By Joanna Woronkowicz
Since moving to Copenhagen, I’ve been consistently impressed by how public services are designed not just for efficiency, but for enjoyment and participation. At local playgrounds, there are bikes and toys anyone can use. Public libraries double as game rooms and lounges. Many of the swimming pools are free. These aren’t special programs for a select few—they’re embedded in the infrastructure of daily life, premised on the idea that shared public resources improve social and individual wellbeing.
What if we applied the same thinking to the arts?
For a while, I’ve had the idea that arts extension offices would be community-based hubs where anyone could learn, make, and explore creative practices. Borrowing from the century-old model of agricultural extension services, these offices would offer hands-on support, tools, space, and guidance for people to engage with the arts in accessible, informal ways. Their mission would be to make creativity a civic resource, not a specialized field.
Right now, access to the arts is uneven—shaped by income, education, geography, and social capital. Many people simply don’t feel that the arts are “for them.” Arts extension offices would challenge that dynamic by creating neighborhood-level access points where creative participation is expected, supported, and normalized. They’d help ensure that the arts aren’t limited to the well-resourced, the formally trained, or those already connected to cultural institutions.
This model would also help address broader social concerns. In an era where social isolation is widespread and digital devices increasingly mediate our time and relationships, arts extension offices could serve as offline gathering places—places where people of different ages and backgrounds come together to make things, exchange ideas, and build community. In Denmark, many municipalities fund after-school “youth clubs” where young people can cook, make music, play sports, or just hang out in a safe, supervised environment. Imagine a version of that model extended to everyone—built around culture and recreation rather than just services or output. For kids, they’d offer an alternative to screen time. For adults, a reason to step out of the house. For neighborhoods, a shared investment in local culture.
While community arts centers and makerspaces exist in some places, they’re often nonprofit-run, reliant on short-term funding, or tailored to specific audiences. An arts extension office, by contrast, would function as public infrastructure—like libraries or recreation centers—with stable support, professional staffing, and a mandate to serve everyone. Think open studios, drop-in workshops, tool libraries, and mentorship—not for commercial output, but for creative capacity.
This is not about replacing existing institutions but filling a persistent gap in arts policy: we fund elite production and large organizations, but we rarely invest in the local, low-stakes conditions that allow people to discover and sustain creative lives. Arts extension offices would make that possible.
A national or regional network of these offices would be relatively low-cost, easily integrated into existing public systems, and highly adaptable to local needs. More importantly, it would signal a shift in how we think about creativity—not as a rare talent, but as a shared human capacity that deserves public support.