A semester at Krabbesholm Højskole in Skive, Denmark is a tour de force through experiments, lectures, discussions, workshops, exhibitions, parties, excursions, concerts, conversations, swimming trips in the fjord, walks in the forest, delicious food and much, much more. The Danish High School Caters for Students from Several Nations.
Creativity, community and special interaction are at the heart of the teaching at the school in Skive, northern Denmark. The school for adults focuses on courses in art, design, architecture and visual communication. The højskole concept dates back to the 19th century and is uniquely Danish. Krabbesholm Højskole was founded in 1885.
Partly funded by the government, the højskole institutions occupy a special niche between a secondary school and a university, and students of all ages can spend six months to a year receiving a different kind of education in almost any subject. Krabbeskolen is, however, one of the few that focuses on the creative industries.
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The school teaches five main subjects: arts, architecture, graphic design, product design, and photography. The school is recognized as having high academic standards and a creative environment.
Going to Krabbesholm does not require any special prerequisites. Here you can explore, develop and strengthen your skills within art, architecture, design and visual communication. You can practice together, strengthen your self-esteem, and learn to look at the world with even more open eyes.
There are no exams, no grades and no degrees at the end of it. There aren’t even admission requirements. Students and teachers live at the school, where they are encouraged to participate in community living through singing in the morning assembly, sports activities and philosophical discussions.
“At Krabbesholm, we are interested in the history that has not yet been written. We look for currents that point towards new forms of life and relate to today’s problems, sustainability, democracy, gender and sexuality,” is a statement on the school’s website.
The school is located in the Krabbesholm manor, which dates from 1565. The manor is composed of several farms that were inherited by Magdelene Banner, who then gave it to her husband Ivar Crabbe, after whom the farm is named.
Facing the Skive fjord, the school has gradually expanded over the years to include workshops for carpentry, ceramics, sewing, analogue photography, and printmaking. The majority of the 122 students are between the ages of 18 and 24 and from Denmark and Norway. Some of them focus creating a portfolio to apply to art school but most of them see their time here as part of a gap year, an opportunity to explore crafts they wouldn’t normally have access to.
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The school is home to the Four Boxes Gallery, designed by Japanese architects Atelier Bow-Wow, a three-storey building conceived as four stacked boxes used to exhibit work by both students of the Krabbesholm Højskole and invited artists.
“We present you with traditional craftsmanship as well as new, digital techniques. Our workshops and fantastic, architect-designed drawing rooms are open for you around the clock. Here you will experience a warm, social and supportive community outside the normal teaching hours. Krabbesholm is also a way of being together that is creative, innovative, and supportive,” states the management.
It’s an outlook tied to another untranslatable Danish word often referred to at Krabbeskolen; “dannelse”. Similar to the German “Bildung”, it can be described as a kind of “self-cultivation” – a personal journey involving education and philosophy. This means no subject is taught for its own sake. Instead they must be connected to to their impact on the words, an approach that is helping Karbbesholm deliver a new generation of socially conscious designers.
Krabbesholm is avant-garde, freedom and punk. Rebellion, passion and commitment. Only the imagination sets limits and that the release of the students’ creative potential is a gift for life.
Danish High Scholl Caters for Students from Several Nations, written by Tor Kjolberg