Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

For older pupils, there are electives in photography and film making. Pupils from the school won a small photography
and short film contest for 66° North. The filmmaking elective is more popular with boys, whereas most other electives
in the arts are more popular with girls.
Assessment of the arts is done in the same way as all other assessment. The pupils receive a report twice a year and
the arts teacher writes a comment and can give a grade. The arts teachers also participate in the parent teacher
interviews. Drama is not taught but twice a year the school pupils put on a play. The principal of the school is a
committed amateur actor and so takes the 3 oldest classes to make a play. He says, “The pupils really love it. It is a big
production”.
Class teachers are also encouraged to use creative ways to teach. Twice a year they get a visit from the “Music for All”
programme. The school also pays for a small theatre group to visit the school once or twice a year. The principal
comments, “The last group dealt with social issues. They were excellent and suitable for all ages. Even the teachers
learnt from it.”
The theatre groups charge between 40,000-60,000 ISK to come to the school. The school takes the pupils every
second year to Reykjavik to visit the national gallery, art gallery and museums. The parents’ association pays for the
pupils to go to an evening at the theatre during their visit.
The pupils usually prefer to see a musical. The school is also actively involved in the national talent quest competition
and do a series of in school ‘talent quests’ as a lead into the bigger event.
The principal comments, “I am quite surprised when I describe it how much we are actually doing in the arts. We have
quite a lot of foreign students, mainly Filipino and Polish and we cater for them through the arts. The arts really work
as they connect people. It is a common international language. All students love dance and music. We try to integrate
creativity into all things that we do, but it is not always a success. The principal finishes, “Parents say they are very
happy with the school”.
Vignette 5.4.3.2 Everyone sings along in the school
The small compulsory school is erected by the banks of a frozen river. It has 36 pupils between the ages of six and 16
years and seven pupils under five. They are mostly from the three towns that used to exist and come from a radius of
about 40 kilometres, to get to the school. School buses go out each day and pick the children up.
Art is in all grades. There are four groups across the whole school. Group one has students in grades one to three,
group two grades four to six, group three grades seven to eight, and group four grades nine to ten. Group one gets
four classes in art and one in music, each class is 40 minutes long. They also have two classes in wood and textiles and
they swap around having half a year of wood and half a year of textiles. They also have cooking but the Principal said
he was unsure if it is part of the arts or not. In the second group they do two classes in art, one for music, and one also
for textile and wood which once again is spilt across the year. They do two classes in cooking. In the grade five they
also have two classes a week, additional, in Lego building and can choose this and other subjects over the three
semesters. Group three has one lesson a week in music, and four lessons where they can have electives. Most have to
choose one elective for one semester then move to the next. The most popular electives are wood, textiles, digital
photography, sports and cooking.
A quote from the school principal indicated that “the pupils are doing a lot of integrated learning, there is a lot of
working together, the art teacher and the regular teachers work together. For example we are learning about wind, so
what we did was we integrated this with history and with art, we work on related theme topics.
We do have specialist teachers, a specialist wood teacher, a specialist arts teacher who comes from America, a textile
specialist and a music specialist. But the music specialist has 30 years of experience but not formally qualified. Most of
our teachers are not officially qualified because it is hard to attract teachers in this remote area.
We are also a base for a music school, which we hold in the basement of the school. About 80 to 90 percent of our
pupils do extra music. There are two teachers, and very high amounts of our students go. The parents have to pay for
the instruments.
Once a week the whole school and the teachers meet together and sing a song. We make song books for the school,
including some popular Icelandic folk songs. This was a new initiative in the school and they all liked it. Everyone sings
along in the school even the older children sing along.
We’ve also started a dance group, someone came from the cultural museum and they taught dance, it was linked to
history as it was all about eating traditional Icelandic foods and showing the old dances. We all danced and it was
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