About Trampoline House
 

Trampoline House: Copenhagen Refugee Community is an independent community center in Copenhagen that provides refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark with a place of support, community, and purpose. Four days a week, the house offers internships and job training, language classes and activities, legal/medical/psychological counseling and campaigns for change to both asylum seekers and refugees in the Danish integration program. The aim is to break the social isolation and sense of powerlessness that many refugees and asylum seekers experience, while undergoing the integration program or while waiting years in the Danish asylum centers for a response to their asylum claim or for their deportation.

Trampoline House is intended to be an antidote to damaging effects of Denmark’s asylum and immigration policies. It brings together asylum seekers and Danish citizens, refugees with residence permit and other residents of Denmark, united by a desire to improve the conditions for asylum seekers and refugees.

Trampoline House is a self-governing institution with a board of directors, a paid staff of 10, and close to 200 interns and volunteers. It was formed in 2009–2010 by artists Morten Goll and Joachim Hamou and curator Tone Olaf Nielsen in collaboration with a large group of asylum seekers, socially engaged art students, migration activists, and immigration lawyers in reaction to current Danish refugee and immigration politics, which has become one of the toughest in Europe.