Start of studies 2025: rector’s speech

This is the third time I have had the pleasure of welcoming everyone to a new academic year here at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and I am so incredibly happy to do so. Why? Because it gives me the chance to let it be known that this is truly a good place to be – right now, at the present moment in time, with everyone here.

My name is Marianne Skjulhaug and I am the school’s rector.

Dear new students – you are playing the leading roles today! On behalf of KHiO, I would like to express my gratitude that you in particular chose to study here. Everyone who works here knows that it has by no means been an easy path – the auditions and tests are nerve-wracking, and the wait seems never-ending before finally getting that letter of acceptance. I assume that you all spent the spring going through that demanding process until your place here could be confirmed. Thank you for all of you seeing that race through to the finish line. You have my full respect!

Throughout the summer, I have followed local media reports from all over Norway, where several of you have been interviewed about starting your studies at KHiO. I’m impressed by how you so clearly express a strong desire to create something new, to be involved in a given artistic field in order to develop your particular specialty. When you have that inner motivation, you can just let it rip.

I hope you will give yourself the time to explore things, both broadly and wildly – to commit yourself whole-heartedly and shoot for the stars, without any fear of making mistakes along the way.

Now you are here at KHiO and will use the next few years to develop your own art – art that will have an effect and influence people in a challenging world.

This challenging world notwithstanding, art has for century after century shown the ability to remain relevant and renew itself – to be free and independent of political regimes, wars and crises. Art does not go bankrupt or become absurdly old-fashioned. Art endures. No era is left poor and artless.

KHiO has a particular social mission, namely ‘to educate performing and creative artists and designers, carry out artistic and academic research at a high international level and spread knowledge about the Academy’s activities, operations and values’.

I am immensely happy that KHiO has such a social mission. For me, it means not least that the art education here should – as a matter of course – help shape both the present and the future.

This is something that the Minister of Research and Higher Education, Sigrun Aasland, also underlined when she visited KHiO in June and spoke about how ‘crucially important it is to have an art education, especially when the world is going through troubled times’, as most of us feel is the case right now.

I hope and believe that your time studying here will be an immersive experience, and that it will develop a practice that feels impossible to set aside. I hope that KHiO will continue to be a venue where new insights are created. The performance artist Kurt Johannessen once encouraged us to ‘think about something you don’t know’. For me, this single sentence embraces the entire power of art. It is a reminder of the open and the inquisitive, of the things that challenge and move us. We should strengthen and cultivate that power, because artistic and academic freedom is never a given. These are priceless freedoms that infuse us, as human beings, with vitality and meaning.

So, in short: go full speed ahead, break a leg – not literally though – and good luck to you all!