Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

fantastic and I’d like very much to be able to continue dance. I’d like to have dancing for all students in the spring and
we are working hard to get a dance teacher as I think dance is very important.
Because we are so isolated, I tried to bring in visiting performers. Every class group does a theatre production or small
play before Christmas and everyone goes on stage and everyone is in the performance. It’s a great family occasion, we
drink cocoa, dance around the Christmas tree, and share a meal. We also have an annual festival on March the 20 th or
sometime usually near Easter. We put a lot of work into that and once again we do one large play where everyone is
on stage, everyone has to say something. Teachers help too, they sew costumes and so on. It’s really not normal
lessons in the lead up to that; it is all centred on the arts. This is very popular and everyone wants to go to it. Parents
pay to go and that is great as it helps us to do a school trip. Last year our trip went to Denmark.
We try to do a trip every three years but I do not know if we will be able to do that in the future. The parents also
support the trip by raising money. We also try to go to the larger town nearby, definitely to visit the museum and art
collection. We try to go on Thursday and come back on Friday, but once again this is paid for by the parents and I'm
not sure in the future we will be able to do this. We usually do it in the spring when the weather is better, but we have
to get a bus and pay for food and accommodation. We try to subsidise it but we have to pay for teachers and extra
parents to come too as young children must have their parents with them. We try to work with the parents
association. The budget has not changed so far.
There has always been a lot of art here, we are very rich in culture and we have well educated families to support the
arts. We try to develop the children’s talents as we think the arts are very important. It’s interesting because the
maths teacher even says the arts are really important. The teacher in the highest grade is teaching history and
Icelandic but she is actually a trained arts teacher; that is how we integrate things. We work a lot on the arts in all
lessons, some teachers are better at working with the arts than others, but still, all teachers have something to do
with the arts. The parents are really supportive and I am really supportive of the teachers.
I’ll try to take some of the teachers’ lessons so they can finish their qualifications. We are working on assessments;
we take notes and evaluate the children. We do reporting in November and February and this is through a parent
teacher meeting. All classes get a grade in the arts and we also give them a comment or special words and we try to
find something for everybody. Parents are very supportive and in a recent survey we were found to be very good and
very few children have left. Some people even come to this area because the school is so good.
Vignette 5.4.3.3 Rural music school
We are a very established music school. We have been running for over 35 years and have 150 students who are
learning instruments or singing. We have a connection to the general school in the first and second grades, where
they get lessons in an introduction to music. This is paid for by the community. Pupils can also start coming to our
classes privately from seven years of age onwards.
In the music school, 85 percent of our pupils are under 18 years of age. They can choose any instrument and specialise
in either pop or classical music. We have 12 teachers but four of our teachers only work part time most of which are
working in the elementary school.
It is very hard to get good Icelandic teachers to come to this part of town, 70 percent of our teachers are foreign. We
hope that we will have more Icelandic teachers in the future because of the economic situation. Our teachers
currently come from all over the world Scotland, Finland, Lithuania, Spain and Germany. They don’t have courses in
pedagogy as teachers, most of them are musicians but they have quickly become part of the local music scene. Some
of our courses are also taught by our secondary students they get credit if they come and work with us.
We have four official concerts per year and a chamber concert once a month. We also do impromptu concerts such as
playing for the pre-primary school or at the old people’s home. We try to be accessible for all pupils, some people
haven’t been trained. We had one child last year who had hyperactivity and previously we had one with downsyndrome,
but this year we have no children with special needs.
We do not have a waiting list and everyone can come if they want to come. About one third of the town’s children do
attend the music class. The music school is in the new building as the previous one was affected by an avalanche. It’s
interesting in the beginning it would mostly be just music and everyone would think it to be positive.
The pupils pay around 45thousand ISK per year for one instrument if they do a full programme of study. It is one hour
of private tutoring which is usually taught as two 30minute lessons. They also have to do a theory class and oral
training. Some additionally participate in a string orchestra or a brass group, we do not charge anymore for that.
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