The Cultural Schoolbag, TCS, is a nationwide cultural-political scheme, within the formal Norwegian education system, offering arts and culture to all pupils in schools at all levels. It offers cultural experiences during school hours, contributing to the pupils’ formation, independent of pupils’ socio-economic background (Ruud et al., 2022, Borgen and Brandt, 2006). At the national level, the TCS is administered by Arts for Young Audiences Norway. It receives its mandate from the Ministry of Culture and Equality and the Ministry of Education and is responsible for managing/developing the TCS program, ensuring activities align with school curricula and fosters collaboration between the cultural and education sectors at all administrative levels. Countries in Europe and elsewhere have similar programs, although the scope in Norway is unique.

Since 2018, there has been an increased national focus on the Sámi arts and cultural offer included in the programme. In official documents from culture and education sectors’ authorities, there are clear ambitions and requirements that Sámi perspectives are to be included (Kulturdepartementet, 2021, Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017, Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2020). Also, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee delivered its report in 2023, describing the historical and contemporary effects of the Norwegianisation policy on the Sámi, the Kvens and Forest Finns. The report calls upon all sectors in the Norwegian society to contribute to change. The assimilating processes started among other places in the education system and this sector is key to future changes (Sannhets- og Forsoningskommisjonen, 2023).

In the TCS, this means on the one hand an opportunity for Indigenous Sámi artists to show their projects to pupils, developing their communication skills, and their artistic career. On the other hand, this might mean that the artists experience challenging and difficult encounters with pupils and teachers.

RQ: How do the Sámi artists touring in the TCS engage with this national cultural program and the pupils and teachers, and how do they prepare the artistic content? How do the schools prepare for the visits? Further, what is Sami art, is it just a tag for statistics, or is it something real, that both artist and audience can understand as a point of departure for their encounter?  

This paper addresses encounters between Sámi artists and pupils. These encounters, being relatively short in time, must fit into the schools’ everyday learning activities, in an education system accommodating all pupils. There is an interesting stretch between what the school can possibly “offer” as an arena, and what the artists can “offer” artistically to the schools. Most artists are not pedagogically trained, but artists who often expose their personal, deep-grounded art that centres their identity as Sámi. They tour the TCS throughout the country, meeting pupils and teachers who might have knowledge of Sámi cultures, or not, or very little.

This stretch is similar to Somerville’s concept “abyss”, between Indigenous people and people from the majority society (Somerville, 2010). Telling stories, and grasping their meaning, is differently perceived from the one who tells the story, and for the one who listens (Somerville and Perkins, 2005). To understand this situation, she also uses the concept of “contact zone”, introduced by Pratt (Pratt, 1991, Pratt, 2008), and developed by Somerville and others (Danbolt and Kramvig, 2024, Clifford, 1997, Høvik and Kjeldaas, 2023, Knowles, 2020). They foreground situations where minorities and majorities meet, or clash. Encounters might become “zones of contestation” or “zone of discomfort” (Somerville, 2010), revealing power asymmetries. However, despite friction or disconcertment in postcoloniality (Verran, 2002), forms of communities, through art, culture and communication may occur across ethnicities and backgrounds (Danbolt and Kramvig, 2024, Danbolt et al., 2022, Morphy, 2003 [1994], Martineau and Ritskes, 2014).

With my PhD project, “Doing Sámi art and culture in the Cultural Schoolbag”, I have toured with seven Sami productions in the TCS, in four counties and at all school levels. This includes primary schools, lower secondary schools and upper secondary schools. The artists’ productions span from duodji, Sámi art/handicraft, design, music, visual arts, and cultural heritage. Also, the length of their school visit or show span from 40 minutes to four hours, depending on the format. For music shows the visits were rather short seen from a pedagogical perspective, compared to duodji/design workshop where the pupils worked creatively, finding their expressions. My PhD research encompasses my own bureaucratic practice in Arts for Young Audiences Norway, several “patchwork” ethnographic fieldwork periods (Günel, 2020), touring from school to school with seven productions in the TCS, and practice-oriented document analysis (Asdal and Reinertsen, 2022) of White Papers and grant letters written by the ministries of Culture and Equality and Education. The fieldwork periods varied from two weeks for the same production, to two days. With my two roles as an insider and outsider, senior advisor and researcher, my access and understanding of the TCS is solid (Naaeke et al., 2010, cf. Lea, 2008). However, I was also an “apprentice” (Wadel et al., 2014) related to Sámi arts. Related to the fieldwork I recorded numerous open-ended conversations with a total of 11 artists, 10 teachers and 7 groups of pupils. These conversations (mostly face-to-face, a few digital) followed a semi-structured questionnaire designed for this target group (NESH, 2021, Fangen, 2010). For the artists and teachers, the conversations lasted between 45 minutes and 2 hours, with the pupils between 10 and 20 minutes. One of the studies in my PhD work follows up with 20 recorded, open-ended research conversations with 12 TCS bureaucrats at the county level and three from the municipal level. These conversations (digital or face-to-face) followed a semi-structured questionnaire as mentioned above. I also had numerous informal and formal follow-up conversations with 17 bureaucrats, from 2022 to 2025. In 2025, I completed a variation of a thematic analysis of the ethnographic material (Braun and Clarke, 2006, Lundh, 2020). I noted recurring themes during the interviews, chose specific citations from the transcribed material, under relevant themes, and noted certain categories relevant to the analysis.

Norway faces changes in all policy areas, at least if we choose to listen to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations. The commission pointed out that the school and education system contributed greatly to the Norwegianization of the Sami (and Kvens and Forest Finns). There is therefore an increased attention on Sámi themes in Norwegian schools today, but not sufficient resources for teachers. Teachers are expected to teach these topics, despite variable knowledge. One such resource could be The Cultural Schoolbag’s Sámi productions, one of many interventions in school, offering students experiences by using other capacities than academic ones. My research shows that the teachers are positive and emphasize that visits open for both experiences in themselves, but also for increased diversity of perspectives. My first sub-study includes an investigation of duodji and art workshops in the TCS with reconciliation potential. Here, the argument is that art and culture provide access to other dimensions and "worlds", which opens for new realisations of both similarities and differences between people, and that dividing lines do not necessarily run along the majority-minority axis. However, while this is a “democratic good” for all students in Norwegian schools, it is also associated with some dilemmas. On some of the tours I attended, the encounters between artist and students were not positive, but characterised by friction. There were cases where the artist was challenged, not believed, or opposed by pupils in ways that tend to be racist. In one of my sub-studies, I thematise this, and I ask whether the national ambitions for cultural and school policy sometimes demand (too) much from the artists with minority experiences. National ambitions seem to come with a price. The Cultural Schoolbag is the scene where such negotiations between national requirements, artistic contributions, and the pupils are played out.

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