The Workers Museum in Denmark is part of an international project working on developing a transnational serial nomination for the UNESCO World Heritage List of buildings connected with the labour movement from around the world. We are working with teams in Australia, Belgium, Finland, Argentina and the UK.
We are looking to locate union halls, people’s house, workers’ assembly halls, labor temples and people’s palaces from everywhere in the world. They are multifunctional buildings where workers have been meeting for big or small gatherings and to organise themselves in their daily lives. Many of these buildings would consist of meeting rooms, a big gathering hall/conference room and many would have had kitchen facilities; a multifunctional space for both cultural, social, political and educational activities for men, women and children. They might have been used by trade unions and political workers’ parties and for education of the working class as well as having provided a space for social activities and social network.
We are less concerned with when these buildings were built but more interested in the history it represents. We think of these buildings as instruments of organisation of workers and they were important platforms for the mass-organisation of workers beginning from the late 1800s and until today.
We are really looking to find buildings in countries on the African continent, the Middle East, countries in Asia and countries in Latin America. This nomination is to represent the labour movement as a global phenomenon and therefore we are hoping for your help.
If you know of any such buildings any where in the world, which still exist or have been demolished/refurbished, we would love to know. Feel free to contact with ideas, suggestions or questions.
Thank you.
Marie Brøndgaard, museum curator, mbr@arbejdermuseet.dk
The Workers Museum, Rømersgade 22, 1362 Copenhagen K, DK-Denmark
