Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

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1.10 Compulsory Schools ‣ Almost all compulsory schools have specialist visual arts, textile and woodwork teachers and facilities with the majority of schools having specialist music teachers and some dance and drama. In most schools, children get specialist lessons in arts and cultural education as a compulsory part of education from grades 2-8. While the way this is done can vary from one school to the next, the general picture includes specialist lessons in art (fine arts, drawing, painting etc); wood and metal work; textiles and sewing; cooking; and computers. Additionally the majority of schools have specialist music lessons and some also have specialist dance lessons (though these are generally in a ‘block’ rather than spread throughout the year. In the majority of cases, these lessons are taught by specialist trained teachers in especially equipped, studio style classrooms. In most cases, classes are split. So for example, half the class might go to cooking, while the other half goes to wood work. After half the school year (usually around Christmas) the classes swap and experience the other arts form. Lessons are usually once a week for each art form and tend to be 2x40 minute lessons per week. A shortage of music and dance teachers means that these are less common in school than the other art forms. To counteract this, a number of schools have outside providers who come in to offer music and dance lessons, including percussion lessons. These may be private artists or practitioners or might come from the music school. The teachers from the music school are more likely to come to younger children (who are too young to start after school music school) than to fill any ‘gaps’ in music education in the older classes. Most schools also get some other ‘supplementary’ arts professional during the year. For example, one school employed a Director to work with pupils in year 8-10 to produce the annual school play. 1.11 Upper secondary schools ‣ Pupils in secondary school have a wide choice of electives. ‣ Pupil generated arts and cultural activities are popular and can attract additional credit points. Upper secondary schools are not compulsory, but everyone to the age of 18 has the right to upper secondary education. The typical course length is four years, for students aged between 16 and 20, though students of any age can attend. Secondary schools (gymnasia) are divided into four types: grammar schools—offering four-year long programmes of study, ending with matriculation exams; vocational schools—theoretical and practical courses in various trades; comprehensive schools—offering a mixture of courses, has qualities of both a grammar school and an industrial-vocational institution, in addition to specialised vocational programmes; specialised vocational schools—programmes of study for specific trades and careers. Several secondary schools in Iceland have an art specialism or arts options. The following vignette is one such example: Vignette 1.11.1 We are very proud of this department 34
There are 300 hundred pupils in this school aged between 16 and 20 years, of this 100 pupils and roughly a third of the school takes the art line. There are 90 pupils this semester taking the art line. The art line is available to everybody including students with special needs. There are students applying to a full range of universities. There are roughly 20 students in the visual arts line and 15 in the textiles line and also a range of electives that can be taken over two years. Students take the art line alongside their matriculation line. Most students take around three years to complete the qualification. Currently there are only two teachers in art. The arts course covers basic visual arts, drawing, painting, colour and form, art and culture. There is also an art history course and this is available via distance learning, and also graphics and architecture. They can choose the line that suits them. We do some history of design and we work in collaboration with other courses via online learning in particular students in the information and media course chose some of our electives. In particular, those in the media like to undertake arts courses. For example we currently have seven students that are doing design via distance learning. We started collaborating with three other schools and we focus on textiles. We followed an existing curriculum and we also do the basic line for tailors and for adults. We encourage designers who have graduated from our course to come back and talk to the students. We also encourage our students to be active in design projects such as designing for the school play. The school has a strong culture of art throughout the school and the students do a lot of art activities outside the school. Personally I think it would be better if we could open things up a bit. Open to students of all different backgrounds and all different types of students that way we would be able to get students from wider horizons. We have less money this year so things have to be smaller. They’re also changing a policy and we are concerned about what the future will bring. I wanted to mix the disciplines but so far that’s not been possible. I only got half the funding I’d asked for, the funding is only about 30million ISK per year, but I would do it anyway. I’ll have to make do. We’ve all got less money in this country. But I’ll survive because of help from the community, but I’ll have to do it differently. I’m looking at programmes of cultural cooperation. We have one already with Ireland and another one with Norway. I think basic art and design courses give a good introduction to different sorts of courses. We have basically four cultural centres; visual arts, theatre, literature and music.. We encourage artists in residence. These come from other parts of the world, currently from Ireland. We also can send our students to Ireland as part of a cooperation. I recently sent students to a visual arts festival. I’ve tried to find opportunities for our students to work with other students, so their work is not so isolated. For example, students from Arizona, Norway and Ireland worked together to produce a short film. We also made an exhibition of 100 artists of stills. Basically, you get 20 hours a week for one unit. We have a very flexible structure. We have a lot of visiting artists and there is a youth house which we collaborate with. It is an old slaughter house which is now a youth centre and a cultural house. We hold exhibitions there. The students are going to Sicily for two weeks to have an experience. We do this through a project. They have to pay 1500 euro each but we’ll write a report and put some articles online. We can’t go every year on visits because the students can’t afford to pay. We are very proud of this department and think it is important in the community too. We do a lot of work with the town centre and festivals; there are a lot of festivals. 1.12Music Schools ‣ Iceland has an extensive system of local government funded after school music schools ‣ Attendance at Music Schools is comparatively lower in adolescence ‣ The curriculum of Music Schools is generally based on classical music and traditional instrumental instructional approaches ‣ Music schools should work more closely with their local compulsory school(s) ‣ Further research needs to be undertaken on the impact of group or individual tuition on musical instrument and vocal learning on pupils, attendance, enjoyment and quality of learning ‣ Effects of changes in affordability of music school lessons needs to be monitored to ensure there is not an adverse impact on attendance or accessibility Iceland has an extensive network of after school arts schools. There are two main types of out of school provisions. The first are music schools offering substantial instrumental and/or 35
Page 1 and 2: Arts and Cultural Education in Icel
Page 3 and 4: Acknowledgements This research woul
Page 5 and 6: Helga Rut Guðmundsdóttir Helgi Vi
Page 7 and 8: 5.4.2 Talent developement..........
Page 9 and 10: practices, but in reality there are
Page 11 and 12: Chapter 1: Introduction and overvie
Page 13 and 14: school type to which the comment re
Page 15 and 16: A future study could examine specif
Page 17 and 18: The number of pupils with a foreign
Page 19 and 20: pre-primary school teachers were so
Page 21 and 22: Figure 1.5.3: How useful is the Nat
Page 23 and 24: The conclusions from this report in
Page 25 and 26: primary level exceptional students
Page 27 and 28: ‣ Schools and colleges should be
Page 29 and 30: Increasingly, schools are becoming
Page 31 and 32: here, it is a good cooperation. We
Page 33: In terms of suggested improvements
Page 37 and 38: Figure 1.12.2 Accessibility of the
Page 39 and 40: e active in a range of local profes
Page 41 and 42: schools have waiting lists of child
Page 43 and 44: Going to local schools… well we t
Page 45 and 46: in theatre. The students really lov
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This vignette from an academic in t
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in offering adult education. Other
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demanding more of our schools and t
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It was argued that the arts may not
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(teacher a professional photographe
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There is a lot of respect amongst p
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“The popularity of pop music is g
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Others would argue that the connect
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interrelationship with nature and c
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From this summary, it can be seen t
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training of senior secondary arts t
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Vignette 5.2.4 Our selection proces
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There is a lack of connection betwe
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During the research, various school
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The following sections are other as
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For older pupils, there are electiv
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Before I came here no-one was doing
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Creative and cultural industries Mo
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While the previously listed recomme
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