Should young people really be allowed to have their say?

How do young people actually view theater and dance that is made 'for' them? Does this art manage to touch - to mean something to young people? And not least, can we create a space for reviews and reflection from young people themselves?

This was the starting point for Scenekunstbrukets project, which became SUS - Scenekunstbrukets unge stemmer.

As adults, we want to advise children so that they are best equipped for the future, and it's important that we can set out some signposts along the way for them. In the same way, it's important to listen to their advice and views.

In connection with Scenekunstbruket's performing arts festival Showbox, six tenth graders from Nittedal ungdomsskole have followed the festival before, during and afterwards. They attended performances and wrote their own blog with reflections, reviews, interviews and thoughts.

Performing arts and Norwegian
For the pupils who took part, SUS gave them credit in their Norwegian lessons. The pupils signed up for the project with their contact teacher, and beforehand we had conversations with the principal and contact teacher about the implementation. Instead of a school exam, the students handed in some of the texts they had written, along with reflections on the process. This also gave the school the opportunity to try out portfolio assessment as an alternative to the exam. Both the school and the FAU have been positive about the project and the opportunity to use it as a non-traditional form of examination. For the school, it has been important to be able to link the project to learning objectives in Norwegian or new electives such as theatre, media and information and international cooperation.

Why a youth blog?
Among the young people, blogging has engaged them on several levels. Some are involved in dancing and singing themselves, others are most interested in the writing process, while some wanted to have their own views on performing arts challenged. The blog has given them the opportunity to think about how their texts are read and who they are writing for. Among other things, the young people wrote a post in which they themselves reflected on giving a dice roll - in their case cuddly bears(!). Among other things, it said: "We were afraid that those who read our posts would only look at the grade, and not at what we wrote. That it would prevent others from reading our opinions about the play."

An important input for us adults, who often just resign ourselves to the fact that dice rolls are given. For our bloggers, it sparked an important discussion.

Out in the field
We initially planned for the bloggers to work from an editorial room at Black Box Teater, where many of the performances at Showbox took place. But in a theater house filled with festival, there was nothing available. And how good it turned out to be! The six young people set up an editorial team in one of the sofa groups in the foyer, where they wrote, conducted interviews and, not least, discussed among themselves. In the beginning, they were largely left alone by the other festival-goers, who admittedly commented to us how impressed they were with how hard the young people worked and how committed they seemed.

What is quality?
The performance Uten Genser was a turning point. It offended some of the adults, but the young people really liked it! And with that, the dialog between the young people and the professionals at the festival started, both Norwegian and international. For Scenekunstbruket, it has always been important to see performances together with the target group. That's not always possible at Showbox, but with SUS we got a direct reaction that made it possible to discuss with a target group, right away! What did the disagreement actually consist of? Is something of low artistic quality just because adults don't like it? Why weren't the young people outraged by Uten Genser? Why were some of the adults offended? Could it be that it was about something other than youth vs. adults, or quality vs. banality?

Read the SUS blog's review of Uten Genser here :

Experience with SUS shows that young people don't just choose simple and flat performances with high entertainment value and low educational value, as adults might fear. On the contrary, they are able to go into depth, cope with being challenged and explain their points of view well. Of course, we adults can choose to disagree with them, without that being a good reason not to listen.

Desire for involvement
In many schools, students can take on "jobs" as cultural hosts. Tasks vary from school to school, but what they all have in common is that the cultural hosts help solve practical tasks related to visits from the Cultural Rucksack. During Showbox, the young people involved in SUS made the following heartfelt statement: "Imagine if the cultural hosts could be involved in selecting what we get to see, not just serving coffee!" We know that this works differently from school to school, but it certainly says something about the desire to be involved.

Of course, SUS is not intended to replace the artistic council or professionals in the field of performing arts, but we are convinced that feedback from the target group is also important and can help to adjust Scenekunstbruk's and others who work with performing arts for children and young people's views on what appeals to the younger audience.

Continuation
SUS was a pilot project this year. It will now be evaluated and we hope to continue it, not only during our Showbox festival, but also as an ongoing project where young people all over the country can blog about the school performances they have seen and their experiences. We want the audience of the Cultural Rucksack to be able to reflect on their art experiences, and it's interesting for those of us who work with artistic expression for children and young people to be able to observe these reflections.

In this way, the target group can provide those of us who work with the dissemination of performing arts for children and young people with important benchmarks in our efforts to provide them with a good cultural offering.

Editorial by Ådne Sekkelsten and Elin O Rekdal.