Access to a Diversity of Cultural Expressions through Initiatives Focused on Special Groups - Children and Youth
Denmark has a long and firmly-rooted tradition of ensuring that children, young people and their families have a large choice of cultural experiences based on breadth, versality, and quality. Denmark also has a very strong tradition of dissemination of culture at the level of children and young people and continues to have this as a focus area in cultural policy.
Among the initiatives related to arts education, the "House of Artist Programme" should be mentioned. The Danish Arts Council provides support for schools which cooperate with professional artists within the fields of literature, the performing arts, the visual arts, and music. The main purpose of the "House of Artist Programme" is to give pupils an insight in aesthetic and artistic work and creative processes. Another important initiative is LMS - Live Music in the Schools. LMS is a non-profit organisation funded by the Danish Arts Council aiming to offer high quality live music to schools all over Denmark. This is done through school concerts, classroom visits by musicians and composers and other activities that give the pupils a deeper understanding of the professional music scene (http://lms.dk/english.asp). Finally, a reimbursement agreement between the state and th municipalities is established to ensure access for all children to theatre performances in the schools.
The Network for Children and Culture is the advisory body of the Minister and the Ministry of Culture for children's culture. The network consists of representatives of the Danish Agency for Culture, the Danish Film Institute, the Ministry of Children and Education, and the Ministry of Social Welfare. The main task of the Network of Children and Culture is to create greater cohesion in the state allocations for children's culture and greater totality in working with the many facets of children's culture.
The Danish Centre for Culture and Development DCCD is the organizer of Youth Programme aimed at developing the creative competences, cultural understanding, and identity among Danish school children and young people (aged 14-18) .The Youth Programme presents workshops and education projects with artists from developing countries. It has a focus on creative workshops within new and experimenting art forms, including rap, hip-hop, pocket movies, break-dance, krump, street art, slam poetry, VJ graphic, afrobeat, sound art and viral art, which involve artists from e.g. Afghanistan, Uganda, Palestine, Egypt, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, and Mauritania. The program includes teaching materials, and it is linked to social networks in order to strenghten the dialogue between the young artists in Denmark and in the developing countries.