Design X Change Press Release

Press release 17.05.18

Sustainable market for the whole family 26-27 May in the garden at Designmuseum Danmark

Take friends and family along when Designmuseum Danmark opens its sustainable market Design X Change for the second year in a row. This year, we’ve increased the number of children’s activities and live debates. Come and join us as popular entertainers like radio host Anders Morgenthaler and the crew from DR’s Ramasjang help save the bees and the global climate. The weekend will offer lots of free activities for Copenhagen residents and tourists.

Designmuseum Danmark’s beautiful garden will be packed with exciting booths where designers, craftsmen, companies, and organisations will show how they work with sustainable products and solutions. Both children and adults can take part in do-it-yourself workshops – from home-made flowerboxes to fabric dying and the redesign of clothes.

Museum director Anne-Louise Sommer says:

“Denmark is known for good design, which is something we show every day at Designmuseum Danmark. Sustainability can seem abstract for many people, so our goal with Design X Change is to create a meeting place where the city’s residents and tourists are invited to participate in specific activities and get involved in many types of dialogue. That’s why we really appreciate our co-operation with Copenhagen Municipality, which has helped put sustainability on the agenda along with strong stakeholders and co-operative partners.”

Lots of activities for children and teenagers

There will be wide variety of activities for children and teenagers on offer again this year – from a “sort the rubbish” relay race to competitions requiring creative and sustainable solutions. Copenhagen Municipality’s young climate ambassadors will come and discuss how they actively work to promote a sustainability agenda. As a special treat this year, you can meet the team behind DR’s Ramasjang. Along with the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, they will show how important it is to rescue the bees.

Debates on the sustainability stage

All the activities will take place in the garden and be centred around a sustainability stage, designed and built by students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture’s programme for Heritage, Transformation, and Restoration. This stage is not the usual use-and-toss-away stage. In line with the sustainability theme, it is built with the goal of being able to be reused for other events. That means that the wood frame can easily be taken apart and re-used, and that the covering consists of discarded tarpaulins. The students took inspiration from sources as diverse as Japan and old Danish timbered houses. In those days, buildings were also designed to be taken apart and re-assembled in another place.

On this stage you can experience artists, writers, and the radio host Anders Morgenthaler, who is known from the program Climate Testimony on DR’s P1. You can also meet the author and keynote speaker Signe Wenneberg, who will discuss with Iben Krog Rasmussen of the food thinktank Frej about how daily grocery shopping can support sustainability. Which production methods are the most sustainable? Should we stop eating meat in order to save the climate? Should a Danish bag lunch include an organic apple from Austria or a conventionally-produced apple from Denmark?

Refreshments from the Designmuseum’s Café Klint will also be available. In co-operation with Copenhagen Food Co-operative, it will serve healthy food made of seasonal local ingredients at good prices.

About Design X Change

• Design X Change is arranged by Designmuseum Danmark in co-operation with Design Denmark and Danske Kunsthåndværkere og Designere and has received support from Copenhagen Municipality.
• The market takes place on 26 and 27 May in the garden at Designmuseum Danmark.
• The market offers free admission, and the museum will also offer free entrance to all its exhibits during the weekend.
• Read more at ddfestival.dk and www.designmuseum.dk

About Designmuseum Danmark

• Designmuseum Danmark is located in the heart of Copenhagen on Bredgade, in a building that was once Frederiks Hospital. Until 2011, the museum was known as the Danish Museum of Art and Design.
• Designmuseum Danmark has benefited from a massive uptick of interest in Danish design. Nearly 290,000 guests visited the museum in 2017, four times as many as in 2011.
• In 2017, Designmuseum Danmark won the museum industry’s version of an Oscar, the European Museum Academy Award – DASA AWARD, for its success in involving its audience.