Scenario by Line Bøhmer Løkken

posted by: Tone Hansen

Sandaker School, 2009, is a long-term project by the Norwegian artist Line Løkken, where a school and its students are portrayed. For the third scenario of Learning for Life nine photos from the series and a book is presented. Sandaker School was designed by architect Finn Bryn and opened in 1959. At the time the school was finally completed in 1964 it was one of the largest and most expensive schools in Norway. The school was a crowning achievement for Oslo Municipality due to its architecture and to the educational strides it signified. Sandaker was an experimental school for trying out new ideas to develop a better school model. The motto was, and still is, a school for everyone with a social and pedagogical focus on the individual student, regardless of their background. Today, Sandaker School offers educational programs at high school level for both trade specialisation and for college preparation, with approximately one hundred employees and places for nearly six hundred students. The school has regional responsibility for the hearing-impaired, and it offers special education programmes for students with learning disabilities. Sixty-five percent of the school’s students are language minorities. Few high schools in Norway have a student body that is as diverse as Sandaker. Recently, the Oslo Municipality passed legislation to transform the entire school into an elementary school in 2012, and Sandaker’s high school students will be moved into new facilities in Nydalen along with Grefsen high school students. Line Bøhmer Løkken Sandaker School, 2009