Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

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centres had this, but all found this to be an excellent idea but one they had not thought about before. Hitthúsið was an exception, where young people were heavily involved in all aspects of management. In the case of Hitthúsið, it was stressed that all the ideas should come from young people. Despite the lack of representation on boards or management groups, the cultural agencies focus group unanimously agreed that the situation regarding young people and art education had improved considerably over recent years. Icelandic youth are highly international in their focus and are more likely to aspire to international art forms than those associated specifically with Iceland, as these comments exemplified: Icelandic music is bad, weird, boring. Icelanders like to be like Americans. They are no different. What do young people like doing? I like going to the cinema, playing football, being on Facebook and generally on the computer. I like techno and hippo. I am getting into some tribal music and old rock, like Cold Play. Of the young people interviewed, most preferred international music to Icelandic music, citing the following sorts of reasons for their choice: Icelandic music is weird. Icelandic music is sort of too creative and different. It sort of sounds strange. Most of the young people interviewed felt they would leave Iceland for their future education and careers. Of the group interviewed, 60% said once they had studied overseas that they doubted they would come back to Iceland to live. as these sample comments indicate: I think I would like to work in property in the USA. I would like to be a doctor and travel in Canada. I will do pilot training in Germany. The young people interviewed found arts education in secondary school to be: A bit babyish and boring. A lot of hard work. Makes me nervous. Lots and lots of learning is different. Unlike many of their European counterparts, Icelandic young people are not worried about tests or exams and are generally happy with where they have grown up, as this quote typifies; “We live in the right size sort of place. School is really good, but we are sometimes a bit isolated.” Despite the overwhelming preference for international culture, some young people did comment (almost with surprise) that when they had tried some of the more traditional Icelandic culture, they had actually enjoyed it. We have a disco once a month. Different kids do sets as the DJ. We all try to be like everyone in America and Europe. I really liked it when we did the old time dancing in school. It was actually cool. I would like to do more of it. We do things for the Talent Quest, and the winning group gets to go to Reykjavik.” I don't agree , Mugison, Múgsefjun, Emiliana Torrini, Reykjavík, these are quite good... While the earlier section on the music school shows a quite traditional choice of music, instruments and curriculum, some more progressive music schools are seeing a rise in demand for pop music and more international music from adolescent pupils (who may have pulled out of more traditional music lessons). In the case of these pupils, it is self-generated interest that brings them back to the music schools, as this comment from a music school director outlines: 96
“The popularity of pop music is growing. Young people like to be in a band. Of course they learn notation too. These students come however late to the music school, about age 12-15 perhaps...” 4.5 Creative Industries ‣ While the creative industries form an important and expanding part of the Icelandic economy, this fact has not been taken-up in actions at all levels of education, including professional education In general terms the cultural and creative sector includes all those who work in the creative occupations across the wider economy. The United Nations estimates that the creative and cultural industries account for about 7% of the total GDP of most economically developed countries and that this sector is growing at 10% per year, which is more than double general economic growth. Furthermore, democratic trends, such as higher levels of education, longevity and increased consumer spending are likely to continue growth in the cultural and leisure activities into the future. Icelandic creative industries have a wide reach internationally, but this link is not always fully exploited. For example, designers such as Guðrún Sif Jakobs 22 , while Icelandic, studied in Sweden and later worked Italy. She has designed for Dorrit Mussaieff (the wife of the Icelandic President) and markets her design as Icelandic, despite her international training. It is difficult to determine accurate figures for the contribution or otherwise of the creative industries to Icelandic economic growth. Statistics Iceland predominantly reports on export of goods resulting from primary production. The few exceptions that may give a glimpse into trade in the creative industries are the clothing and footwear section where the trade for 3 months was 66.6 million ISK. By comparison, this is roughly half the income earned by dairy products 23 . Figures related to tourism and trade for the first quarter show this as a strong area of the economy (10,687.8 million ISK) but, while this is encouraging, the importing of travel services exceeds those services exported, resulting in a net deficit. In the year 2000, tourism only accounted for around 4% of GDP 24 . Concurrently, the potential for the development of 'high tech' creative industries is very high. With a highly educated workforce and 97% high speed internet connection, this area offers enormous potential for growth. Unfortunately though, this is an area of the creative industries not apparent to a significant extent in the school curriculum with visual arts, textile, woodwork and design and music all favouring more traditional approaches 25 . Cultural employment in Iceland as a percentage of total employment in 2005 was 3.8% of the total workforce. This was equally top with the Netherlands and compares with the European average for 2005 of 2.4%. Nearly 20% of the total workforce of under 24 year olds are employed in the cultural industries and this is the highest in Europe 26 . In the European Union, 29% of cultural workers usually or sometimes work at home. This is significantly higher than the rate in the total workforce, which has no more than 13% home-workers. This proportion among cultural workers ranges from 3% in Cyprus to 41% in Austria and the United Kingdom (up to 46% in Iceland). These figures indicate that Iceland has the highest percent of creative industry workers working from home. 22 http://www.sifjakobs.com 23 http://www.statice.is/pages/2269 24 http://www.statice.is/Statistics/Tourism,-transport-and-informati/Tourist-industry 25 http://www.statice.is/Statistics/Tourism,-transport-and-informati/Telecommunication 26 Eurostat cultural statistics 2007. 97
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Arts and Cultural Education in Icel
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Acknowledgements This research woul
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Helga Rut Guðmundsdóttir Helgi Vi
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5.4.2 Talent developement..........
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practices, but in reality there are
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Chapter 1: Introduction and overvie
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school type to which the comment re
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A future study could examine specif
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The number of pupils with a foreign
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pre-primary school teachers were so
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Figure 1.5.3: How useful is the Nat
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The conclusions from this report in
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primary level exceptional students
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‣ Schools and colleges should be
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Increasingly, schools are becoming
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here, it is a good cooperation. We
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In terms of suggested improvements
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There are 300 hundred pupils in thi
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Figure 1.12.2 Accessibility of the
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e active in a range of local profes
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schools have waiting lists of child
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Going to local schools… well we t
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Page 107 and 108: Vignette 5.2.4 Our selection proces
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Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

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