Hello dear friends of LungA School <3

Welcome to the return of the newsletter! You are receiving this because you used to receive school updates in the past, because you have been part of the school or because you have shown an interest in the school through another platform, but if you don't want to receive these updates then you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this post.  Also if you know anyone who you think might like to receive it then do suggest they get in touch!

We’re planning to send shorter newsletters out every two months, and will be a summary of some of the things we will be doing and have done. As such, this edition will be somewhat longer than usual as we are catching up on a lot of news that you might otherwise have missed in the newsletter's absence.

Since Heiðdís (Project Manager) and I moved into the office back in the late summer / early fall of 2023, we have seen the first two full iterations of the LAND Program, joining midway through each of the Winter/Spring ART Program in 2024 and 2025; the first iteration new RADIO School, launched as a 10-month, part-time programme in February 2025; and the beta version of the new Digital Library, also this year. We have also developed the new LungA Kitchen, trialled in the spring of 2024, and then fully implemented in both ART and LAND programmes from the fall of that year; a brand new website supported by Uppbyggingarsjóður; and renovations to both the radio room and the wood workshop. More than this of course, not least the many exhibitions, performances and workshops delivered by participants at the school. 

On the 22nd of this month we will see a new group of participants starting the Fall ART Program 2025. This program has been designed with immense care through the collaboration of Aoife Coleman and Mariana Murcia, and I can’t wait for it to land. We have a full cohort preparing to join us, following to record application numbers over the last two years, and look forward to welcoming them to Seyðisfjörður. Our open call has launched for the Winter/Spring ART Program, which will run from January 5th - March 27th 2026, please do share this with friends:

All of these new variations of the school's being have been made possible by the hard work of the school in an expanded sense, including the kindness and support of others outside the school, and for this we are so grateful. This includes invaluable relationships with the Hafaldan Hostel, Herðubreið Community and Cultural Center, HEIMA art collective, Skaftfell Art Center, Skálanes Nature and Heritage Center, the Herðubíó, and the Filling Station, which will make this coming program possible. This school has become an example of a unique and urgent approach to education that institutions around the world are looking to and learning from, but it can only exist as part of a strong and supportive community. In fact, this embeddedness is a major part of why it is so well regarded by artists, educators and institutions in systems and countries where such a school is not possible. So thank you for helping this to be!

Speaking of which, we have also seen a lot of visits to the school as well as invitations for the school to share our work, and I’d like the opportunity to mention some of these in brief:

Per Ingvar Haukeland visited from USN, and saw in the LAND Program examples of accomplishments in teaching as part of a situated place, community and connection of people and environment, that Norwegian university systems, in his view, were desperate to learn from. He recognised in the school how our Program Directors are experts in designing situations in which we can give participants this particular kind of situated learning; bringing local knowledge to the fore and combining old knowledge and new approaches. Per Ingvar, in return, hosted the Directors of our LAND Program at USN, inviting them into the classroom and sharing approaches and teaching fiscalities, and it was clearly a powerful and fruitful experience.

We were visited by the Simon, the Principal, and Brian, the Vice Principal, of Brandbjerg Højskole from Denmark, who commended our particular pedagogic approach in developing programmes that favour a “becoming” school and schooling-together, thereby taking control over individual and collective concepts of knowledge and creativity in place of traditions of delivering a set of pre-defined expectations and outcomes-based assessments. They correctly identified how this is in firm opposition to everywhere else, and how it is increasingly important that a school exists that manages to achieve this in practice. Indeed, they felt we undersold the impact we have on each of our participants: “Nobody will be here in twelve weeks and say that it didn't matter, that it's not life-changing. You can hold your hand to your heart to say that.” Simon is coming back to visit us this fall, along with Lone, Brandbjerg’s teacher in horticulture, campfire cooking, and homemade / wild food.

Ellem (RADIO School Program Director), Lotte (ART School Program Director) and I were invited on a reciprocal visit to Brandbjerg. There was a generosity and transparency to the visit we were so grateful for, and for me particularly to get a first hand experience of a Højskole and understand how this might resonate through the practices and memories that participants often bring from Denmark to LungA School. The visit, like that to USN, gave us so many ideas of things to play with, critique, perform and refuse, and such exchanges are so important to our own schooling.

This May gone, Mariana and Lotte Rose Kjær Skau curated the exhibition It’s no longer possible to map any distance, at the Ausstellungsraum Klingental in Basel, which included a phenomenal range of work from artists they had met through LungA School: Örn Alexander Ámundason, Una Margrét Árnadóttir, Á. Birna Björnsdóttir, Hreinn Friðfinnsson, Vilhjámur Yngvi Hjálmarsson, Þórir Freyr Höskuldsson, Nina Magnúsdóttir, Una Björg Magnúsdóttir, Tumi Magnússon, Toti Ripper, Steina, and Ísar Svan. Mariana and Lotte shaped the situation of the exhibition as they are used to inhabit the school situation, conveying the presence of their praxises, moving through a landscape of associations among thoughts, words, invisible experiences. The process acknowledged collaboration as an act of learning, a symbiotic relation that invites to shape their angles, to hold and embrace or to rest their weight and let go.

Seyðisfjörður was visited by the Sluice Expo, which had previously taken place in cities: London, New York, Berlin and Lisbon. Sluice writes: 

I feel one of the characteristics Sluice shares with LungA School is the continual undermining of our speculative worlds  — as we build them. Because the worlds we are building are self eviscerating, they continually reveal their own guts to examine its intestines. We ask by what we are constituted and to what purpose. This doesn't lead to neat quantifiable outcomes because the answers are different for everyone. But that doesn't mean the questions shouldn't be asked, as asking them clarifies our objectives. Sluice and LungA School are just two clusters in the chaos of cultural production, but perhaps incrementally, in concert with others we inch forward positing alternative ways to be.

This iteration of the expo also included an exhibition built around Heiðdís' installation: The Goose that Ruined Everything, supported by Múlaþing, which was such a delight to bring to Seyðisfjörður from its previous appearance as the centre piece of her exhibition in Akureyri Art Museum, from March to August 2024. A number of the Sluice magazines contain pieces about LungA School , issues on 'Nothing Pure', 'Unlearning' and 'World-Building'. We have copies in the office to look at if you're passing, otherwise they can be found via their web shop:

This iteration of the expo also included an exhibition built around Heiðdís’ installation: The Goose that Ruined Everything, supported by Múlaþing, with some wonderful beers donated to the launch by Beljandi, which was such a delight to bring to Seyðisfjörður from its previous appearance as the centre piece of her exhibition in Akureyri Art Museum, from March to August 2024. 

These are obviously just a few of many other events, activities and visits to and from the school, and from and to other institutions around the world. I know there were many other projects, relationships and situations that the school was involved in in some capacity. I know also that those of us who work here are doing brilliant things elsewhere: whether Hilmar and Heiðdís’s work on the magnificent film Ástin Sem Eftir Er / The Love That Remains, and Signý’s amazing work with Erindrekar, not least at DesignMarch at Norræna húsið in April. 

I was invited to London for the 10 year anniversary of the Freelands Foundation, a non-profit research foundation focused on art education. The event was attended by artist-educators from all of the UK keen to find ways of balancing the expectations of teaching, research and studio practice in what is currently a very challenging climate with significant, existential threats to creative Higher Education courses across the country. I feel that, through sharing my personal impressions of LungA School, I offered them some sense of hope and suggestions of ways in which they could imagine and carve out alternative schools within (or against) the limitations of their own institutions. We mustn't forget when we are here how important the existence of situations like LungA School are to those struggling under the pressure of workloads in institutions around the world that are bowing to industry, and media pressure, to see education first and foremost as an economic exercise. We are a school that offers instead an opportunity for critical thinking, the opportunity for participants to have agency in their own learning and participate in decisions that affect them, and to prioritise community over market forces. Such education is indeed urgent.

These were just a few of many other visits to the school from other institutions around the world, or from the school being invited to share our work with others. As always we know that our school is one that lives and breathes through word of mouth and real generosity. It is a school that can exist only in a world in which people care about one another. And through this we are able to continue to explore, understand and challenge conditions of art-making, living with and in the land that we share, speaking through radio that connects us, and believing in education as a common good.

We are coming to the point where our ERASMUS+ funding that supported the LAND Program and RADIO School is coming to an end. A special thanks to the hard work Björt and Celia put into developing that project. It's been rewarding seeing the ways in which LungA School can, through the LAND Program, contribute to efforts to preserve and find new audiences for local traditions and crafts, and focus on local knowledge and the environment we share with other residents of our beautiful and unique town. The participants from both of these new programmes have been utterly extraordinary and so committed to the spirit of what we do. Going forward we are focused on finding ways to continue the success and investment of the LAND Program. We have learnt so much about what a LAND Program can be, and as we gather all of this work and report and share it we will be looking about what a permanent LAND Program might look like for Seyðisfjörður. Recent changes in the Ministry and its budget for funding education has made the necessary support less than certain. We hope you share this concern and how much value and potential a LAND Program brings to Seyðisfjörður. Our priority is maintaining a sustainable school that lives as part of, and benefits, the community of Seyðisfjörður, and we hope that the Ministry will grow to understand this and support this important work. 

The RADIO School similarly is in need of future support, although it is likely this will come from other sources than the Ministry. It's also been incredible to see how the RADIO School can provide a way of being with us, when distance, time or other obstacles or commitments prohibits them from staying here. So we are looking internationally for opportunities to run a second RADIO School. Our recent membership of the Independent Community Radio Network (ICRN), linking Seyðisfjörður Community Radio FM 107,1 with similar stations around the world, is helping us reach new audiences and improving the reach of what we do. The radio has been significantly upgraded of late, and now runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! This has been made possible by including an archive program in between live transmissions, the latter of which has become considerably more frequent due to the efforts of the RADIO School, as well as both ART and LAND Programs, international guests broadcasting from locations around the world, and radio takeovers. The radio has been pretty busy, whether contributing to Tai Shani’s amazing project The Spell or the Dream at Somerset House, or planning an intense programme with the ICRN to run in Seyðisfjörður from the 10-17th of September, supported by Nordisk kulturkontakt, so there will be a lot of amazing live broadcasts to listen to. The radio will then head to Utrecht to appear in November at the 2025 Le Guess Who? music festival. Last but not least, the radio is here for you as a broadcaster as much as a listener, so please get in touch if you are interested in putting something out on air! It is, as always, free to use, and we are more than happy to help you if you are unfamiliar with how it works. 

A new transmitter is to be installed this month, so if you live in Seyðisfjörður you will be able to tune into us on FM 107,1. Or if not, or you prefer your radio to be via the web, you can find the live stream via the radio's website as well as links to past programming:

Our new LungA Kitchen is in full swing, having fed the last three programs masterminded by artist-cook Gudrita Lape, alongside occasionally guest cooks. It has provided amazing, varied, nutritious and cost-effective meals for the school participants. You may have had the opportunity to taste her delicious and creative cooking in one of the pop-ups she has run over the last few months at Skaftfell Bistro and Ströndin Studio. In the coming semesters I hope that a new collaboration with the Filling Station will now help them provide additional services to the town outside of the summer season, including regular fresh bread and opportunities to eat in, so keep an eye out for those! For the first few weeks of the coming fall, Gudrita will be in an artist residency in Þórsmörk in Neskaupstaður, and so the kitchen will be managed by Amanda Veirum Høgsgaard, joining us from the Friland ecovillage in Denmark.

One thing that has been made clear from the school expansion over these last two academic years is that we must be mindful of the spaces we use and how those spaces are often also spaces used by others. Going forward we are making sure that the spaces communal to the town are used either sparingly (i.e. avoiding regularly booking or occupying spaces others need where possible) or else benefit from the school's use (i.e. repairing or adding to these facilities as part of the school's occupation of them). If you have any ideas or concerns about this, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for your patience in reading to the very end! I promise that subsequent newsletters wont be as long, we had a lot to cover in the hiatus and yet I feel I have only covered a fraction of what has happened. If you want more, I am usually in the school office from Monday – Friday, but you can also contact us by email, with our addresses all visible our contact page, below, but if in doubt of who to ask, drop me an email on [email protected] or if you prefer to call, you can reach us on (+354) 547 5477. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have something you want to discuss!

I hope you had a wonderful summer, please do share our open call, and, if you’re here in town, look out for evidence of the school’s new cohort!

All the best for now,

Mark