Dear Norwegian Theater Academy,

With love and respect for your work and upbringing of the generations of students and alumni that successfully work in the field of contemporary performing arts, we need to challenge the way you share information about the job applications for the newly open permanent positions in your institution.

A short summary of the situation

What has previously been fixed-term contracts for 4 years at the time (renewable twice so 12 years altogether max) will now become permanent positions. This applies to the two positions (both 100%) as Artistic Leader for Scenography, Artistic Leader for Performance and a 60% position as associate professor of Voice and Acting. Though the applications have been opened since March 7 on the website of the university college (hiof.no), jobbnorge.no and nav.no with a deadline for March 22, the school has not promoted the jobs elsewhere, as they have expressed the wish to strengthen the institution by hiring the current employees for these permanent positions. The job applications are not posted on any Facebook pages, nor on common platforms such as finn.no, scenekunst.no or any other international websites, and not even shared in an email to alumni, current students and staff. This promotion strategy has been addressed a few days ago by some of the current students, asking for the school to share the applications in all the possible places as mentioned above, and to translate them to English in order to reach out to as many qualified applicants as possible, but this proposal was fully rejected.

This is highly problematic and positions of this importance cannot be open in such short notice, with such a short deadline, only in Norwegian and not shared on more professional and social platforms!

As much as we respect NTA administration, leaders and teachers, we believe it is fair and justified that opportunities such as these should reach out to all the possible applicants and artist in the field, in order to get the best possible candidates for the institution. To clarify we wish to point out that this is not meant as a criticism towards the current employees in these positions.

With this letter we call for a transparent behavior and open procedures from NTA and thoroughly question the selection process.

- Who will be in the selecting committee for such an important potentially life-lasting position?

- Will they ever be revised?

- How often, how and by whom will these permanent positions be revised?

* 

Therefore we kindly ask you to postpone the deadline, translate the job offer to English and publish it widely on all possible professional platforms and social media available.

* We have removed a part because it confused the point of this petition. We are aiming to question the ideology of the institution, not individuals. This should not have happened and we apologize.