The Cultural Rucksack is a national programme for arts and culture in Norwegian schools that aims to give all students aged 6-19 years access to professional arts and culture of high quality. The programme started in 2001 and is a cultural and educational project that involves both policy sectors and administration at the municipal, county and national level. This publication is a compact English version of the book The Cultural Rucksack (Breivik and Christophersen, eds, 2013) and the result of a three-year research project conducted by researchers from the Uni Research Rokkan Centre and Bergen University College, 2010 2013. The researchers studied what the programme meant for artists, students, teachers and administrators; what actions schools and municipal and county authorities took in relation to the Cultural Rucksack programme; and how selection processes proceeded. Proximity to the actors perspectives gives crucial insight into how the programme is perceived from different angles. A main insight is that the programme is widely appreciated but also characterised by a goodness discourse that in some cases has rendered criticism inappropriate. The authors argue that the programme would benefit from more resistance and comprehensive debate, more openness in the selection processes, greater opportunity to examine programming work and selection practices, and greater influence from both students and teachers, and thereby also greater collaboration between artists and schools.
