Struggles of Governance and Autonomy in the Field of Kulturskole

Abstract

The Norwegian extracurricular schools of music and performing arts, kulturskolen, largely govern themselves. In contrast to other types of law obliged schools, kulturskolen receives no clear signals from either state levels, or municipality/county municipality levels, but rather are left to informal steering mechanisms on individual or collective levels. This leads to a wide diversity of what disciplines that are offered, what collaborations that are conducted, what aims, intentions, profiles, and competences that are managed, and thus to very different conditions for what the pupils might learn and experience. This article is a theoretical discussion of this finding, investigating diverse forms of conduct that are identified on (i) state, (ii) community, and (iii) individual school level. The article particularly looks at the identified steering mechanisms, with Michel Foucault’s thoughts of governmentality and power/knowledge as its basis. This discussion on how the kulturskole regulates itself is a contribution to the body of research about kulturskole, cultural policy, and about extracurricular arts education in the kulturskole that aims to be “for all.”