COMMUNITies

Look forward to a talk program organized by 1.A and 1.B at NEXT South Coast Gymnasium. Contemporary art is about our shared world – even the parts of it that we don't all necessarily understand. With the exhibition Group Therapy, we aim for dialogue and for us to really listen to and make an effort to try to understand each other. In this talk series, it has to be about everyday life seen through the eyes of young people. Danish and design students from NEXT South Coast Gymnasium decide what to talk about, who should speak and how it should be done – dialogues are not limited to pure talk, it can take place in a multitude of sensual and performative ways. The youth of the West Region have a strong voice and we want to hear it.

Over the decades, ARKEN has maintained strong and lasting collaborations with municipalities in the Vestegnen region west of Copenhagen, including the municipalities of Brøndby, Ishøj and Vallensbæk. The aim has been to give schoolchildren in all three municipalities an intensive three-day course at the museum and to collaborate with Ishøj Library and Ishøj's care homes to enhance the quality of life of local residents. Click 'Learning' if you're curious to learn more about our educational offerings.

The museum is proud to present ARKEN Community Board — a civic board that will work together across the Western Region to strengthen the local community with communities, value and relevance for more. The Board wants to spread the good story of the West Region (Vestegnen) and raise awareness of the many local treasures. Art must inspire regardless of background, be widely accessible and inclusive for all, which is why the museum strives to be more listenable and include more voices in the museum's work. If you have input to ARKEN Community Board, please send an email to community@arken.dk

Bricklaying students from NEXT Copenhagen had the experience of a lifetime when they brought Per Kirkeby's (1938-2018) drawings to life and erected four new brick sculptures in connection with the exhibition Bricks — Per Kirkeby (2023). Danish Minister for Children and Education, Mathias Tesfaye (Soc. Dem.) dropped by and was challenged by the hard-working students to demonstrate how much he could remember from his days as an apprentice bricklayer. The collaboration between ARKEN and NEXT paved the way for new approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Third Space will be a new multifunctional artwork created as a collaboration between young people from secondary school Ishøj's Ungdomskole and artist Henrik Plenge Jakobsen in 2024. When the work is completed, it will be the new meeting place for the Vestegnen region for local activities such as sports, communal dining, performances, dance and play. This is the first time that young Danes have been invited to co-create a lasting work of art on this scale in an art museum. Third Space was nominated for the Art Explora - Académie des beaux-arts European Award 2023, and is funded by Foreningen Roskilde Fonden, Region Hovedstaden Kulturpulje and Spar Nord.

On the annual sand day, more than 1,000 kindergarten and school children from Vestegnen come to Ishøj Strand for workshops based on the museum's exhibitions. It's a fantastic day at the beach, where the children meet the art and the museum in new ways. Sand day is supported by Ishøj Municipality, Vallensbæk Municipality, Brøndby Municipality, Glostrup Municipality, Hvidovre Municipality, Høje-Taastrup Municipality and Albertslund Municipality.

Guests of all ages remixed their experiences with BUTTERFLY!, ARKEN's collection curated by Esben Weile Kjær in the museum's first major collaborative work created by the museum guests themselves. The walls, floors, tables, chairs and ceiling served as canvases, and guests were invited to draw, cut and paste. The space was filled with love, chaos, poetry, exclamations, activism and a '90s vibe. The idea was simple -- do whatever you feel like.

Shop at Ishøj By Center and become an art collector. In 2019, shoppers were offered this deal when the museum moved into the Ishøj By Center shopping centre among its many shops and eateries. The ARKEN Lab branch was open for a three-year period and featured changing activities and exhibitions, including SOUVENIRS by Danish-Turkish artist Deniz Eroglu and HYDRA by Danish artist Eva Steen Christensen. SOUVENIRS was an art project designed as a kind of Ishøj community souvenir shop that sold quirky Ishøj souvenirs such as scarves saying Ishøj, a bird from a local playground landmark as a keychain. The pieces played with the boundaries between everyday activities and the space of art: If you bought a souvenir in the shop, you brought home a little work of art and became an art collector. In November 2022, Eva Steen Christensen established an open sewing workshop in ARKEN Lab where people could donate old clothes and textiles and help sew strips together for the sculpture "Female Nude", which was shown at ARKEN in 2023 as part of the HYDRA exhibition.

How can art be used as a tool to explore underlying dynamics, power structures and messages in an age when technology and artificial intelligence are impacting the way we communicate, interact and form communities? Through camps, talks and events, this project explored how contemporary art can establish a dialogue about current trends and taboos and shed light on blind spots. The project was a collaboration between the Danish Film Institute, Cybernauterne, Aarhus Municipal Libraries, Roskilde Libraries, Tønder Municipal Libraries and numerous artists and writers as well as schools and youth study programmes from all over the country. Projects in the Art + Tech Lab are funded by, among others, @lliancen, which is a partnership between the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET), the Media Council for Children and Young People, Børnes Vilkår, the Danish Youth Council, Skolelederforeningen, Efterskoleforeningen, Styrelse for Uddannelse og Kvalitet (STUK), the National Centre for Documentation and Counter Extremism (NCFE), and the Ole Kirk's Fond.