Kreativitarium Kunsten Museum of Modern Art’s educational team was established with three-year funding grant (2018-21) from the Nordea Foundation, which made it possible to employ three artists and a team of educators from a variety of backgrounds for a period of three years. The team rolled out a stunning range of initiatives designed to make the museum a place where children were not just welcome, but the focus. The museum’s educational offers are both ubiquitous on-site at the museum, but also extend to other sites like schools, events, nursing homes, hospitals, cultural meetings and public spaces like the regatta, carnival, shopping centers and even the beaches during the summer months. The project aimed to increase 70.000 children’s creativity and encounter with art and artists. Today ‘Kreativitarium’ is a fully integrated department in the museum organization, the strategy and in the museum’s range of activities. The museum’s approach is characterised by a philosophy of open source Givism, a generous sharing of ideas and practices.

No copyright is part of the museum’s philosophy, so visitors can take ideas and concepts from the museum and use them in their own institutions or homes. Zones like the water wall, where a concrete panel provides endless opportunities to paint with water, and the elastic wall, which uses hair elastics and divots to provide a canvas that can be “painted” repeatedly, are elements that have been copied and installed in numerous kindergartens and schools. Both are highly sustainable, reusable concepts requiring a minimum resupply of materials. The workshops at the museum, although deeply rooted in fundamental learning, are also made as simply and cheaply as possible with a kitchen cupboard philosophy, allowing them to be copied easily and implemented at low cost and minimum effort. During Covid, the museum’s outreach included creative goodie bags that we left outside the door and free on a first-come-first-served basis. The museum team also produced instructional videos for fun activities to try at home, an online dialogue-based workshop and a visit to a nursing home in collaboration with a kindergarten. The team is also very active in bringing the museum out of its physical location with ToGo workshops in a huge variety of locations, schools, nursing homes, on the beach in summertime, at festivals, the regatta, Aalborg carnival and the like. At these locations the museum often takes an artwork with to show to visitors.