Denmark set aside 30 million kroner in 2026 for a digital culture card: 1,000 kroner a year for a young person to spend on whatever cultural experience they wanted. By early September only about 6 million had been used. On 1 September the culture minister, Zenia Stampe, and a majority of parties moved roughly 20 million of the unspent money somewhere else.
It went to the other half of the scheme, the longer culture pass programmes, where a young person is given a place on an organised course inside cultural or sports life. That half has the opposite problem. When 40 million kroner was offered for such programmes in April 2025, 130 applications came in asking for 276 million between them, and 15 were chosen. Free money with free choice was left on the table. Being taken somewhere by someone was oversubscribed almost seven times over.
So…:
Do your customers want a free choice, or do they want to be taken somewhere?
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Picture:
commons.wikimedia.org // Christian Ursilva (CC BY-SA 4.0)