“This is me”: Storytelling with students to reveal their mutual entanglements with the “kulturskole”

Abstract

This video article illuminates what stories can be told about kulturskolen — Municipal Music and Performing Arts Schools in Norway — when pupils are the storytellers. The method is based in collaborative, long-term, performative work with a group of students in a particular kulturskole. These students Were asked to consider the question: “What does the phenomenon of the kulturskole do to us?” The primary researcher (Hauen) met with the students once per week for five months and produced videos, recordings, and notes in response to this question. Afterwards, she edited and cut the data in order to analyze the process, drawing on the work of Karen Barad and post-qualitative thinking. This resulted in three important findings, according to the students: togetherness, self- expression, and “perfor-managing.” In the video article, the students tell stories about how they develop these three elements, in the kulturskole and in the world. They ask how the kulturskole phenomenon is relevant to their everyday lives and how it helps them “to find peace and the right way,” as one of them raps in the article. In order to provide additional insight into the methodology of entanglement between researcher and participants (the students and their teacher), a concluding discussion follows the main video.