How LEGO bricks are reshaping the world, one town at a time
August 31, 2022The birthplace of the LEGO brick and the company that makes it are slowly working to instill the same sense of nurturing creativity and imaginative learning that made the toy so compelling into the city’s daily life, Denmark’s national government, and – perhaps – one day, the world.
LEGO founder Ole Kirk Kristiansen got his start in toys after buying a woodworking shop in Billund, Denmark. His company was officially renamed LEGO in the 1930s, and despite its tremendous international growth, it remains headquartered in the relatively tiny town.
It’s hard to overstate the construction toy’s impact on Billund. The company built the town’s airport, the second largest in the country. When the town seat of government was shifted to a nearby city, the LEGO Group bought the town hall and turned it into the LEGO House, an international attraction. Billund is also home to the LEGO Group’s headquarters, most of the company’s physical archives, leading master builders, a major LEGO factory, and the first LEGOLAND®.
Billund Mayor Stephanie Storbank said the LEGO Group has significantly impacted the town, especially the area’s daycare and school systems.
In 2018, the town upgraded the qualifications for all daycare employees, sending them to a LEGO-influenced course about play, learning, and creativity. That has since extended to the town’s many schools, which use a program called playful learning – developed in concert with the LEGO Foundation – to teach local children.
“We started it up at one school, and it has been such a success that now we’re going to do it in all other schools,” Storbank said.
The town also works with KIRKBI, the Kristiansen family’s investment company, on city planning, she said.
The town hall is a perfect example of that. Billund used to have its own town hall, but in 2007, the Danish Municipal Reform combined a number of municipalities into one, and Billund’s town hall moved to nearby Grindsted.
The town hall move underscored an issue bubbling up in Billund for a bit.
“The center of Billund was very boring,” Storbank said. “There were not many things to go and see there, and each year, a lot of tourists would come to Billund (because of LEGOLAND), and when they got into the town center, they would think, ‘Am I in the right place?'”
So KIRKBI stepped in and purchased the empty town hall building, tore it down, and built a new attraction in its place: the massive LEGO House. At the same time, the town and the company worked up a 30-year plan to help modernize the downtown area. They’re just five years in, and Storbank said the city center is almost unrecognizable.
“Each day you come, you can see something different,” she said.
The town’s work on the schooling system and the city center aren’t the only ways the toy has impacted the town – and even the country, to some extent.
In 2010, the Capital of Children was formed to help transform the town of Billund into the literal worldwide capital of children. The organization operates under the belief that children are just as capable as adults and that learning through play is a fundamental way to achieve their goals.
Capital of Children CEO Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, a former Danish Minister of Science, Technology, and Development, and previous head of the LEGO Group’s R&D department, said the group co-creates everything with the child members of its panel or the Children’s General Assembly it runs.
So far, those efforts have led to creations and concepts big and small, from designing a new welcome area for the town and a permanent marble art installation in Billund to participating in the town’s urban design, with a focus on multi-generational living, as well as calling on U.N. leaders to meet with child participants to address their global concerns.
The work Sahl-Madsen and the Capital of Children are doing is already being noticed internationally. In 2020, thanks to their efforts, Billund was recognized by UNICEF as a “child-friendly city and municipality.”
“There will be one capital of children, but there will be parts of what we’re doing that we would like to share with the world – the co-creation methodology for sure,” Sahl-Madsen said. “The way to have municipalities and children work together to transform democracy is what we are aiming for.”
And the city of Billund’s leadership remains enthralled with the concepts brought forward by the LEGO Group and the Capital of Children, extending those ideas to a broad swath of its operations.
“We were very curious about how we develop our work-life balance also here in the office and the city hall,” Mayor Storbank said. “And I hear that many other municipalities in the area are looking at us now and thinking, ‘Oh, maybe they have found something that we can do also.”
Explore more …
In order of appearance:
KIRKBI – official website
Capital of Children – official website
LEGO House – official website
Billund – Official website
LEGO Foundation – Official website
This article originally ran on LEGO.com as a summary of episode one of the weekly Bits N’ Bricks podcast, which you can listen to here.
