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This chapter focuses on football as a health-enhancing activity. Or more specifically, Football Fitness, which was launched in 2011 as a response to various developments in Danish sports. The sporting habits of Danes are changing, and there is a growing political desire to involve voluntary organised sport, including football, in public social and health-related tasks. The Danish Football Association (DBU) describes Football Fitness as football in a “completely new way in sporting and organisational terms”. Besides outlining how recreational football is an activity with wide-ranging impact on health, this chapter pursues the perception of Football Fitness as a football activity that breaks with traditional organisation, based on the idea of path-breaking concepts (Sydow et al., 2005). We show that Football Fitness breaks with the sporting form of recreational football, but not with the organisational form. This conclusion is challenged in the chapter's discussion, which stress that the degree of path breaking is dependent on each club's approach to managing Football Fitness.

This country-specific chapter seeks to explore football in Denmark. We start by examining the early years of football, starting from the 1870s. From there, we present decisive landmarks for the understanding of Danish football, leading up to insights into the current state of play. Overall, we conclude that Danish football is characterised by four unique traits: firstly, organised club football is based on an autonomous associative decentral democratic structure incorporating clubs, regional county unions, the League Association, the Women's League Association and the national Danish Football Association; secondly, a large number of grassroots clubs, financially dependent on regional municipalities, are spread around the country; thirdly, late professionalism, beginning from 1978, due to Danish sport and culture policy; and fourthly, the creation of a certain business model of professional football, including talent development, engaging sponsors, floating shares, facilities and stadium development, and diversification.

This chapter considers a specific kind of landscape: post-war green open spaces in Europe. These omnipresent ‘welfare landscapes’ made for the public by the public played a key role in the materialization of the postwar welfare states. This chapter lays the foundation for the emerging research field. It shows how the landscape was associated with and accommodated qualitative ideas of welfare through key dynamic and multiscalar relationships. Using Denmark as its case, it focusses on three relationships: landscape and ‘the good life’, landscape and the prominent new user group: the children, and landscape and ideas of community., This chapter considers a specific kind of landscape: post-war green open spaces in Europe. These omnipresent ‘welfare landscapes’ made for the public by the public played a key role in the materialization of the post-war welfare states. This chapter lays the foundation for the emerging research field. It shows how the landscape was associated with and accommodated qualitative ideas of welfare through key dynamic and multiscalar relationships. Using Denmark as its case, it focuses on three relationships: landscape and ‘the good life,’ landscape and the prominent new user group – the children – and landscape and ideas of community.

People living with dementia often experience memory problems, loss of independence, and difficulties in communication (Karkou & Meekums, 2017). Thus, they risk becoming lonely, depressed, passive, and isolated. But feelings do not get dementia; dance has no age and the living language of the body is accessible all through life. This chapter focuses on why and how Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) and the dance form Memory Dance can be used with individuals with dementia. DMT is a multidimensional arts-based therapy form. Memory Dance is a recall-inspired movement method that can be facilitated by the caregiving staff.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains feature the extraordinary creative dance-making and practice of older dance artists, innovative community dance groups, students and recreational dancers who come together regularly and are inspired by committed teachers and exemplary pedagogy, and dance for well-being across several medical conditions and special needs sectors. It includes exceptional international artists actively engaged in performance and choreography who share decades of wisdom and experience. The book recounts the work of several community groups that are exciting audiences with innovative, insightful productions. It explores change processes and transformations that come about in the lives of senior dancers. The book is an eclectic mix of lived experiences, wisdom, deep knowledge and reflection – it is necessarily a small sample of myriad excellent and essential projects and practices around the world.

Burridge and Svendler Nielsen bring together many perspectives from around the world on dancing experiences through life of senior artists and educators, whether as professionals working with community dance groups, in education or for recreation and well-being. Broadening our understanding of the burgeoning sector of maturing dances and dancers, this book incorporates a range of theoretical approaches with an emphasis on cultural and experiential dimensions. It includes examples of how artists, community practitioners, teachers, policy makers and academics work to better understand, promote and create new ways of thinking and working in the field of dance performance, education and well-being. Each section of the book includes a mixture of chapters based on research and case narratives focusing on practitioners’ experience, as well as conversations between world-renowned mature dance artists and choreographers. It features an eclectic mix of lived experiences, wisdom, deep knowledge and reflection. The book is a valuable resource for students of performing arts, pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, social and cultural studies, aesthetics, interdisciplinary arts, dance therapy and more. Artists working across generations and in communities can also find useful inspiration for their continued dance practice.

Using the phenomenon of friendship as a case, the possibilities of a neurosemiotics of friendship is investigated by analysing ongoing research in cognitive social neuroscience on friendship. Neurosemiotics, both as a field dealing with particular semiosic processes that are neurobiologically based, and as an approach to the knowledge gained in neuroscience interpreting its semiosis of inquiry and dissemination, can help us better understand the construct of friendship having a neural basis. Thus, the finding that "neural similarity predict friendship", analysed as an instance of a propositional dicisign, can be true or false, depending on how prediction and friendship is interpreted.

Thirty-one-year-old grassroots football player Yasser Al-Hamad has experienced being called “monkey” and being told to “bug off to his home country” by opponents when attempting to provoke him in football matches. Similar discriminatory practices directed at others with non-normative identities in Danish organised grassroots football, including women and non-heterosexuals, are present. The personal narratives of Yasser and others can be understood as “personal troubles”, but they reflect more general tendencies that can be examined as public issues paying attention to experiences and attitudes towards gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. This chapter examines the interdependence between individual experiences of discrimination and discrimination as a social issue. We draw on individual testimonies about discriminatory experiences as well as a nation-wide survey of more than 8000 respondents, all of whom participate in organised grassroots football clubs. Results indicate that discrimination is a persistent social issue in sport even as diversity and inclusion are commonly raised as public goals. Discrimination is more often experienced by minorities than by the majority population and is not just an individual experience.

Out-of-school science education institutions such as natural history museums, science and technology museums, science centres, planetariums, zoos, botanical gardens, and aquariums have a critical and unique role to play in educating children and youth for a sustainable future. Wicked sustainability problems challenge the idea that science can provide the right or the definitive answer. Because wicked problems are found at the intersection between science and society; science and technology alone cannot provide proven, unambiguous answers. We consider out-of-school science education institutions to play an absolutely crucial role in helping humanity transition towards sustainability, and we believe that these institutions should be ready to play much more proactive and transformative roles than has been the case so far. Although out-of-school science education institutions are well placed to disseminate sustainability, they still face the significant challenge of deconstructing and reconstructing sustainability concepts and notions to fit their own practices.

When we think about designing science learning environments, we attend to what the visitor brings to the encounter, what the designed environment offers, and the diversity of ways creative cognitive activity can happen in the space between them. Recent research, however, has revealed a different picture, suggesting that many exhibits do not offer unbiased and equitable science learning opportunities for visitors. Many natural history museums create their object-rich galleries with the expectation that visitors will conform to a cultural norm of quiet and subdued behavior regardless of whether this may marginalize visitors who express interest and pleasure by active movements and vocalizations. Museums have only begun to explore how to engage their visitors with scientific processes in ways that encourage individual expressions and individual differences. One can imagine that exhibit labels could speak to diverse audiences without implying that there is only one way to view the world. It is time for museum professionals to acknowledge the role that museum exhibits may play to further systemic biases.

This chapter utilizes sociological phenomenology to investigate intercorporeality, intersubjectivity, and sensoriality in leisure swimming, as experienced by mothers with their pre-school aged children. Data from two research studies highlighted salient elements of such experiences, including a shift in women’s intentionality from the self to their children, and increased focus upon their children’s subtle embodied cues. The ability to ‘read’ such cues was assumed by participants to reside in an innate maternal ‘instinct’, related to the management of perceived risks in the pool and changing-room spaces, including problematic traces of the passage of other bodies. Moreover, the maternal experience was replete with emotion work and the management of young children’s embodied behavior. Mothers were cognizant of the tacit etiquette of the pool, including respect for the integrity of the auditory and somatic space of others. Our insights offer an example of the value of a sociological and feminist phenomenological theoretical framework in understanding mothers’ embodied experiences of leisure-swimming.

Politicisation of leisure time physical activity (LTPA) has increased in many European countries. In Denmark, for example, the relationship between ‘Muslim culture’ and a majority ‘Danish’ culture in LTPA has been debated, leading to the introduction of progressively more restrictive policies. Such debates are presented in binary terms, where constructions of an indivisible, monadic, legitimate and liberal majority culture are frequently presented in opposition to an antagonistic, patriarchal, oppressive and illiberal caricature of Islamic culture. Such debates have also racialized space, labelling neighbourhoods with ethnic-minority communities ‘ghettoes’ within which parallel societies are presumed to exist. Consequently, activities which are considered to transgress ‘Danish’ practices, such as gender-segregated swimming, have seen negative political attention. For example, in Aarhus, women-only swimming has been described as a religious practice and incompatible with ‘Danish’ values such as gender equity and liberal democracy, albeit only when Muslim women are present. Debates about the legitimacy of women-only swimming in Aarhus characterise participants as oppressed by their husbands, and to reside in racialized areas of which the women only swimming sessions are an extension. Such debates have led to increased regulation (and subsequent closure) of gender-segregated swimming in municipal pools during public hours, despite permitting nude outdoor swimming in wealthier areas of the city attended by predominantly ‘ethnic Danish’ women. Such assumptions were contradicted by participants, however, who were rarely heard in the debates. Here, we contrast the lived experiences of participants with descriptions in the political debates, and describe their feelings of belonging both within and outside gender-segregated swimming spaces. For participants, such spaces were considered ‘safe,’ not from oppression from within their own community, but from the gendering and ra

In 1950, the well-known Danish architect and urban planner Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1898–1990) was appointed principal architect on the development of Tingbjerg, a large new housing estate set in a picturesque natural environment on the northwestern fringe of Copenhagen. In this chapter, we focus on the planning logics behind the Tingbjerg estate’s green open spaces - a meticulously thought-through structure that sought to ensure the well-being, the welfare, (trivsel) of all who lived there. In this chapter, we discuss how, why and in what way the Danish understanding of “welfare” – as a societal model providing access to “the good life” for all citizens – can be said to have been expanded through the housing landscape of Tingbjerg. Despite the good intentions, however, today the estate regularly appears in Danish news media due to gang violence and other social problems marking the area. Tingbjerg has therefore recently been selected for a vast new development plan which, as we argue, has spun the estate into a neoliberal logic which fundamentally changes the way the very idea of welfare applies to the estate. Tracing the history of the concept of welfare in the Danish context, we first revisit Rasmussen’s classic 1954 publication, Experiencing Architecture, and, as we find, illuminates and challenges some of the fraught dichotomies –freedom/control, individual/community, architectural ideals/daily life – that have haunted and still haunt Tingbjerg, and which provide a surprisingly topical backdrop for Rasmussen’s later defense and self-critical recognition of the issues facing the Tingbjerg estate.

Experimental Museology scrutinizes innovative endeavours to transform museum interactions with the world. Analysing cutting-edge cases from around the globe, the volume demonstrates how museums can design, apply and assess new modes of audience engagement and participation. Written by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and research-led professionals, the book argues that museum transformations must be focused on conceptualizing and documenting the everyday challenges and choices facing museums, especially in relation to wider social, political and economic ramifications. In order to illuminate the complexity of these challenges, the volume is structured into three related key dimensions of museum practice - namely institutions, representations and users. Each chapter is based on a curatorial design proposed and performed in collaboration between university-based academics and a museum. Taken together, the chapters provide insights into a diversity of geographical contexts, fields and museums, thus building a comprehensive and reflexive repository of design practices and formative experiments that can help strengthen future museum research and design. Experimental Museology will be of great value to academics and students in the fields of museum, gallery and heritage studies, as well as architecture, design, communication and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to museum professionals and anyone else who is interested in learning more about experimentation and design as resources in museums.

This chapter explores the career trajectory between athlete and coach has been regarded by the athletes themselves, fellow coaches and senior sports club directors to not only be a logical progression but one that is seamless. It offers an account of a group of men’s rugby union and football players based in the United Kingdom who negotiated a ‘fast-tracked’ career trajectory into a post-athletic high-performance coaching role. A proceeding theoretical sensitivity phase overviewed coach development studies and the sociological theories that had been utilised in them. Post-positivist theoretical frameworks devised by Erving Goffman, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault were found to have been frequently drawn upon to theorise and conceptualise a range of social mechanisms affecting coach efficacy, behaviour and learning for coaches situated across participatory, development and performance contexts. Theorisation of the social processes enacted by academy directors in this instance aligned more to Foucauldian disciplinary concepts of control, surveillance, normativity and docility.

With twenty-nine percent of all trips made by bicycle, Copenhagen is considered a model of green transport. This book considers the underlying political conditions that enabled cycling to appeal to such a wide range of citizens of Copenhagen and asks how this can be replicated elsewhere. Despite Copenhagen’s global reputation, its success has been a result of a long political struggle and is far from completely secure. Car use in Denmark is increasing, including in Copenhagen suburbs, and new developments in Copenhagen include more parking for cars. There is a political tension in Copenhagen over the spaces of cycling, the car, and public transit. In considering examples of backlashes and conflicts over street space in Copenhagen, this book argues that the kinds of debates happening in Copenhagen are very similar to the debates regularly occurring in cities throughout the world. This makes Copenhagen more, not less, comparable to many cities around the world, including cities in the US. This book will appeal to upper-level undergraduates and graduates in urban geography, city planning, transportation, environmental studies, as well as transportation advocates, urban policy-makers, and anyone concerned about climate change and looking to identify paths forward in their own cities and localities.

Not all conversations and types of dialogue are supportive and suitable for individuals looking for help in their professional or private life. It is important to understand the social and organizational context to be able to establish meaningfulness and a value base. Dialogues can be the basis for helping people to find their stance and personal integrity so that they can take action in their world. We need to stop in our tracks and learn to linger in dialogue with a supportive partner, for example a coach, counseller, psychologist, or therapist. Lingering in dialogue helps individuals, and sometimes even supportive partners, to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves, their personal, social, or organizational contexts, and their life in general. If we listen to ourselves and to each other, dialogue will not focus on a quick fix, but instead strive towards a sustainable and meaningful conversation, where individuals can find their ethical stance based on their own lived personal values.

The Nordic Food Lab (NFL) is a self-governed foundation based in Copenhagen, Denmark. The aim of NFL is to investigate food diversity and deliciousness and to share the results in an open-source format. We combine scientific and cultural approaches with culinary techniques from around the world to explore the edible potential of our region. We are intent on challenging and broadening tastes while generating and adapting practical ideas and methods for those who make food and those who enjoy eating. Food fermentation, as a highly diverse and complex set of phenomena, is ripe for this sort of interdisciplinary, practical study. Our aim is to understand the science and craft behind the exceptional results obtained by the very best food producers and, by analysing and experimenting with this knowledge, to figure out how it can be reapplied to food production in new ways.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the dramatic increase in the power of human agency over the environment through an analysis of landscape change. It discusses the processes that have shaped new landscapes in the capitalist world before focusing on one place that is characteristic of the shifting balance of ecological agency in favour of humans during the Anthropocene. Banks Peninsula on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island was first settled by Polynesian peoples within the last few hundred years. The nature of their footprint contrasts with the dramatic change wrought by Europeans since the 1840s, when indigenous forests were transformed into improved landscapes of sown grass. The chapter is shaped by a broad question. What can be learned from this place about the ways in which people have exercised and are coming to terms with what Gibson-Graham and Roelvink describe as our ‘gargantuan agency’ and ‘almost unbearable level of responsibility’ in the Anthropocene (2009, 321)? It concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘middle landscapes’ as one means by which the planetary dominion of humanity might be tempered with a realization of its dependence on terrestrial ecosystems for continued survival.