The arts are vital to democracy. Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children have the right to participate in the arts. And there is no better place to reach children indiscriminatory than at school. Art provokes and challenges us and can be a powerful voice for those in society who have none. In schools, art experiences can bring about engagement and openness about sensitive topics, trigger critical thinking and spark creativity. Art evolves us as human beings and sharing good art experiences brings us together, giving us a sense of belonging. A recent WHO report also tells us that the arts can be used to nurture social inclusion. The aim of The WOW Experience (WOW) is to ensure that pupils have more meaningful performing art experiences in a school context - with the intrinsic and instrumental benefits that follow, such as social inclusion. The instigators of WOW are the administrators of The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS) in Vestfold and Telemark County Council (VTCC). TCS is a national programme in Norway designed to ensure that all pupils aged 6 to 19 years old regularly experience professional art and culture of all kinds. As a regional art provider, we see big differences between the schools in our county in the facilitation of meaningful art experiences. This is a reality we share with both national and international colleagues who have art programmes for pupils. To maximise the output and the impact of WOW, the education and culture sectors have joined forces with European partners to share best practices and together, identify ways of ensuring an increase in meaningful professional art experiences for pupils. Our objectives are to: 1. Improve the working relationship between art providers and schools when providing professional performing art experiences to pupils. 2. Improve the organisation of professional art and culture activities within the school. 3. Increase the number of teachers who facilitate the conditions for meaningful professional performing art experiences for their pupils. We have identified 3 significant areas that we will look at: Communication, Participation and Lasting impact. There are nine partners based in Finland, Iceland, North Macedonia and Norway involved in WOW. Each country has a school and an art provider partner. In Norway the national agency for TCS in is also a partner. Together the partners will produce a Best Practice Toolbox as a guide to schools and art providers with tips and step-by-step advice on how to facilitate the conditions for meaningful professional performing art experiences for pupils. It will be made available on www.thewowexperience.eu in all participant languages. The project activities consist of six transnational meetings (TM), including four workshops. The first three workshops are themed: Communication, Participation and Lasting impact. The aim of each workshop is to uncover best practices within the themed areas. Following each workshop, partners will test the suggested best practices to assess whether they should be included in the toolbox. The fourth workshop will result in the toolbox itself. The TMs will encompass presentations, group work, school visits, talks from external professionals and excursions. We will also invite regional and national policy makers to share their insights. Participants involved in the project activities will be the contact person for each partner, their deputies, heads of the schools, teachers and pupils. The latter three will mainly be involved in the testing of practices. In addition, we will involve a Norwegian project team and Færder Municipality, the local art provider who administrates TCS for the Norwegian school partner. The impacts of WOW are many, and the main envisaged impacts are: 1. Increased understanding of cultural, social and linguistic diversity. 2. A closer working relationship between schools and art providers involved in WOW, and between schools outside of the project and the art providers. 3. The making of local, regional and national role models for a way of collaborating between the two sectors. 4. An increase in schools and teachers outside of the partnership who use the toolbox in order to facilitate the conditions for meaningful professional performing art experiences for their pupils. 5. Improved competence of staff related to teaching, training and youth work. 6. Improved awareness in the school and culture sectors of the benefits in using professional performing art experiences when trying to achieve educational and social goals in school. 7. Better understanding of education practices, policies and systems across different European countries. The desired impact is an increase in meaningful performing art experiences for pupils that in turn can contribute to a positive long-term impact on social inclusion at school.
We had three main objectives: 1. Improve the working relationship between art providers and schools when providing professional performing art experiences to students. 2. Improve the organization of professional art and culture activities within the schools. 3. Increase the number of teachers who facilitate the conditions for meaningful performing art experiences for their students. Our intention was that by achieving these objectives we would increase the chance for students to have meaningful performing art experiences in school. Although the project suffered from measures introduced during the Covid-19 outbreak – most importantly that professional art performances in schools were not permitted for a while – we have seen a positive development in surveys we have carried out. Our partners report that the working relationship between the art provider and the school has improved and that the number of teachers who try to make performing art experiences meaningful for their students has risen.
The reason we applied for the project is because as an art provider to schools we see big differences in the outcome of professional performing art experiences for students. Our experience is that there is a lack of consistency among schools in the facilitation of art experiences. Our belief is that herein lie many missed opportunities. Over many years we have experienced the positive impact art experiences can have on young audiences and this is supported by international research. One such impact is improved social inclusion. The challenge of inconsistency among schools and teachers is something we share with colleagues, both in Norway and in Europe. We wanted to address this with the aim of increasing the chance for students to have meaningful performing art experiences in a school context.