Kend din by:
a cultural welcome.

The project: cultural orientation through participation

Kend din by means “Get to know your city”. The 2024 pilot used performance and cultural participation to introduce international residents to Copenhagen. Its starting point was the audience’s situation: living in a new city and trying to understand its culture, history and everyday life.

The design challenge is to make cultural knowledge relevant to someone building a life here. A museum can offer a setting for that encounter, and performance can give people an approachable way to ask questions, recognise their own experiences and enter a conversation.

Peter’s contribution and the partnership

Peter’s contribution brings together performance and experience design for this audience. The pilot connected That Theatre Company, International House and the Museum of Copenhagen. The case is therefore about cultural experience design within a partnership between performance, a city’s welcome function and a museum.

The key creative task is the connection between the audience and the material: what should participants encounter, how can they enter the conversation, and why does that encounter matter to their lives in Copenhagen?

The participant experience: history meets present-day life

The pilot combined International Citizen Days with museum workshops. The report describes encounters with Grundtvig and Countess Danner, alongside a contemporary international couple discussing children and school. Historical ideas and present-day questions were brought into the same experience.

This gives the case a clear structure: start with the people arriving, connect cultural material to situations they can recognise, and give them room to respond. Performance becomes a way to open a subject for discussion. Participants’ questions form part of the encounter rather than remaining outside it.

Design lesson: build an invitation around the audience

The case illustrates a use of immersive storytelling for cultural welcome and dialogue. The ambition is to help people develop a relationship with their new city through participation. Long-term belonging and talent retention remain ambitions; the available material does not establish a measured effect on either.

For cities and museums, the transferable question is how a cultural offer can begin with the people it hopes to reach. Relevance depends on connecting the place and its stories to those people’s interests, questions and everyday experiences.

Municipal records document the 2024 pilot. The project application of 2 April 2025 includes a pilot report and a proposal for a next phase of city-based quests. That proposal is presented here as a development plan.

• Municipal project overview ↗
• Pilot report and project application, April 2025 ↗

For cities, museums and organisations welcoming international communities: explore how storytelling, live encounters and participation could make your cultural offer more accessible and relevant.