Child-Free Zones: How KMD Quietly Excluded Mothers from Their Own Studios
In April 2025, the Faculty of Art, Music and Design (KMD) at the University of Bergen (UiB) sent a private message to a student who regularly brought her child to school. The message, framed as an update to health and safety protocols, informed her that children and pregnant women were no longer allowed in workshops, studio spaces, or shared student halls. She was told she could remain only in the cafeteria or the library.
No public announcement was made. No institutional discussion took place. The policy arrived silently — and the effect was total: exclusion without negotiation, without alternatives, and without accountability.
The justification, according to the email, was rooted in UiB’s internal HMS (health, environment, and safety) framework, citing concerns about air quality and potential hazards in shared workspaces. Yet, despite invoking student safety, the school has not provided a list of hazardous materials, nor any formal risk assessment. Most revealingly, there is no alternative solution offered for the affected student — no clean studio, no timeline for accommodation, no plan for equitable participation. The result is that a mother, actively enrolled in the program, has now been denied access to the spaces essential to her education.
This silent enforcement raises urgent questions about inclusion, gender equity, and the institutional responsibility of art schools. KMD claims to be a space for experimentation and critical inquiry, yet its response to pregnancy and care work has been bureaucratic, exclusionary, and indifferent. The reality is that motherhood is being treated as a contamination risk — something incompatible with the institution’s sanitized vision of the ideal student. When an art school cannot accommodate the presence of a baby, it is not protecting safety. It is protecting a narrow cultural fantasy of the isolated, unencumbered, fully available artist.
Despite the administration’s polite tone, the underlying message is clear: reproductive labor is a liability, and students who perform it will not be supported. While the policy claims to be universal, its implementation has been targeted, private, and non-negotiable — and as of now, a student remains without access to her own studio. No formal apology has been issued. No policy has been shared with the broader student body. The institution’s silence is not neutral. It is a message in itself.
In response, dozens of students and faculty have signed a public letter demanding immediate action. The demands are not radical — they are the bare minimum for educational access: a child-friendly workspace, clear material guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding artists, and logistical support to ensure that care obligations do not disqualify students from participation. At its core, this is a call for the institution to recognize that care is not a disruption of artistic practice — it is part of it.
KMD’s treatment of this issue reflects a deeper failure to align its values with the realities of student life. A progressive art education cannot claim relevance if it excludes those who create not just objects, but families. If institutions cannot make space for reproductive bodies, then they are not truly inclusive — they are performative. What happens next will define KMD’s future: will it remain a school shaped by outdated hierarchies and silent gatekeeping, or will it become a space that supports the full spectrum of what it means to be an artist today?
The exclusion of pregnant students and mothers is not a technical issue. It is a political decision. It reveals who is welcome to create — and who is quietly told to disappear.
Strategic Silence: How UiB and KMD Quietly Censor Student Art
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One week ago, KMD sent a message to a student who brings her child to school, stating that children and pregnant women are only allowed in the cafeteria and the library.