Aurora Verksted

Aurora Verksted SA is a private, social cooperative that was founded in 1987 by Trine Dreyer that provides a sheltered workshop for people with different abled bodies and the neurodiverse. We collaborates with the municipalities of Oslo and Bærum through public contracts that enables us to provide supported employment. From the very beginning Aurora Verksted SA was founded on the belief that to provide people with a meaningful job, and a place for creative output, is also a possible solution to converse and solve a series of both social and societal problems. At Aurora Verksted we believe that by providing meaningful work, where we all collaborate through discussion, design and production, we create a community that teaches everyone involved how to collaborate, see, understand each other, and the value of each persons very own outlook on life.

Since the beginning there has always been a department at Aurora Verksted SA that focuses on visual art, where unlike the other departments, there is not a focus on production, but the focus is wholly and solely on each individuals own unique artistic expression. We work within a studio setting, where each artist formulates their own set of questions and set of expressions, where we also guide and help them when it comes to techniques, questions, and doubts. Many of our colleagues have never been able to freely express their thoughts visually, and often not at all, and in the cases where they have, they have not been taken seriously, as an expression of a unique world view, a specific way of telling a truth about an experience of living that gives grounds for further conversation and understanding.

At the department of art, there is no «right» way of making, only their own way of making and expressing, where a series of group discussions, collaborations between artists, and the whole process is shaped by the group as a whole, where each individual creates and formulates their own set of artistic tools, expressions, and artworks