Norway

Last update: February, 2024

The Storting (the Norwegian Parliament) and the government define the goals and decide the budgetary frameworks for education. The Ministry of Education and Research is Norway's highest public administrative agency for educational matters and is responsible for implementing national educational policy, including arts education at all levels. Over the past decade, arts education in Norway has been reorganised at the primary level, lower and higher secondary level and in the higher educational system.

Last update: February, 2024

New curricula for primary schools, as well as lower and higher secondary schools, place an emphasis on aesthetic disciplines. Twelve percent of all teaching in elementary school is designated to arts, crafts and music (According to The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training).

The wish to strengthen the aesthetic and creative capacities of Norwegian pupils is also manifested in The Cultural Rucksack (Den kulturelle skolesekken), which was established as a national scheme in 2001. This is a national initiative for professional art and culture in education in Norway with the following objectives:

to help to ensure that pupils in the primary and lower secondary schools are offered a professional arts and culture programme;

to make it easier for primary and lower secondary school pupils to gain access to, make themselves familiar with and have a positive approach to art and cultural expression of all kinds; and

to contribute to an overall incorporation of artistic and cultural expression in the realisation of the schools' learning objectives.

DKS is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education and Research and is primarily funded by profits from Norsk Tipping A/S (Norway's state-owned gaming company).

Last update: February, 2024

Regarding third-level arts education, there are major variations between the different art forms in terms of the training opportunities available. While there are several different institutions offering higher education in visual arts and music, there are fewer opportunities to train in the fields of literature, theatre, dance and film.

Over the last few decades, the number of artist academies – both private and public – has expanded, especially within the performing arts. The number of Norwegian students gaining an art education abroad has also increased considerably. This has contributed to a large growth in the number of artists in Norway. As long as the economic basis for artistic work has not expanded proportionally, the expanding education of artists is seen as a problem by both artists' organisations and public authorities. At the same time, the growing numbers of artists who gain their professional training abroad means that the close links that have traditionally characterised the relationship between the arts education sector on the one hand and the art institutions on the other, not least in the theatre sector, are changing. However, artists who gain their professional training abroad have not been automatically accepted in the Norwegian labour market for art, although this discrimination seems to be declining in recent years.

Higher arts education has been reorganised during the last decade in terms of the merger of various institutions in the field. The intentions of the state merger have been to enhance the available resources to help establish broader artistic professional environments and promote cooperation beyond disciplinary divisions. Both working artists and professionals in the existing art educational institutions have expressed scepticism in relation to these organisational reforms. In particular, critics have questioned whether the quality of the arts education and the specific needs of each art form are sufficiently considered within the new organisational frameworks.

Last update: February, 2024

The municipality schools of fine art / (kulturskole) make important contributions to the primary level of public arts education, which has been ongoing since the 1960s, and primarily started with a music education. On 5 June 1997, Norway formalised the municipality schools of fine art. The Act on Primary and Secondary Education, Section 13-6 states that: "All councils should, alone or in cooperation with other municipalities, have music / cultural offerings for children and young people organised in association with the school and other culture."

Today, the municipality schools of fine art provide an art education to children as well as adults. A total of 93 000 children attends a cultural school (2020), which is 14% of all children in primary school.

Last update: February, 2024

Most cultural education in Norway is provided in higher education such as universities and colleges. However, there are also programs for art education in high schools, both performing arts (music, drama and dance), visual arts (Art, design and architecture) and crafts (Crafts, design and product development). In addition to this, there are some courses in culture-related educations within other programmes.

Further, there are culture educations within Folk high school which provides one year programmes in several cultural subjects.