New initiative in Skåne will fight against cultural isolation

25 of the region’s music and culture schools will cooperate to offer a more varied curriculum

These past few months we have been hearing plenty about isolation. A new initiative that will take place in the southernmost Swedish region of Skåne wants to fight isolation, too, but this time it has got nothing to do with sanitary matters for a change.

An association called Nätverket Skåne (The Network Skåne) has recently been granted funding from the Swedish Arts Council to develop an inter-municipal project that will involve 25 music and culture schools across the region. They will try to coordinate their curricula so young people will have access to a wider selection of courses than before.

The idea of coordination originated at the Kulturskolan Lund

The building on the photo is the seat of the Kulturskolan Lund (Culture School of Lund), which is a famous institution in the university town of Lund offering municipal courses in music, arts, dance and theatre to children and young people. In essence, this is an institution which serves to stimulate and develop the cultural interests of the local youth.

These kinds of extracurricular services are offered in other municipalities, too. The problem is that each school tends to specialize in different areas and genres which means that it cannot offer students the full spectrum of activities that might ideally match their interests and talents.

“We see a need for more and better meeting places for culturally interested children and young people where their interests can be developed together with other like-minded people. Today we see large differences in the breadth of subjects offered to children living in different municipalities. We want to change that,” said Annika Kharraziha, unit manager at Kulturskolan Lund.

Coordination between schools is seen as the remedy to this deficiency. The idea is to create inter-municipal activities which will allow children to choose a new and different subject. This could vary from things, such as playing the oboe or speed metal bass guitar to managing a film collection or dancing ballet.

Relying on voluntary coordination between municipalities is generally ineffective and does not work well as commitment might be lacking in the long term. However, the new initiative will count with a specially appointed coordinator whose job will be to make sure that these complex partnerships will be formalized.