Outpost II - Þúsund þakkir Bodø!

We are back in Iceland after an inspiring week with incredible kids in Bodø, Norway! It was surprising to see that the plants in Bodø were really similar to those in Iceland, but the landscape was different. Yet it all felt very familiar. Norwegian people are so hospitable and kind, they are friendly and often said Hi to us in the street, even though we did not know them! Perhaps kindness is essential to living so far north.

In Bodø we spent four days working together on new music and we had four really inspiring workshops with kids studying fine arts at Bodø Kulturskole. We had written music to their art beforehand and we had written three pieces together on the theme “light:dark” that we played for the kids while they were drawing. The kids seem to be very inspired by the music and had a lot to say about their experience of living in such extreme darkness and lightness conditions, both through their drawings but also in words. They told us that “shadows may have light” and that they heard “scared eyes” in the music. Some thought the music was scary, so they made pictures of ghosts and witches. Others drew Christmas lights because they thought the dark reminded them of Christmas. The pictures were all colorful, so it’s clear that the darkness isn’t all bad after all. It will be an interesting to compare the conversations with the kids from Bodø to the conversations with kids from Iceland about light and dark!

On the fourth day we had a concert exhibition where all the art was shown and we played all the music we had worked on. It was so inspiring for us to see how creative and open minded the kids were and to see their reaction to contemporary music. Their thoughts and ideas about light and dark were really mature and interesting. We really hope that we did inspire them to process their thoughts through and with art.

Ásbjörg and Eygló