citizens should be met with a confident belief in their ability and desire to service themselves. The Citizen Centre is continuously developing its digital services in line with the rise of the digital literacy of the city’s citizens. This is supported by self-service advice and guidance for those who require assistance. The city’s voluntary associations should be supported in their work, and being a volunteer should be easy, too.

Libraries are an integral part of the city and their specific potential can be further developed, which could include offering targeted social counselling services, either as part of the regular services at the Citizens Centre or as services offered during specific restricted hours.

The city’s culture and leisure offerings must support equal access and be able to accommodate everyone. Participating in culture and leisure activities should be easy and activities should be accessible for participants and organisers alike.

The digitally accessible cityMany citizens in Copenhagen are ‘digital natives’ and we must utilise these skills and build on people’s curiosity to develop the best within digital services. Digital technology must be employed to the benefit of the citizens, providing easy access to the city’s offerings.

The digital services need to be developed so that citizens can easily gain an overview, and the content of the services must be adapted to the needs of individual citizens.

The digital services must continue to provide access to the city’s municipal offerings, while also acting as a platform for other players. The digital data and the opportunities that digital technology provides must be utilised. It should be easy to access information that is digital available in the municipality.


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Historic CopenhagenCopenhagen invests millions in museums and the city archive. One of the objectives is to promote interaction between the major state-owned and private cultural institutions as well as municipally owned cultural institutions in order to create a “museum axis”. Locals and visitors alike will thus enjoy far better access to use and appreciate the city’s cultural heritage as well as the latest contemporary art. This initiative will result in new activities and render our city with a unique narrative that appeals to local citizens and tourists alike.

The international cityCopenhagen is an international metropolis, a European city and part of the region of Greater Copenhagen. Greater Copenhagen has undertaken to promote the metropolitan region as an attractive centre in Northern Europe. This is supported by a wider cultural cooperation with other municipalities, which helps ensure that initiatives throughout the region are coordinated and mutually reinforcing. Copenhagen strives to make the city attractive for talented and hard-working citizens from all over the world. With the International House, the city has already opened for easy access to municipal services for expats in addition to assisting newcomers in becoming integrated citizens in the city’s culture and leisure activities.

VisitorsVisiting the Danish capital as a tourist should be an attractive experience. As the nation’s capital, Copenhagen offers a natural link between Denmark and the rest of the world. Copenhagen hosts major events by international entertainers, world-class art exhibitions and international sporting events. In short, Copenhagen as the nation’s capital offers something very unique. There are activities happening here that only take place in Copenhagen. The ambition is that tourists not only visit Copenhagen due to its shopping opportunities or classic tourist attractions; they should also experience the more rough-edged and vibrant aspect of Copenhagen’s city life. Copenhagen is to convey to tourists its classic attractions as well as its more offbeat culture. The diversity of the city is to become more visible to the world. This means that the city’s culture and leisure institutions should to a greater extent contribute to the development of new tourism offerings. Tourists are to be offered easy access to information and services via multiple analog and digital channels. Copenhagen is to meet the tourists on their own terms.


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Associations and public educationCopenhagen must continue to accommodate a broad and attractive array of leisure associations, clubs and societies as well as diverse offerings within public education (evening classes), which is one of the driving forces in the development of new culture and leisure offerings and opportunities.

Copenhagen’s leisure associations play a key role in the city. They bring people together and promote democracy and interaction across generations and cultural boundaries. Among their special qualities is that they are often deeply committed to working with children, and that many associations adopt a constructive approach to promoting culture and leisure activities in relation to the nation’s new primary school reform. However, leisure associations are changing. Many associations are voluntary and don’t require formal membership. But despite their flexibility, many associations represent very solid communities based on shared interests. They thrive when given the opportunity to develop larger projects or initiate spontaneous activities. In this context, social media offers easy access to organising activities quickly among those who have the time and inclination, here and now.

These changes call for a recurrent focus on how best to support the many voluntary associations amidst this process of change.

Activities at associations and clubs must be adapted to the needs of the city. Analyses, user consultations and other initiatives are to be adopted to help ensure that these associations continue to thrive and play a key role in the city’s culture and leisure activities.

Attending public education evening classes is an important leisure activity for many citizens in Copenhagen. The municipality will partner with evening schools to ensure that they can adapt and continue to create attractive offerings for the city’s residents.


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A comprehensive childhood – learning, wellbeing and inclusivenessCulture and leisure activities are active and central forces in the implementation of Denmark’s primary school reform, ‘The Open School’. Here, culture and leisure activities can reach even more children and support their development, wellbeing and sense of citizenship. Culture and leisure activities strengthen children’s love of physical activity and creativity, general education and readiness to learn through playful activities and in learning environments outside the classroom, for example in the city’s parks and green spaces. The city must therefore work more focused towards embracing diverse culture and leisure activities organised by the voluntary associations that encourage active participation among children. To support the ‘Open School’ partnership an even more coordinated effort is required in relation to the use of facilities, i.e. that schools need to open their buildings to the surrounding community.

Growth layerThe city has a special obligation to embrace new and emerging initiatives and ensure that they enjoy the freedom of artistic expression to offer citizens new, creative cultural experiences and furthermore to ensure that the cultural “food chain” is maintained.

The city’s growth layer is closely linked to the creative industries. These creative players are important in maintaining Copenhagen’s position as an attractive and exciting city. They help ensure the continued development of the city. Copenhagen must strive to be attractive to creative people. Indeed, the city is widely embracing and offers scope and a good environment in which to test new ideas

Creative people generate growth in Copenhagen, for example within filmmaking, gastronomy, computer gaming and interactive media. The city needs to encourage and provide easy access for creative people to experiment with methods, ideas and new products and experiences. The establishment of creative zones can help ensure that there are areas where artistic and creative firebrands can start projects without having a big budget.


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Working together for the whole cityWhen all municipal administrations work together we can ensure that our city fares well on all parameters. When it comes to facilities, the needs and aspirations of citizens should be reflected in all urban development and urban regeneration initiatives so that e.g. sports venues at schools are also used as club sports in the evening and so that libraries and cultural centres also incorporate other kinds of municipal services. The facilities are to be designed so they can be used by schools as well as serving the leisure needs of the general public. A cross-community approach is to be adopted both in the planning stages of construction as well as in the daily management of the offerings.

Experiences from the integration of school, sports and cultural facilities are to be developed and tested in new directions. One possibility is, for example, to establish sports venues adjacent to the municipality’s care homes that can be used for ‘soft’ forms of movement. Another area to be studied is the option as well as the value of establishing cultural and sports facilities in conjunction with other offerings for socially marginalised citizens.

What often supports the urban culture of Copenhagen and the city’s quality of life – as well as giving the city its edge – are the new connections that arise from a cross-segment approach. Collaborations should be forged internally among municipal departments as well as with citizens and external and private players, including foundations. Culture and leisure activities are particular in the sense that they also play a role within other municipal policy areas, which is why there also needs to be policy cooperation with other municipal departments and initiatives, such as ‘Enjoy life, Copenhagener’ and ‘Community Copenhagen’.


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City of Copenhagen

Culture and Leisure Policy

2016-2019CITY OF COPENHAGENCulture and Leisure Administration

Nyropsgade 1, 3. floorDK-1602 Copenhagen Vwww.kk.dk

city of copenhagen culture and leisure policy 2016 … the principles are fundamental values...

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