Life in the workshop

By Kåre Birk

The time is almost 8.30 when I swing into the school’s park­ing area and walk directly into the school’s workshop. A couple of students have already pitched up. They are sit­ting there, looking a bit bleary-eyed. That’s what it’s like being young. You are tired in the morning. A few others have prioritised sleep over breakfast and are hurrying straight from their rooms across the courtyard towards the workshop. The usual latecomers arrive five minutes after. That’s how it is. Mikkel walks straight across and stretches out in the hammock. It was late last night, so he just needs half an hour more sleep. But then they say that all Nobel prize-winners were born in a hammock, so there is one we’d like to test.

We are in the middle of a project in the subject Furni­ture, Space & Product, where we have taken the world’s lead­ers as our starting point. Every student has been a coun­try and its leader, for whom they have to design a modern throne. We are calling the project “Game of Thrones” and are basing it on current politics. The throne has to be built of recycled materials and has to underscore, reinforce, pro­voke, underplay, play up against or otherwise be a phys­ical expression of the leader and the country they have been given.

In the woodwork room the machines are already run­ning, and chippings and sawdust fly about, tickling your nostrils and spreading the scent of wood. One student just needs some help with a little project on the side. He is a lit­tle short of space in his room, so he wants to build a shelf that will fit behind his bed. We sort that out, too.

Is Trump more a little child or an American eagle? Is it at all possible to see North Korea’s throne? Should the throne for the Maldives stand under water? How conceited is Macron? Is England a member of the club or not?

Kåre Birk

The students are thinking, drawing, chatting, build­ing and discussing. Is Trump more a little child or an American eagle? Is it at all possible to see North Korea’s throne? Should the throne for the Maldives stand under water? How conceited is Macron? Is England a member of the club or not? And how to get all this translated into form? There are many questions, each with as many answers. At the same time, we know that the thrones will be displayed in an exhibition and that there has to be a description of the project, which briefly explains the design choices that have been made. So it really ought to be done properly.

As the day progresses, the level of activity increases in the workshops. All sorts of ideas are tried out, manufactured, talked about, questioned, tested, laughed about, dismissed as failures and tried again. As we approach the end of the class, the workshops are an inferno of activity, and it looks like they will see yet another long evening, another night. Fortunately, I am to play host at the school after classes are over and have to be here all day, so I hang around and give a hand. While I’m there, a bunch of students from the other subjects also come by. Some of them just to lounge in the sofa and chat, while one needs help in repairing a pair of shoes whose soles have come unstuck, and another comes in to borrow some magnets and some spray paint for a pack­aging assignment.

It is one great melting pot of activity. On the tables, prototypes, cardboard and models are muddled up with coffee cups, smartphones with unread snaps and a couple of half-finished plates with unidentifiable remains of food, as well as the first sections of what will end up as a throne. Right now, everything is chaos, but on Friday, as I know from experience, everything will have come together and we will be able to make a fine presentation, where we can discuss their solutions. Then we will also manage to tidy the workshops again – and get the coffee cups back to the kitchen, so we are ready for another week.

The workshop – living together, talking together

This is largely the way we live together at our school. Life happens in the workshops. In the space between the word and the act. Grundtvig himself said that we have to grasp with our hands in order to grasp with our heads. We take this quite literally, and our teaching is built around creat­ing something together. This is where the talking together starts. This is where edification has its starting point, in working with the subject, specialism, substance, materi­als. First specifically about the product, later more gen­erally about the project, and then gradually it begins to be more about life in general. So why is it, in fact, that we hit the buffers in the middle of a project? What’s it like to work with something, for which there is no ultimate truth or final result? And what does it mean to be a (creative) human being?

Grundtvig himself said that we have to grasp with our hands in order to grasp with our heads. We take this quite literally, and our teaching is built around creat­ing something together.

Kåre Birk

Our entire focus is to foster self-motivated, inde­pendent and free-thinking young people, and this happens largely through work in the workshops. As teachers, we are present here for only a small proportion of the time, for the projects extend far beyond the prescribed teaching time and so students are forced to work by themselves and to make decisions without there being an ‘adult’ present to consult. They have to use themselves and each other, to take some chances and to see and grasp opportunities. Then we can have a talk the following day about the choices they have made and why. It is here in the workshops that we create a shared pedagogical life together.

Togetherness in work

Let me just set up the framework.

We are a specialist folk high school – and we stress the “specialist”. We spend a lot of time on our specialist subjects. Compared to other folk high schools, we have a rather different teaching structure and a different rhythm to our daily life. In a normal week, we have specialist sub­jects on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday – for the entire day. On Wednesday, we have our “vision day”, where other things happen. Furthermore, we have our assembly before lunch (we have no morning assembly), since we have found it works best to get going with our special subjects in the mornings. This means that there really are a lot of hours spent on special subjects, and that means that we can often work for one or more weeks at a time, con­centrating on just one project. This allows us to maintain a focus and gives us the time to go into depth with any cur­rent topics we might want to work on in our subject.

This means that the workshops become a fulcrum for our lives together as a community. We are all familiar with this. The best way to be together or to get to know other peo­ple is to do something together. As a result, in our various subject areas, togetherness becomes both important and necessary. This is where they enjoy each other’s company, where they build, play, rest, work, laugh, chat, listen to music, drink coffee and sometimes sleep. It is a fundamental part of our nature to create things together. To create the society, the family, clan, village or world that we want. Together with others. We can keep talking until the cows come home – but it is only when our hands begin to create something that our thoughts materialise and become a reality.

It is a fundamental part of our nature to create things together. To create the society, the family, clan, village or world that we want. Together with others.

Kåre Birk

The consequence of having a strong sense of together­ness in our subject areas is that a kind of group dynamic is generated, where students form particularly close ties with those they share a subject with. And there is nothing wrong with that. We all need a place where we can belong. We con­stantly identify with certain groupings and distance ourselves from others. And, as I say, this can be both good and powerful.

On the other hand, it can also have an adverse effect on the larger community. For when some students sit work­ing into the small hours or favour their working commu­nity, they can be lost in the larger community of together­ness. This is where they can encounter difference and get to talk about something other than their subject and the chal­lenges they are facing there. This is where we play games, play music, party, sing, dance, kiss, hug, enjoy each other, see films, make food, do the cleaning – all the other things that life at a folk high school also consists of.

Togetherness that broadens horizons

When we meet at a folk high school, on neutral territory, all differences are erased. We no longer belong to any particular grouping defined by age, gender, background, origins and so on. We are suddenly all in the same boat, sharing everyday life and have no choice but to get our lives together to work.

Here a subject and a shared passion or interest can be a natural meeting point. It is here that differences can be dissolved between being an 18-year-old who has just fin­ished a course of further education and is still living at home and being a 25-year-old with a BA in psychology, a steady girlfriend, a dog and a flat. Here everyone can meet in one space, where we all talk and work on the same specialist pre­sumptions. And, as time goes on, our specialisms fade into the background and human, personal, relational aspects become central and subject-related areas take second place.

They learn to deal with the frustrations that inevitably arise in groups. They learn that differences can be difficult, but that it can also be a strength to work in very different ways, at different times of the day and with very different attitudes to deadlines and meetings.

Kåre Birk

For us, one of the most important approaches to this is group work. Here, students are forced to show considera­tion, to make compromises, to discuss, debate, be enthused and build on each other’s ideas. They learn to deal with the frustrations that inevitably arise in groups. They learn that differences can be difficult, but that it can also be a strength to work in very different ways, at different times of the day and with very different attitudes to deadlines and meetings. But that’s how life is. And if they don’t learn it here, early in life, it can be hard later.

Even with more individual projects, however, an environment develops in which students share and where they inspire and help each other. Things are presented in the round and people give feedback on projects. They offer encouragement, challenges and suggestions for changes and improvements. This requires, however, a secure and trusting environment where no one is afraid of failure, where they know each other through and through, and where they can recognise the other and where he or she is when things are not going well, when they are weak, ill, vulnerable or just need a hug and a chat.

This means that it is also only when we feel safe, when togetherness is working, when we dare to throw cau­tion to the winds and swim out of our depth that we dis­cover our limits and find perhaps that we can both float and fly and can do much more than we thought.

This requires, of course, a lot of us as teachers. We have to dare go out with our students and together walk on this new thin ice. Naturally, we have a mass of (life-)experiences, which mean that we may know what we are going to do if the ice does not hold, and we end up in the water. Then we are the ones who will have to throw students their lifebelts and pull them to shore again, give them dry clothes and a warm hug, after which we will try again to find a new way across the ice. It is all about con­tinuing to dare to try, until suddenly the students them­selves become familiar with the ice and can see their own way. And if we teachers are not there to help, then there will always be a crowd of friends along the shore standing ready with a rescue boat.