Injustice with the Best of Intentions

A living dilemma trail connecting the voices of Fattiggården, Svendborg's former poorhouse, to students' lives today and the futures they'll inherit.

What does society lose when personal freedom shrinks? What does it gain when everyone has a voice? 

An interactive booklet guides students through six outdoor stations across Danmarks Forsorgsmuseum, where they step into real lives from Svendborg Fattiggård, hearing stories of power, duty, gender, and dignity, before asking where those same forces show up today.

YEAR AND LOCATION

2025
Svendborg, Denmark

PARTNERS

Danmarks Forsorgsmuseum
Statens Kunstfond
LAB for Play Design, Designskolen Kolding

DESIGN AREA

Play Design · Museum Experience Design

ROLES

Francesco Aloisio designed and tested the activity and format of the play experience.

With: Nina Sofia Rüder (Play Designer) and Sune Klok Gudiksen (Associate Professor), LAB for Play Design

A serious place to play

A dilemma game asks participants to step into the role of someone from the past, consider the situation they faced, and decide what they would have done. Danish museums have used this format for years to teach history through the difficult choices people had to make. Danmarks Forsorgsmuseum is one of six museums whose experience with this approach contributed to a shared toolbox for museums and schools in 2018.*

The museum focuses on the residents of Svendborg Fattiggård: people admitted because they were poor, separated by sex, judged according to whether they deserved help, and given little control over their own lives. The museum asked us to design a three-hour programme for upper-secondary students that would move beyond teacher-led instruction and give them a more active role.

In response, we developed a playful book and a final construction-play activity to encourage collaborative reflection and participation.

*Andersen, K., Bager, M., & Appel Laursen, A. (2018). History Conveyed Through Dilemma-Based Communication: Toolbox for Museums and Schools. Den Gamle By, in collaboration with Arbejdermuseet, Danmarks Forsorgsmuseum, Museum Vestfyn, Museum Sønderjylland and Struer Museum. ISBN 978-87-89328-94-2.

Upper secondary students at Danmarks Forsorgsmuseum, Svendborg.

One spread per resident. Right-hand page folds over with the question about now; the back cover becomes a tile.

Walking the trail

Six posts are placed across the museum grounds, beginning at the gate where admission took place. The class follows the trail in order, dividing into small groups at each post to work through the booklet. Each post introduces a former resident and a theme from their life: admission, power, gender roles, duties, hiding places, and the language used to separate the “worthy” from the “unworthy.”

The residents are real people from the museum’s records, and the booklet gives them a voice based on those records. At the first post, for example, Wilhelm Jørgensen has been sent back to Svendborg, where he was born, unsure whether the institution can help him. Each spread includes a fold-out flap that turns the theme toward the students’ own lives: When do you lose the right to decide for yourself? Where is your hiding place? What words do you use about other people? They record their answers in a circle divided into family, school, and society.

Six posts across the grounds, walked in order, beginning at the gate where admission took place.

The class gathers at each post, breaks into small groups to work through the booklet, then regroups at the next one.

Laying out the future

The final activity brings the class together around one table, where the booklet becomes material for play. Its back covers become tiles, each printed with a stretch of green track and a stretch of yellow. Placed edge to edge, the tiles form two branching paths across the table—representing the different courses a life can take and how one condition can lead to another. The students arrange the tiles themselves, so no two paths are ever the same.

Each path begins with a tile containing an empty circle. The facilitator fills the circles with two words that mattered most to the group that day, one for each colour. The words are chosen from a set ranging from personal freedom and democracy to punishment, money, and security.

The groups then take green and yellow leaves and write what might follow—for society and for an individual life—if the green word increased and the yellow word decreased. They attach each leaf to a branch, gradually filling the table with possible consequences. The session ends with the groups reading one another’s paths and discussing the futures they have laid out.

The final activity. Back covers of the booklets become tiles and are laid out as a shared board.

The board at the end of a session. Every leaf is a consequence a group argued for.

Get in touch!

Want to bring this approach to your museum, or talk about how play and participatory design can deepen visitor engagement?

Whether you are an educator, a museum professional, or just curious about what design can do for your collection, feel free to reach out.

Contact me at  hi@francescoaloisio.com, or use the button below. Also on LinkedIn.