Case study Trondheim

The Norwegian centre for traditional music and dance, leading partner of our Dance-ICH project, starts working on the Norwegian case study in collaboration with Rockheim and Ringve – national music museum of Norway, both situated in the city of Trondheim, in the middle of Norway.

The aim for this case study in Trondheim is to search for a sustainable model on developing safeguarding and co-creation strategies between cultural heritage institutions (Sff and Ringve/Rockheim) and heritage communities that best suit the heritage communities aim to safeguard their dancing. The model should aim for methods on responding to bottom-up initiatives, as well as offer guidance on tools such as participatory dancing events, dance pedagogy, and creation of events of practice exhibition(s).

The focus for this case study is the Norwegian folk dances that the general people danced from the 1950s and upwards to today. Even though many of the dances, like reinlender (Shottis), walts, mazurka, polka and the village dance from the region pols are older, other more modern dances as swing, tango, foxtrot, and slow are going to be included as well.

Need for a social arena In Norway

In Norway dance heritage communities are very small in their local communities, however often part of a wider regional milieu. In Norway heritage communities often wish to safeguard participatory dancing across generations and have special attention towards children and youths. Both MiST and Sff have experienced that the younger age groups are splendid target groups for inclusion, representativeness and diversity. Also, students and young adults are in need for meeting places for inclusion and belonging after the corona pandemic.

Today, the social dancing arenas are under threat, social couple dancing in general, comment seniors. Todays’ younger generations don’t get to experience this inclusive arena where you meet people in an intimate but safe place, and the relational learning dancing socially implies. These are important factors to safeguard and transit for the aim of social sustainability for younger generations.

In response to this context, the project partners of Dance-ICH in Norway work to collaborate and co-create with heritage communities to raise awareness, ensure respect, and safeguard their dancing. This co-creative process will take place throughout the year of 2024 and expects to find sustainable structures both internally in strategies and working models for Rockheim, Ringve and Sff, and externally in communicating and facilitating processes and projects, both locally and nationally.