About Mark
The vision, the mission, and the dream
Mark is a Museum of a New Danish History
The living museum farm, Karensminde, is surrounded by beautiful landscape between the meadow and heath, where you can see traces of development and its consequences of the last 400 years of Danish history. During school holidays, there are always treasure hunts and games for the youngest members of the family. On certain days, the museum's Support Association, Karensmindes Venner, organizes activities such as horse-drawn carriage rides, workshops for children, and revives both the old forge and the old wood-burning stove in the kitchen. Every spring, children participate in planting potatoes, and every fall, they help dig up the new potatoes, receiving a bag of potatoes to take home as a thanks for their assistance.
They left a mark
The history of the area around Billund is a mirror of 400 years of Danish history, as it tells the story of the development from agricultural land, to industrial nation and tourist destination to the development of the welfare society we have today. The museum is located in a field, which is a delimited and changeable piece of land where people have left their mark – in the past, today and in the future. Just like the area’s irrigation channels, plantations and heathland, industrial complexes such as Grindstedværket and LEGO – Billund Airport and major tourist attractions.
Mark tells the story in a coherent and dynamic way that also leaves room to understand epochal changes over time. The cooperative movement is seen as a symbol of the transition from agriculture to industrialization, just as an industrial company’s airport was the starting point for the entire country’s charter tourism.
The movement
Mark rethinks the museum institution as a social actor by creating a museum movement. We bring people together across time and place and use it to engage ourselves and others in meaningful communities driven by passion and beliefs.
You can turn your experiences at Mark into action, such as participating in public debate, planting trees, action groups, entrepreneurship, new shopping habits, community life, etc. – all because Mark makes you want to make a difference in the world.
The experience
We bring cultural history into play through conversations, exhibitions and experiences we create together with the museum’s users.
We are curious, open, polemical and courageous in our encounter with the world. We create democratic meeting places that move our hearts, minds and bodies. We create, explore, challenge and experiment with things and ideas at Mark in exhibitions, the Factory and the Museum Salon – and in the authentic and place-based environment of the cultural landscape and the Museum mobile. You will be moved when you meet the fate of Nightmare Maren and try to change it; you will be moved when you are bombarded by attitudes that make you want to escape from the story of the generational pollution from Grindstedværket; you will be moved when you discover how man plays God and destroys the earth we live on.
And the rest is history…
Billund Kommunes Museer was founded in Grindsted in 1923 as an association but became part of Grindsted Municipality on April 1, 1969. In 1972, the museum gained the status of a state-recognized museum. In 1982, Grindsted Museum merged with Vorbasse Museum. In 2008, the museum changed its name to Billund Museum in connection with the municipal merger. In 2014, the name was changed to the current name Billund Kommunes Museer. In 2022, the brand Mark | The Museum for a New History of Denmark was introduced.
