Photo: Jørgen Krogh, Herning Municipality
Jørgen Krogh, Director of City, Business, and Culture in Herning Municipality and Vice Chair of EuroSkills 2025, has been involved since before the EuroSkills 2025 Secretariat was established in 2020.
Herning Municipality is one of six Founding Partners of EuroSkills 2025, and from the very beginning, the driving force for Jørgen Krogh and the rest of Herning Municipality has been clear: to take on a societal responsibility and create a legacy that extends beyond Herning and generates positive attention for vocational education across Denmark.
Herning Municipality and Jørgen Krogh have thrown themselves into the planning of EuroSkills Herning 2025 with great enthusiasm – because the impact the municipality experienced in 2018, when it hosted the Danish National Skills Championships, must be spread throughout Denmark.
“We are seeing a growing preference for academic education, and we’re thinking a lot about how we can shift the spotlight onto vocational education. Skills competitions are a really effective way to do that – as we saw with enrollment in vocational education in the municipality of Herning in 2018, after hosting DM in Skills. Being the host city for the European Championships in Skills is on a much larger scale and will hopefully have a greater national impact on enrollment in vocational programs and the narrative around them.”
Herning as a Role Model City
Jørgen Krogh’s goal is that the impact of this major celebration in September extends beyond the municipality’s borders – that those watching from afar also learn something new:
“My dream is, of course, that we’ll see a positive effect in vocational education enrollments, and that visitors to the event will gain new insights. But the results shouldn’t only be visible in Herning Municipality. I dream that the images of skilled professionals performing at their best will be shared across all of Denmark, so that other municipalities can benefit from the event just as much as we will in Herning.”
According to Jørgen Krogh, that is exactly where the strength of skills events lies:
“They make people smarter – both those who participate and those who observe. Everyone should come away having learned something – whether it’s a young person gaining a new perspective on vocational education, or an academic experiencing a cultural eye-opener. What matters is that we all learn and discover something new.”
Creating Legacy for the Skills Family
As the person responsible for more than 35 European and World Championship-level events and as the author of Herning Municipality’s event strategy, Jørgen Krogh has earned the right to aim high. And his ambitions are tangible:
“We want to create the best event of its kind to date. We want to set the standard for future skills events. In the best-case scenario, we can influence WorldSkills International, inspiring them with the way we execute EuroSkills Herning 2025.”
About Jørgen Krogh
- Vice Chair of EuroSkills 2025
- Director of City, Business, and Culture in Herning Municipality