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Charlottenlund Primary School, Trondheim,
Norway Charlottenlund Barneskole The four Norwegian young artists contributing with their paintings to the KEEPS project are pupils from Charlottenlund Primary School located on the outskirts of Trondheim, Norway’s third biggest city. As almost every Norwegian school, it is public and free, which implies that pupils come from different backgrounds - although living standards seem to be relatively similar due to a strong welfare state. The school system is pretty lenient: pupils do not wear school uniforms, they call their teachers by their first name, and the pupils’ opinions are very much valued. Moreover, the school put a lot of emphasis on creativity as a part of the education with lectures in music, painting and dance. All Norwegian municipalities provide day-care programmes before and after the regular school day from first to fourth grade. These programmes offer facilities for cultural and recreational activities suited to the age, physical abilities and interests of the children. It is in this setting I was welcomed to organise the KEEPS project. Due to Easter holiday starting the day after there were only four kids left to participate in the project. The four kids, aged 7-8 years old, spent three hours painting what they considered as the most important in their lives. They enthusiastically started mixing colours straight away and seemed pretty determined of what they wanted to paint. Understandably enough, the kids would have liked to keep their paintings; however, the excitement of exposing their art in London with kids from all over the world definitely made up for the loss. Judging from their amazing art; safety, family and friends undoubtedly play important roles in their lives, together with the ability to be creative as demonstrated by the 7 year-old boy who eagerly expressed that he painted a dragon simply because he “loves painting!” |
