The Danish Welfare Museum is located in a unique historic site: the Nordic region’s best-preserved poor- and workhouse, established in Svendborg, Denmark, in 1872 and operating until 1974. Today, the museum preserves and explores the history of social welfare and the lives of people who experienced poverty, institutionalization, disability, homelessness and out-of-home care.

The museum is committed to connecting this history with questions that remain urgent today. Working alongside people with lived experience, researchers, archives, NGOs and welfare professionals, we develop exhibitions, research, educational programs and public dialogue around welfare, marginalization, dignity and rights. Projects such as Placed in Care and The Right to Your Own Story demonstrate our commitment to co-creation and to sharing authority over how difficult histories are interpreted and represented.

Our ambition is to be a useful museum: a place where difficult histories are preserved and acknowledged, but also mobilised to foster dialogue, strengthen rights and contribute to public debate social change.