“Kulturtanken: Arts for Young Audiences Norway” presented by Stenslie

Arts for Young Audiences Norway (Kulturtanken) is the Norwegian Ministry of Culture’s agency responsible for art and culture for school pupils. Most prominently, this includes nationwide responsibility for The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS), which is the centerpiece of the government’s policy for bringing culture to children and young people. Briefly put, The Cultural Schoolbag secures that all children growing up in Norway have access to professional art – spanning literature, music, visual arts, performative arts, film and cultural heritage.

This is done through close collaboration between Arts for Young Audiences Norway, county councils and municipalities, schools and cultural institutions. The program is ambitious and far reaching. Four times a year in average, 3300 schools, including 830.000 school pupils in the country are visited by professional musicians, writers, actors, dancers, artists and other cultural producers through The Cultural Schoolbag.

The explicit political aim is to provide all children living in Norway with a shared frame of reference and joint experiences, irrespective of their nationality, address, wealth and social background. It is held that artistic and cultural expression can transcend norms, languages and social identities, and in this way, being a force for democracy that ideally can be felt far beyond our national borders, reaching out into the world.