Where is the knowledge strategy for adults?

Where is the knowledge strategy for adults? As an adult I've decided that I want to learn more about classical music, about theater, about literature. I want to read Wergeland and understand him... Where do I go? Where are the universities with exciting lecture series that they stream? Where are the NRK programs with poetry readings? Where is Fjernsynsteateret? Arts school for adults?

More generally I wish there were more opportunities for adults to learn to appreciate/understand culture more systematically. There are lots of events and talks etc, but very few courses, or opportunities to go deep. And that goes for both digital and local. Which universities in Norway put out a whole lecture series on art history, literary history? Many foreign universities do, and have ambitious radio programs with many episodes. (Norheim og Hoem fortel litteraturhistoria was a great initiative, but way too short). Love the approach of focusing on one text in each program, reading parts of the text aloud, having music etc.

From a letter to a literary critic at NRK, February 2025

The fact is that we have a lot of adults — most of them — who didn't grow up with, and who don't feel at home at, grown-up theater, a classical music concert, the opera, with reading older or more literary books, etc. And I've gotten very interested in how we can both motivate and help people to take that step well into adulthood.

Three questions for Hamar

So I'm thinking about what you could do politically here. There's a thought buzzing around in my head about "arts school for adults", but I haven't developed it any further...

The radio

I like listening to classical radio in the car, but it's just unbelievable how much more ambitious foreign channels are when it comes to teaching their listeners... I'm listening to a series of 9 hour-long episodes on "Dante in musica" from Italian radio, which takes me through different periods and how Dante has been interpreted... They also have a series called "Sound from the centuries", and lots of other deep dives and thematic series like that...

The series: Dante in musica, Rete Toscana Classica · Alle otto della sera, Rai Radio 2, the whole archive

What about a series of programs that introduces Norwegian folk music through the ages? Systematically? Or Grieg — I'd love to hear four hour-long programs about him. Romanticism abroad and how it influenced Norway... Now that a lot of people listen by podcast and there's a hunger for longer and deeper programs I think something like that could be popular.

And if you didn't grow up in a family of artists, how are you supposed to learn about music history — both classical and folk music? Great that you can find everything on Spotify, but how can you learn? Get inspired?

The study that should have been done

I'm very fascinated by how people receive their "cultural Bildung" or cultural capital... I look around me at the people sitting at an Ibsen performance in Oslo, at the Philharmonic... People who go to the opera... It would be really fascinating to do a study where you work your way backwards. One thing is of course demographics and social class etc, but it would be really interesting to do some in-depth interviews about how people got into it — what they brought with them from school, from marching band, from TV, from the internet, from their family... Is there anybody in Norway doing research on this kind of thing?

Yes we're a small country, but we're rich, with big public institutions, universities and media houses, and objectively speaking a pretty big culture budget.

Cinema and stage for Hamar is in The whole world to Hamar

More on this: Adult beginners