CON • TEXT - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo - AHO

R E S E A R C H I N G D K Showever the region sees fit. The remaining 20% of the lottery money goes tothe national art institutions. The responsibility for managing the money andorganise the DKS program locally is left to fylkeskommunane — the regions(Kristiansen 2007). How they organise the program locally will differ fromregion to region. It is not mandatory to use the services offered. Themunicipalities can choose to use the DKS program or not, and the schoolscan decide to be independent. Some schools consciously choose to stayoutside the programs i.e. develop their own strategies regarding culture in theeducation outside DKS, but will then receive no funding (Kristiansen 2007).To handle the daily running of the DKS-program, there has been appointed aSecretariat. This administrative body is placed within Statens senter forarkiv, bibliotek og museum (ABM) — the State organisation for archive,library, and museum. They handle the reports and plans presented from theregions. This organisation has other primary tasks than managing the DKSprogram— among them working for the betterment of their area of expertise,namely archive, library, and museum (Borgen and Brandt 2006). They will inthis setting be referred to just as ABM Secretariat. 17 There is no formaldemand for any evaluation at local or regional level, however, severalnetworks have been established at regional level to discuss and evaluate theresults, to learn from each other. There are no set guidelines for how to reportor evaluate the quality of the program, just the activities executed. This issent from every region to the ABM Secretariat. As it is not mandatory toevaluate, this is dependent on regional or municipal initiative, and is notsystematic. The organisation and routines for funding might seem confusing,as there are several levels that are involved in both. I will not enter into amore comprehensive description of organisational aspects. This has beendone thoroughly in other studies (Borgen and Brandt 2006; Kristiansen2007). I will focus on the collaborative aspects when artists and A&Cteachers inhabit the same professional situation, and how the professionalchoices and justifications are initiated and are communicated to the publicoutside the program through narratives of the professional practice.Parallel Programmes AbroadDen Kulturelle Skulesekken is not the only programme of its kind. It hasbeen claimed by artists and politicians (Skjelbred 2007) that it is a unique,and local, Norwegian phenomenon. However, in the US, the Artist-in-Residence program is highly similar to DKS both in organisation,administration and practice. It has existed in some form since the 60s, and hasbeen formalised since the early 80s. Evaluations have been performed17 The administration of the DKS program will be restructured, but as this process is still under hand at thepresent time I cannot address the changes.9