Teachers' seminar: Drawing as a form of expression

We aspire to illustrate the importance of drawings and comic strips. The seminar will present ideas for how these genres can be used in several different subjects. Seminar participants will receive LNU’s professional journal Norsklæreren (Teaching Norwegian) 3-2018, in which the topic is discussed by a variety of writers. Our aim is to provide rather concrete, useful ideas through lectures and good discussions. The event is related to the Fritt Ord Foundation Competition for Pupils in Upper Secondary School, which will have drawing as a topic in the 2018/19 school year.

Binding registration through www.frittordkonkurransen.no by 1 November.

The seminar will be organised by the Fritt Ord Foundation in collaboration with the National Association for Norwegian Teaching and NRK School. Coffee and a light lunch will be served.

Presentations:

• Ida Neverdahl: The power of drawing – and some of its problems
• Ingeborg Øvern: Drawings in the classroom
• Morten Harper: A sideways glance and testimonials in the new serial journalism
• Editor Vebjørn Selbekk: The importance of the caricature controversy today

SPEAKERS:

Ida Neverdahl is a young comic strip creator who is behind several publications. ’I’m a girl. It’s fantastic’ (2018) was exceptionally well received. Earlier, she published the series ‘Jello’ and a travelogue through drawings from Moscow and Los Angeles, along with co-author Øystein Runde. She has had comic strips printed in Dagbladet, VG, Pondus and Nemi.

Ida Neverdahl wants to demonstrate the impact of comic strips as a visual medium that plays on the connection between texts and images, and how this type of communication is conducive to spreading information and getting it to go viral quickly on the Internet. She will also show how images, with their simplified messages, also leave more room for misunderstandings and (mis)interpretations.

Ingeborg Øvern is a teacher at the Hartvig Nissen School. She shows how comic strips can be used as a reading strategy and a tool for telling stories in history and Norwegian classes. Through presentations and workshops, we will explore the potential inherent in using drawings in teaching.

Comic strip writer Morten Harper will talk about documentary comic strips and contemporary serial journalism. These genres are in continuous development, offering important testimonials from fields in which we need new voices and a fresh look at the field they represent. Morten Harper runs the website Tegneserier.no and is an adviser to the ‘No to the EU’ organisation.

Vebjørn Selbekk is editor-in-chief of the newspaper Dagen. He was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Magazinet in 2006 and has published the books ‘Threatened by Islamists’ (2006) and ‘The Power of Fear’ (2016) about his struggle for editorial freedom during the caricature controversy and in the years since.