I grew up in a mid-size town in the middle of Denmark. I grew up with my brother and mother in a house full of looms, arts, yarn, musical instruments, playfulness, cats and dogs. My primary school period was of course a horrible experience with pedagogy of the old days, where time just had to pass. But when I entered high school, things changed. The teachers considered the pupils to be adults with legitimate meanings…. And we made fun things together with the teachers – like: Theatre and music! Wouaw! A whole new world opened up!

During my years in high school, I met two theatre teachers who pointed me in my professional direction. A teacher from De Haag in my local high school who was married to a Danish woman living in Denmark (I am still in contact with him) and an American theatre teacher in the States when I was there for a year as a foreign exchange student. That was so much fun. Can you really make a living out of theatre? I doubted it.

Since I was really bad at acting, I didn’t succeed in getting into the practical theatre schools here in Denmark after the years of high school drama. In stead I went to the academic university degree of theatre studies in Copenhagen. During my studies in Copenhagen, I found out that I could do some of my studies in Lancaster, GB (long before Brexit was even considered to be a thing). So I did. For two years.

For ten tears after my studies, I worked with theatre as a free lance theatre director and as a private theatre-schoolteacher. Those years became the foundation of my pedagogical believes since.

When I teach a new course or a new class, I always tell the students that they aren’t here in school for their own sake, but for the sake of their fellow students, for the sake of the class, for the sake of the profession – and ultimately for sake of the children. Because – like in theatre: we are all depending on each other in order to create solid knowledge. Sometimes, the students understand…..

This year I have been teaching at my university for 25 years……! And I enjoy it every day. I enjoy being with my colleagues, I enjoy being with my students and I enjoy the tasks I have. And mostly – I enjoy having had the international ETEN-vibe in my veins since 2002…..!

My first encounter with ETEN was through teaching at the Myths and Fairytale course as a joint course with Oslo-MET. Over the years it changed name to Creative Storytelling and then again to Playful Learning, Innovation and Citizenship. The basis of this course was the students own devised puppet theatre where they made their own puppets, their own puppet characters, their own storyboard, their own set design and ultimately their own puppet theatre play – to be shown for 100 invited children. They devised and created the whole package on the basis of the classes from the course: Literature, psychology, life philosophy, puppetry, arts, drama, citizenship, play theory, creativity, innovation, culture etc, That way they embodied their theoretical gatherings and made everything more clear to them.

My first ETEN conference was in 2002 in Greenwich, UK – and I became TIG-leader in 2015 after Myths and Fairytale TIG-founder Henning Kopart retired. This TIG is now called Creative Storytelling and a handful of the TIGgies have been joining the TIG for as long as I have.

In 2021 during the pandemic and via an alternative ETEN-zoom-conference I ran for and joined the board. And in April 2024 I became chair of the ETEN board.

I have always thought that joining and working with the ETEN network has been the longest running and most valuable task of my professional life. The vibe, when we meet. The TIG workshops where we generously share good teaching practice and inspire each other. That is what I always bring with me back home to the regular grey Danish educational system. And of course, all the other ETEN-stuff: student- and staff mobility programs, the intercultural understanding, the UCOILDs etc. That is worth fighting and working for in these, for the world peace, dreadful times.

Categories: Creative Storytelling, Portraits, The history of ETEN