This past Saturday the Danish town of Fredericia inaugurated a 'play-bridge between faiths'. After a year and many hours of hard work, Fredricia has a new 'multi-faith' playground with buildings shaped like a Hindu temple, a mosque and a church. The playground is the result of collaboration between Hindus, Muslims and Chrsitians in the city.
According to the town's website (DA), the project had three main goals: To bring together people of different religious and cultural background so they could get to know each other; to build something for the future, namely for today's children, and to show the you can play together even if you're different; and finally to remember Fredericia's history as a free city which more than 300 years ago got religious freedom, thanks to royal privileges. This means that Fredricia was a multicultural city already by the end of the 1700s. The playground therefore links past, present and future.
Karina Dahlmann, a parish priest at Hannerup Church and one of the initiators of the project, says that they've built friendships along the way and had agreed to have events in the future, so the contact with each other will continue. Karina Dahlmann says that it is very valuable for her as a priest to now have good contacts with other religious community in the city.
The buildings were built by the Fredericia company and were decorated by cross-cultural group. Karina Dahlmann explains that each group was of course responsible for decorating their own play-building, but they also helped each other. For example, several Hindus, Christians and Muslims painted the mosque together recently.
The mosque's dome was put on last week. The three buildings are visited every day by many people, and according to the workmen, the church had already been used by several tourists who slept over in it.
The next project will be a minaret, which will be installed next to the temple.
The "Play-bridge between faiths" was subsidized by the municipality's integration fund and the FredericiaC land development agency. The playground is part of FredericiaC’s provisional activities.
Source: Elbobladet (Danish), h/t Uriasposten
