Björk's environmental campaign goes on the timetable in Nordic schools

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/07/bjork-environmental-campaign-timetable-nordic-schools

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The rising profile of Icelandic singer Björk as an environmental guru of our times is about to be recognised in Europe's schools. A "multimedia exploration of the universe" pioneered by Björk, together with a group of ecology experts, is to be adopted into the curriculums of several north European countries, including her native Iceland. The singing star, who normally spends the first few months of the year in her home in New York, has been in Iceland collaborating with Scandinavian educationalists this spring to draw up the Biophilia Educational Programme.

Her initiative, funded by the Nordic Council, is designed to be non-academic and has already been used in an informal way in Iceland. In an interview with the Observer magazine to be published next week , she said the programme had been "really popular with kids who have ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] or dyslexia" because it gets away from the classroom-bound, traditional nature of the Icelandic curriculum. "Unfortunately, it means we have to sit down and write a curriculum, and that's a contradiction."

The first incarnation of Björk's Biophilia project was a 2010 album which was an ambitious collaboration between app developers, scientists, engineers and a 24-woman Icelandic choir. The stage show of the album toured for three years. Later this year a film of the live show will be released, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. Björk will appear in it sporting a ginger wig and blue facepaint.

Her term "biophilia" is borrowed from the title an influential book by Edward O Wilson, published in 1984, which argued that the human race is designed to live side by side with other life forms. Björk brought out an app that played with Wilson's concept and allowed users to download their songs as interactive educational games.

But this year she has focused on the growing international pressure to use Iceland's geothermal energy to refine bauxite into aluminium. "I want the campaign to get foreign interest," she told the magazine to be published next week. "It can't only matter to us, it needs to matter to everybody to get it stopped."

Environmental campaigning on a national basis is fairly new in Iceland since activism has tended to concentrate on worldwide causes, such as fishing and whaling, identified by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, with Iceland often placed in the role of villain.

The new Reykjavik-based movement is viewed with suspicion in Iceland's Highlands, where many are suffering from the collapse of the fishing industry. Björk admits that she is sometimes accused of being a part-time activist, but said that there is a growing understanding among all sections of Icelandic society that they have something which is worth protecting.

The performer staged a concert featuring fellow big name acts such Patti Smith and Of Monsters and Men and raised 35m Iceland króna (£184,000) for the campaign. "That's a lot of money in Iceland," she said. "We decided we're going to start a national park in the centre of the island, instead of fighting with the rednecks, we'll just get on and do it."

Björk's educational programme began as a series of workshops for students in Iceland and moved to New York in 2012 while the artist held a residency at the New York Hall of Science. A failed Kickstarter campaign last year aimed to create a programme around the world, offering a core syllabus and set curriculum topics to increase pupils' knowledge of nature and science.

The programme has so far been run successfully in Paris, Oslo, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Manchester, Los Angeles and San Francisco.