Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Qupperneq 15

Reykjavík
Köbenhavn
London
Berlín
@burgerjoint
"The personal and the professional
experience and development aspects are
closely connected,” Björt says. “We be-
lieve that you become better at whatever
craft or field you're working in if you
‘know yourself’—meaning awareness of
your own presence, strengths, challeng-
es, passions et cetera. And we believe
that this work also allows you to get to
know your surroundings and your con-
text in society better. So some of what
we do is to provide the tools to shed light
on these dynamics and connections."
It’s a far cry from the one-size-fits-all
structure that many university courses
entail. "The experience we aim to pro-
vide is an intense program filled with
joy, laughter, challenges, surprises, hard
times, easy times and much more,” Björt
explains. “It's an experience of going
far away from your normal setting and
routines and diving into something un-
known. It is a continuous mix between
hands-on work, play and experimenta-
tion, and then a more reflective space for
digging deeper into the learning and the
understanding of what is taking place.”
This emphasis on experimenta-
tion and personal development sets the
school apart from the experience offered
by more traditional institutions. “Put
roughly, in my opinion, the traditional
educational system has shifted towards
serving the machinery of society rather
than the people that constitute it,” Björt
says. “But life does not exist in service of
schools or society—rather, schools and
society should exist in service of life.
And by ‘life’ I don’t mean survival, or
sustaining living standards, or whatever
seems to be the agenda of the day, but
‘life’ as in the feeling of being alive!”
Bilateral learning
The LungA experience is enriched by
the enlisting of well-known figures in
Icelandic art, dance, music and other
disciplines, as workshop leaders. The
students are encouraged to try out each
activity, while the core LungA staff help
guide their experience and progress on
an individual level.
“We look at the overall framework,
and the parts between workshops and
lectures,” Björt says. “We also focus on
connecting the different experiences
for the participants, serving as personal
sparring partners for each of them. We
have talented teachers designing and
leading the workshops, with many years
of experience, so it’s possible for stu-
dents to get really far in a short time.”
The experience has proven inspiring
for the teachers, too, with students pro-
viding the freshness of an untrained eye.
“Many of our teachers mentioned that it
was great for them to work with people
who had little or no experience within
their field,” Björt says. “It was interest-
ing for the teachers to see how they
tackled problems, and what creative
solutions they came up with, from a per-
spective not moulded by years of experi-
ence. The teachers can find it challeng-
ing and valuable to articulate how their
medium works, what it can do, what
makes it special and so on. They seem
to get even clearer on their own work by
being here."
In keeping with this bilateral ap-
proach, the school offers students the
chance to tailor their own learning to
get the most out of their time. “We don’t
tell them what to learn,” Björt says, “but
rather offer the resources so they can
experiment and find out what they want
to learn for themselves. We invite them
and guide them into a program where
they are able to take responsibility for
their own learning and their own jour-
ney."
And whilst Björt is clear that LungA’s
approach is not the only way forward for
arts education, she makes a strong case
for the school as a valuable supplement
to existing universities and art acad-
emies, and as a useful breathing space.
“We have never had access to more in-
formation, more data, more opportuni-
ties,” she says, “and yet we have never
asked fewer questions about the mean-
ing of it all. We’re too busy adapting
and trying to understand the changes
around us, and have no time to under-
stand ourselves. This type of school
offers a space for reflection, contempla-
tion, experimentation and sparring in
the process of asking oneself some of
these questions.”
Seyðisfjörður, Iceland www.lunga.is/school/
15
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2014