2. HOW TO BUILD BETTER BRIDGES

The plan of action is limited to ways of promoting the artistic, aesthetic and creative dimension in children's and young people's everyday lives, and of providing favourable conditions for their own culture and games. They comprise artistic experience or activities created and mediated by professional artists, activities in which children and adolescents are active and creative themselves, and measures in which children and adolescents interact with adults. The plan calls for conscious effort, but is also aimed at shaping attitudes and increasing knowledge of the needs of children and adolescents for such facilities.

The plan's target groups are children and adolescents in basic school. A number of measures will also be relevant to other institutions that work with children and young people, for instance in various leisure activities, day care centres for schoolchildren, kindergartens, art and music schools, and upper secondary school.

The list of measures is not complete, and local priorities and adjustments will be needed. For the plan to achieve the intended results, efforts will be called for at every administrative level. The plan emphasises this point by placing responsibility for the measures with municipalities, with counties/county municipalities, and/or at the central government level. The need should also be noted of trying out new forms of cooperation across traditional dividing lines and levels.

The short-term and long-term measures have been grouped in eight different target sectors:

1. Intercultural bridge-building and knowledge of child and youth cultures
2. Cultural activities and art mediation for all age groups
3. Aesthetic environments at schools
4. Cooperation between institutions, sectors and administrative levels
5. Interdisciplinary cooperation between aesthetic disciplines and art forms
6. Building up knowledge and competence
7. Development of information and teaching aids
8. Evaluation, documentation and research.

An explanatory text for each target sector mentions activities and measures that have been carried out in various places up and down the country. For further information, consult the reading list included in the plan.

2.1 Intercultural bridge-building and knowledge of child and youth cultures

AIMS:

• for children and adolescents irrespective of their cultural backgrounds to take part in the development of a stimulating multicultural community

Norway is a multicultural society. Many Norwegian schools are attended by pupils with very different backgrounds. Knowledge of their interests and cultures is therefore very important, and various forms of art and cultural expression can be used as teaching resources. For the majority of teachers, an important pedagogical principle is precisely that of finding something with which pupils are familiar so as to use it as a link with the topic or field of knowledge to be discussed. Seeing how play, cultural activities, and experience of art are channels of immediate communication with children and young people, aesthetic disciplines in particular lend themselves to bridge-building across other cultural divides.

Youth cultures frequently find expression in lifestyles, language, and such cultural activities as music or sport. Young people are attracted by international genres and fashions. Although the media are often charged with being cultural levellers, it is worth noting the part they play as intercultural bridge-builders and mediators of youth culture. Child and youth cultures often run counter to the educational system's intentions of communicating traditions and quality culture, but it is more important to focus on similarities and shared features than to emphasise the differences between the two modes of expression.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Hold culture days, emphasising intercultural events.
• Improve access to professional art and culture with various cultural origins, and encourage the experience of culture and cultural activities across the generation gap.
• Advise teachers to acquire relevant knowledge of the forms of expression of child and youth cultures and to relate it to the cultural backgrounds and interests of their own pupils.
• Provide conditions in which the natural forms of children's and adolescents' expression are stimulated through free play and planned activities.
• Increase the influence of children and young people on the planning and contents of art and culture events in and outside school.

b. County level:

• Promote the further development of local cultural events suitable for children and adolescents.
• Make use of the knowledge available about child and youth cultures when preparing county plans, subject to national policy guidelines for county planning for children and adolescents.

c. National level:

• Seek and systematise information concerning pupils' interests and the need for cultural measures in schools.
• Prepare material dealing with child and youth cultures and the use that can be made of their various aspects in schools.

2.2 Cultural activities and art mediation for all age groups

AIMS:

• for the mediation of culture to be of a high standard and to form part of ordinary school activities
• for the educational and cultural sectors to commit themselves to cooperate in the mediating of culture

The basic school curriculum presupposes that every school undertakes its own development of the curriculum, supplementing and specifying the material to be taught. A major element of that work is the development of local school plans for the year's teaching. Such internal planning gives each school the opportunity to make its impact, academically, pedagogically, socially and culturally. The last point, especially, is important if the cultural dimension is to be catered for in everyday school life.

The music schools have undergone an extensive development, of great importance to the opportunities of children and adolescents to unfold their musical talents. From beginnings as spare-time activities, several of the country's music schools have begun contributing to and enhancing the quality of music teaching at ordinary schools. As a part of the development of this broader music school concept, several counties have participated in the experimental build-up of culture schools in which various art forms are integrated. The creation of local networks through the "Positive School Environment" project has been very favourably received; varied and creative activities have enhanced school environments. Launched in 1987, the project called for cooperation between schools, cultural life and public institutions in the counties of Nord-Trøndelag and Sør-Trøndelag, and has since expanded to comprise more counties. The Norwegian Council of Music Schools has played a prominent part in this work. In cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs, the Norwegian Council of Culture has provided opportunities for all counties to take part in experiments and development work relating to the establishment of art schools with emphases on graphic arts and other arts.

In a number of municipalities, the schools have drawn up their own culture plans. Consideration ought to be given to the development, by the cultural and educational sectors in cooperation, of a binding cultural plan for all the basic schools in each municipality. For such planning work to lead to specific measures, schools need to know what cultural and artistic resources are available, locally, regionally, and nationally. Each individual school can seldom have a complete picture of all the possibilities or potential collaborators, but can obtain the advice of municipal and county municipal cultural administrations.

Not only the national institutions but also other institutions in the world of art and culture have acquired considerable experience and expertise in communicating with and providing activities for children and young people. Special mention should be made of music schools, libraries and museums. Local planning should take such institutions into account. It is also important to build up the part to be played by school libraries in the mediation of culture.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Encourage experience as a basis for creative activity and expression.
• Plan teaching projects linked to professional artistic and cultural events, so as to link experience and knowledge.
• Survey the resources available in local artistic and cultural life.
• Extend the introduction of artistic and cultural elements into all school subjects and subject areas and all pupil-related activities.
• Provide flexible arrangements for the shared use of suitable premises for different forms of artistic expression.
• Increase the use of the school library and local school film facilities.
• Appoint an art and culture contact (a teacher, other staff member, or parent) at each school to act as a coordinating link between the school and cultural life.
• Draw up a culture plan for all the basic schools in the municipality, in cooperation with the different art and culture institutions and organizations.

b. County level:

• Hold courses at the local or regional level for the local culture contacts, in cooperation with the national institutions.
• Establish cooperation between the county municipality and the Central Government Educational Office with regard to mediation and coordination and the provision of cultural activities to the schools in the county.
• Build up technical support for school visits by touring institutions.
• Participate in exchanges of local culture programs.
• Initiate development projects to be carried out by the educational and cultural sectors in cooperation.

c. National level:

• Prepare reports on the implementation of the measures in the plan of action and the results achieved at the local and regional levels.
• Develop further the mediation to schools offered by national institutions.
• Consider whether the basic school curricula are helping to build up the cultural element in school activities.
• Continue the cooperation between Ministries aimed at boosting the artistic and cultural dimensions in basic school.
• Draw up a plan for building up the cultural element at day care centres for schoolchildren.

2.3 Aesthetic environments at schools

AIMS:

• to improve aesthetic environments at schools indoors and outdoors
• to give pupils knowledge concerning their own surroundings

Official reports underline how important it is to build up favourable attitudes when enhancing aesthetic environments at schools. Many school buildings and outdoor facilities are in such a condition today as may undermine the aesthetic sense and sense of quality of children and young people. Efforts to improve the quality of our surroundings must begin at school, in the promotion of attitudes, in teaching and in practical work to make the inner and outer environments at schools more beautiful. Classrooms, common rooms and school yards can by fairly simple means be made to provide better conditions for work, learning and play. All municipal agencies should therefore discuss the physical environments at schools. Premises and outside areas must be functional for all school users. Children and young people must be stimulated in play and free to choose activities and modes of expression. These matters have come more to the fore in consequence of the basic school reform (GR 97) and the introduction of day care centres for schoolchildren.

In 1995, the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs published a booklet on the improvement and renewal of school buildings and facilities ("Skoleanlegg, forbedring og fornyelse"). It is intended to provide guidelines for municipalities and county municipalities in their planning, alterations, and construction of schools. It has been followed up by central and county conferences on the subject of the development of school environments. There is a need to develop teaching materials which take up the aesthetic environment at school and are suitable for use in basic school. Pioneering work in this area has been carried out under the "Architecture and Surroundings" project of the Central Office of Historic Monuments. A new optional subject "Architecture and Surroundings" is also now being offered in upper secondary school, designed to give pupils cultural and social insight and understanding.

The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has arranged to make central government funds available for the establishment of local environment facilities which are included in municipal plans. Such facilities can be located on sites of their own or on sites adjoining schools or sports grounds, in the latter case on the understanding that they will primarily be used for unorganized sporting activities. They must be additional to ordinary school and sports facilities.

Just as schools have selections of literature in their libraries, so they should also have collections of works of art and/or handicrafts in school premises. Many schools still have no art in their common rooms or class rooms. It will be important to work systematically where the embellishment of schools with art works is concerned. There are various options, like buying or renting works through Art in School, agreements with studios, galleries, or individual artists in the neighbourhood, or exhibitions arranged through National Touring Exhibitions. Posters and reproductions should also be included among the standard teaching aids. The new curriculum proposed for the arts and crafts discipline focuses on the aesthetic dimension and the aesthetic environment to which the pupils belong. Many schools have allowed pupils to cooperate with artists on specific decorative assignments in the school environments, with good results. Such experience should be systematically recorded and brought to the knowledge of other schools. Good drawings and other art work by pupils also have a natural place in school common rooms, but are not a substitute for professional artistic expression.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Develop teaching programs which take the school's history and aesthetic environment as their point of departure, and which take up how different aesthetic and architectonic traditions and ideals found expression.
• Cooperate with art institutions on the mediation of arts and crafts and on the involvement of artists in the work of the school.
• Use professionals (including artists and architects) in the planning and decoration of school facilities.

b. County level:

• Arrange county conferences on the development of school facilities.
• Help to boost the mediation of art to the schools in the county.

c. National level:

• Develop guidelines for curricula which focus on the value of the aesthetic environment.
• Continue the arrangement under which central government funds are made available for local environment facilities, and set standards for their aesthetic design.
• Distribute information and advice concerning the improvement and renewal of school facilities.
• Prepare teaching materials for a program on school history and the aesthetic surroundings at schools, which can be adapted for use in basic school.

2.4 Cooperation between institutions, sectors and administrative levels

AIMS:

• better utilisation of all resources reserved for the mediation of various cultural measures in schools and the local environment

Many institutions, special interest groups and sectors can help to develop a wide variety of cultural facilities for children and young people. The Government is eager to see public sector policy for children and adolescents organized so as to promote cooperation, coordination and a comprehensive approach at all levels of the administration. In municipalities, too, it is important to regard cultural work as spanning across sectors and involving several public services. The efforts being made in many municipalities to bring about more comprehensive and better coordinated provisions for children and adolescents are being watched with interest.

At the county level, cooperation between County Cultural Affairs Departments and the National Education Offices in the counties could have a very beneficial effect on the coordination of cultural arrangements for basic schools. The National Education Offices have for some time been responsible for arranging concerts under the auspices of the State Foundation for Nationwide Promotion of Music. Cooperation along similar lines could be set up for the other nationwide institutions.

One interesting initiative has been the establishment of so-called "culture fora". In cultural fora, schools, homes and cultural life meet as equal partners. The Council for Music Organizations in Norway launched the idea in its program of action for 1991-93, but the models can and should be extended to cover the other art forms.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Cooperate with local artistic and cultural circles on pedagogical development projects relating to the mediation of art and culture in school curricula.
• Through cooperation with schools, build up the competence of the institutions where mediation is concerned.
• Develop schools into local cultural centres by entering into cooperative agreements with art and culture institutions and organizations and other voluntary clubs and associations.

b. County level:

• Establish binding cooperation between the county municipality and the National Education Office in the county for the purpose of improving cooperation between the educational and cultural sectors.

c. National level:

• Make models for cooperation between schools and cultural life known at various administrative levels.
• Extend cooperation between the nationwide institutions.
• Consider the possibility of locating nationwide institutions in the same premises.

2.5 Interdisciplinary cooperation between aesthetic disciplines and art forms

AIMS:

• To enable basic school pupils to work with artists and experience a multiplicity of forms of artistic expression

The various art forms have their own institutions and channels of communication. High standards have been achieved by means of differentiation, specialisation, and professionalisation. Children and young people must be given the opportunity to encounter a broad range of modes of expression at school. But children also have a need for less specialised meetings with art, which must be met through a more comprehensive approach to the mediation of art and an increase in the number of inter-disciplinary projects. Joint projects draw attention to the cultural dimension as a whole in the school environment. Such projects can also help to promote modes of expression which are not established as separate school subjects, such as drama/theatre, dance, film and other media studies.

In the present plan of action, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs attach importance to the development of measures which can encourage cooperation between the arts. The Storting initiated a trial scheme aimed at developing music schools/art and culture schools, as mentioned in section 2.2 above. The Norwegian Council of Culture and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs have launched trial schemes in two Oslo districts (Stovner and Ullern) under which the State Foundation for Nationwide Promotion of Music, the National Touring Theatre, and the National Touring Exhibitions cooperate with schools. A project has also been launched in which the Norwegian Author Agency and the Norwegian Film Institute cooperate with the national institutions. The aim is to stimulate new forms of cooperation across art sectors and discipline boundaries. The aesthetic disciplines at school have been given special responsibility for building up knowledge of aesthetics, creative processes, and the creation and stimulation of aesthetic response. The wish to strengthen the links between the arts has been manifested in upper secondary education with the establishment of a foundation course in music, dance and drama.

Several County Cultural Affairs Departments, for instance in Østfold, Hedmark and Oppland, have given priority to school-related projects in which creative and performing artists are involved. It is also worth noting that for the past twenty-five years, the Norwegian Authors Agency has helped to send authors to schools up and down the country. The Agency has presented literature and communicated understanding of writers' working methods and instruments. It has also given children and adolescents opportunities to express themselves and to work on their own texts. Experience gained in this way can be transferred to other modes of expression and art forms. In Bergen, Barnas Hus (children's house) has developed an interesting art and culture model in an interplay between the municipality's education and culture sectors. It is important to underline that schools ought to seek out and participate in out-of-school activities. To enable pupils to experience and understand how artistic processes arise and develop, they should be given opportunities to meet artists at work.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Provide favourable conditions for closer cooperation between schools of music, art and culture for children and young people.
• Ensure that children and young people are given opportunities to experience and participate in a broad range of modes of artistic expression at school and outside.
• Encourage projects which include cooperation with artists at school and outside, and develop teaching materials for such activities.

b. County level:

• Coordinate projects and arrange for their transfer to the local level.
• Ensure the achievement of national objectives for tours to schools by defining responsibilities for such arrangements and establishing closer cooperation between schools and the national institutions.

c. National level:

• Initiate a development project in the basic school in cooperation with the Norwegian Federation of the Arts in Education, college art teaching departments, the national institutions, and other major art and culture institutions.
• Encourage new trial projects in schools across school discipline and art form boundaries.

2.6 Building up knowledge and competence

AIMS:

• To give a rtists, personnel responsible for mediation in cultural institutions, and school staff opportunities to build up their artistic knowledge and teaching competence

Competence building is very important at the basic school level. Teachers are the contacts who communicate art experience from the outside world to the pupils. The Core Curriculum requires emphasis on the aesthetic dimension in all disciplines. That calls for the development of competence and for detailed knowledge of aesthetic terms and concepts. Increasing use of artists at school also increases their need for teaching skills.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Enable schoolteachers to build up their competence in art and culture.
• Provide courses and establish networks for mediators of art and culture in schools.
• Improve the mediation and communication skills of personnel at institutions.

b. County level:

• Build up competence at the administrative level.
• Establish networks of representatives of regional and national artistic and cultural life.
• Arrange school and culture conferences for inter-disciplinary training and exchanges of experience.

c. National level:

• Build up the aesthetic element in general teacher and pre-school teacher training in accordance with the new Core Curriculum for basic school.
• Encourage colleges to provide art education expertise in order to raise the standards of basic, further, and refresher training for teachers.
• Urge the Research Council of Norway to boost research into the mediation of art to children and young people at school and into the interplay between the educational and cultural sectors.
• Increase knowledge concerning the interrelations between children, aesthetics and schools by encouraging specialist environments in the Norway Network to cooperate more closely with the practical sector.

2.7 Development of information and teaching aids

AIMS:

• To improve teaching aids for use in the mediation of art and culture at schools
• To develop relevant information for all levels and target groups

Art institutions attach great importance to the artistic quality of performances, exhibitions or concerts. Less attention is paid to so-called secondary mediation, i.e. information and presentation arranged for special target groups. For teachers to perform their mediation tasks successfully, it is important for producers to provide them with sufficient relevant advance information.

There is a general need in schools for more and better teaching aids for use in aesthetic subjects: not just books and guides, but also slides, videotapes, CD records and other technical aids. Such aids, and the necessary information, should be developed by publishers, the school sector, and the major cultural institutions in cooperation. Models are already available from such sources as the National Touring Theatre. Project reports, exhibition catalogues and theatre programs can at little cost be prepared for publication to serve as sources of ideas and inspiration for others.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Develop teaching materials and aids for use in the mediation of art and culture at school.
• Draw up plans for exchanges/shared use of available teaching aids.
• Evaluate and extend the provision of materials and information to schools at annual meetings with the institutions and organizations which are included in the school's cultural plans.

b. County level:

• Survey and evaluate the distribution of information to schools.
• Coordinate the production of information and its distribution to schools.

c. National level:

• Prepare guidelines to accompany the basic school Core Curriculum, for the purpose of strengthening the aesthetic subjects and the cultural dimension in all school subjects.
• Make the National Centre for Educational Resources responsible for developing new methods and facilitating the use of media in aesthetic subjects.
• Make it easier for libraries to make use of new technology in mediation to children and young people.

2.8 Evaluation, documentation and research

AIMS:

• To improve the registration of measures for children and young people in the fields of art and culture
• To learn more about the needs of children and young people for cultural arrangements at school and outside, and about the effects of such arrangements

Official documents and reports underline the need for better documentation and evaluation of artistic and cultural provisions for children and adolescents. There is at present no national institution or administrative body with special responsibility for systematising and further developing knowledge concerning such provisions.

In 1993, with funds from the Research Council of Norway and the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the Norwegian Centre for Child Research carried out a survey of the mediation of professional art and cultural activities to children and young people (Arbeidsrapport (working paper) 13, 1993). The survey revealed insufficient documentation both of the mediation and of its effects. Institutional registration and evaluation routines are also described as partly inadequate and unsuitable for purposes of comparison. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs is preparing a project in cooperation with the Central Bureau of Statistics which should lead to proposals for improving national cultural statistics. There is a need among other things for more qualitative and quantitative data relating to cultural facilities for children and adolescents.

Projects which receive central government support through the Ministries or other state bodies are required to draw up and publish reports. But little is known of the use made of such reports, of whether they are readily available, or of how useful local and regional users find them.

For further progress to be made in this area, each school will have to document and evaluate its own mediation of culture and experimental work, in the aesthetic subjects, in other subjects, and in day care centres for schoolchildren. This work should be given priority, not least in order to draw the attention of teachers, pupils and the local community to the cultural activities taking place at the school. Motivation for more deliberate and systematic efforts in this area depends on the teachers and their qualifications, the use of resources, and the prominence given to the activities.

MEASURES

a. Local level:

• Oblige bodies which receive public support for cultural arrangements for children and young people systematically to register and report on their participation and experience.
• Encourage teachers to record their experience of cultural development work.

b. County level:

• Collect and communicate reports on the use of artists in schools, pupil participation in artistic life outside schools, and the use made in schools of the county's artistic and cultural resources.
• Promote development and cooperation at the regional level and assist with the quality assurance of such projects.

c. National level:

• Initiate cooperation between Ministries and other bodies which grant financial support for cultural measures for children and young people on the preparation of guidelines for the registration and reporting of the measures and participation in them.
• Set up an ideas bank for cultural projects in schools and local communities.
• Use children and adolescents as informants in surveys of the uses they make of cultural facilities, and make the results of the cultural research known to them.
• Collect and communicate methods and development work in the disciplines to everyone engaged in artistic and cultural activities relating to children and young people.
• Urge universities and teacher training colleges to do more to relate their research and development resources to the school level.