Cultural Strengthening Begins With Access
In recent months, Cultural Strengthening (kulturel oprustning) has begun to appear in the political vocabulary in Denmark. The phrase is striking — energetic, ambitious, forward-leaning — yet surprisingly undefined. What exactly are we strengthening? Institutions? National identity? Artistic production? Access? Or the public’s capacity to engage meaningfully with culture?
The lack of clarity is telling. It suggests that we are in a moment where cultural policy is searching for direction — a moment where we agree that culture matters, but have not yet articulated why or how.
For me, this raises a simple but essential question: What does it mean to strengthen culture in a way that genuinely benefits families, children and the society they grow up in?
If the goal is resilience — cultural, social, even democratic — then the answer cannot solely be more exhibitions, more performances or more content. These things are important, but they do not stand alone. Cultural strengthening must also involve strengthening access, experience and understanding. It must consider how people, especially children, form their first connections to cultural heritage, and how those early encounters shape their sense of belonging.
This is where I believe the Saganauts project speaks directly into the current moment.
Bridging Culture, Knowledge and Imagination
Saganauts was conceived as a response to a simple challenge familiar to many families: museums hold extraordinary knowledge, but that knowledge rarely travels the last crucial step to meet a child’s imagination. Without that connection, even the most important cultural objects can feel distant — or worse, irrelevant.
A research-based storytelling platform developed in collaboration with museums, educators, creative technologists and children’s authors, Saganauts aims to close that gap. It uses narrative to make cultural material accessible and emotionally meaningful for families. Stories adapt to the child’s age, reading level and interests, allowing adults and children to explore culture together in a shared, personal way.
If cultural strengthening is to be more than a slogan, it must include exactly this kind of work:
strengthening cultural accessibility,
strengthening cultural participation,
and strengthening the competence to understand and use culture as part of everyday life.
Narrative is one of the oldest tools we have for doing this. It gives shape to knowledge. It invites conversation. It creates confidence where there might otherwise be hesitation. And it helps children — and their adults — see themselves reflected in spaces that can easily feel exclusive.
Why Now?
We live in a time of rapid digital change, information overload and increasing polarisation. Families navigate a daily landscape where attention is fractured and meaning is contested. Museums and cultural institutions, in turn, face the dual task of safeguarding heritage and staying relevant to new generations.
In such a context, cultural strengthening cannot simply be about preservation or expansion. It must also be about connection — about building bridges between the knowledge institutions hold and the lived experiences of the people they serve.
Saganauts is one small contribution to that larger effort. A way of testing what happens when storytelling, technology and cultural heritage work together rather than in parallel. A way of ensuring that culture does not only live behind glass or on display boards, but becomes something children can enter, question and make their own.
Toward a Culture That Speaks to Everyone
If Denmark is serious about cultural strengthening, we need initiatives that reach beyond policy documents and into the everyday lives of families. We need tools that invite children into culture early, gently and with curiosity. And we need to recognise that stories — in all their forms — remain one of the most powerful ways to build understanding.
Saganauts is not the whole answer, of course. But it is one example of how we might rethink cultural engagement in a way that is meaningful, inclusive and future-oriented. A small step toward a cultural landscape where knowledge, imagination and participation grow side by side.