ENIGMA’s take on reinventing a museum
A cultural third place in Copenhagen
What is a museum and what purpose should it serve? And how does it create an experience that speaks to a wide diversity of audiences? Those are only some of the questions that Jane Sandberg is addressing as the director of ENIGMA, the Danish Museum of Post, Tele and Communication. With a background in communication and journalism, a former position as the CEO of the Danish Association of Architects and a talent for networking, she looks like the perfect candidate to reinvent the museum.
Formerly housed in the City center, the museum closed in 2015 and reopened its doors in a former Post Office, where it has been transformed into a hybrid and cultural spot for Copenhagen. While interesting in itself, the place also provides an opportunity to illustrate current developments in cities around cultural third places and to highlight the challenges they face.
We’ve had the opportunity to chat with Jane Sandberg and discussed some questions ENIGMA puts to the fore regarding hybrid cultural spaces.
A hybrid place dedicated to communication
So what is ENIGMA… A café? A post office? A research center? A restaurant? A design shop? A venue for social events? A playground? … It is all of that, and will become more, as the Museum’s collections and exhibitions, opening in 2019, will make it also a museum in the more traditional understanding of the term. This massive building opened its doors to the public in January 2017 and hence offers a place to meet, eat, socialise, shop, play, listen, experiment and debate.
The topics under scrutiny have a clear digital component: digital literacy, cyber security, surveillance and fake news are some of the themes that the Museum investigates and around which local actors are encouraged to contribute. With such a focus, it is difficult not to see a more general purpose for ENIGMA: helping people to adopt a critical approach to digital technologies. To assess the opportunities and risks they convey, at a time where communication plays a more and more prominent role. This vision is not stated as such, but it appears rather clearly in the different actions, that Jane Sandberg has been leading over the last months.
Rather than adopting a one way push communication model to sharing culture and knowledge, the museum explores ways for individuals to actively engage in its production and in the evolution of the museum. ENIGMA has for example been the first museum in Denmark to host a “MuseoSprint”. The method, imported from France, consists of inviting people from different backgrounds to come to the Museum and prototype concrete solutions to specific challenges.
During the sprint at ENIGMA, a group of people worked on a project idea, where the packaging for take-away food could be used to start conversations related to the Museum’s topics. A sticker could be placed on the emballage with a question like: “a 100 years ago, the mailboxes in Østerbro were emptied 6 times a day — what do you think of the fact that we not send any mails at all in 10 years?” (Read more about the day on ENIGMA’s blog. In Danish)
A place open to the City that seeks to engage a variety of actors
As a museum for communication, it is in ENIGMA’s DNA to invite people in and facilitate as many conversations as possible. In other words, ENIGMA tries to design a social experience, that will facilitate interactions between strangers. To walk the talk, they have developed a “menu for conversation”, encouraging guests to talk with their neighbours. Regular communal eating are also organised and objects perceived as “conversation starters” may be placed on the table to help start discussions between strangers.
With digital literacy as a key focus area, the Museum also provides tools for users to engage and adopt new skills regarding digital technologies. A partnership with Coding Pirates has been established and the association hosts regular coding classes for kids. Similarly, the association Digi Pippi facilitates gatherings and workshops at ENIGMA for young girls and their mums, seeking to raise awareness around tech.
A year after its opening, ENIGMA has already partnered with more than 100 organisations, many of them being local actors rooted in the neighbourhood, like schools teaming up with the Museum to provide hands on experiences to the students around tech and communication. Rather than seeing the museum as a retreat away from the city, it seeks to invite the city in. Today, a hedge separates ENIGMA from one of Copenhagen biggest parks — Fælledparken — but soon the museum’s exterior areas will blend into the park.
A typical third place… with well known challenges
ENIGMA is a typical third place, in the broadest understanding of the term. It is a multi-functional place, that seeks to reach out to all publics and facilitates the interactions of a variety of actors through different means. The partnerships with local actors, the fact that it took over a former post office and its opening towards Fælledparken, will contribute to its local anchorage.
What is specific in ENIGMA is its cultural dimension. Though one may forget it today as the collections are not accessible yet, it is still a museum. It aims at sharing knowledge and cultures and seeks to place users in the center, whether for learning, debating and co-producing insights regarding emerging issues.
The museum’s journey has just started and several challenges still need to be addressed. They are common to many cultural third places, as highlighted in this article:
- How to secure that the museum is inclusive and attracts a variety of publics and not only the most resourceful people? The question is even more prevailing as ENIGMA is located in Østerbro, a well-off neighbourhood of Copenhagen, home to many young well educated parents with kids. For Jane Sandberg, part of the answer in addressing this issue lies in developing the right partnerships. This is why the Museum works for example with the NGO Ældre Sagen, which is the biggest Danish association for old people. As an example, the organisation recently facilitated an event with tips and tricks around online purchase of cultural tickets. This is however only one small step towards a social mix in the Museum… The pricing, design and atmosphere, the nature of events, the menu, the hosts of the place; all details need to be thought through and constantly challenged not to become solely an enclave for mother groups — an immediate risk in this neighbourhood of Copenhagen.
- How can one assess the values — both for the neighbourhood and for the users — of such a place? Which are the metrics that could be developed to measure the externalities of a space, that seeks to strengthen dialogue between users and with local organisations? This type of evidence based approach requires new methods as well as the gathering of data to assess a value creation, that is not only and directly economic.
- As one observes a major trend towards the development of hybrid cultural spaces, how to secure that they don’t lose their authenticity and become generic places? Museums’ curators and collections are fantastic assets around which to design unique user experiences. Also and again, partnerships with local actors are crucial, especially if they can be granted a degree of freedom in how they activate the space and engage the public with the collections.
- Finally, is ENIGMA a symbol of a need for cultural institutions to be economically sustainable at a time of budget cuts or, rather, an innovative organisation that seeks to innovate in bringing new forms of knowledge dissemination and production?
All these questions still need to be addressed and we hope to be able to work on some of them in forthcoming projects. Stay tuned ;-)
/ Caroline
Caroline de Francqueville Hansen is a French urban strategist, with experience from France and Denmark, focussing on urban innovation.
Sharing.Lab is a non profit organisation based in Copenhagen, consulting and working with common spaces. We are currently building a european network, including a THINK Tank and a DO Tank, whose purpose is to explore, share knowledge and enable the development of more (and greater) common places.
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