Adults can play an important role in supporting children’s creativity by interacting with them in ways that open up new possibilities for learning. This post talks about what a suggestion…
In 1972 Simon Nicholson, the son of artists Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, presented the idea that young children’s cultural participation comes from the presence of open-ended ‘loose part’ materials that can be…
This post looks at the art of Rachel Whiteread, a contemporary British sculptor who creates objects and spaces using different materials such as resin, plaster, concrete, rubber and plastic. Her…
This post discusses the symposium presentation ‘Material play: children’s learning with new, found and recycled ‘stuff’ given by Professor Pat Thomson, Nina Odegard and Louisa Penfold at the Australian Association for Research…
In this post I consider the gap between academics/non-academics in children's art education. A contestable claim but something I believe is worthy of further discussion. I reflect upon my experience of moving from working as a full-time learning curator in an art museum to full-time PhD researcher and what I have learnt along the way.
I was fortunate enough to recently spend a month in California, mainly in and around San Francisco. During this time I visited a handful of children’s learning spaces and met…
This post explores the work of the late Italian artist, Bruno Munari (1907-1998). Munari was a self-proclaimed 'inventor artist writer designer architect illustrator player-with-children' (The Independent, 1998) whose creative practice intertwined with the education philosophies of Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori.
In 1968 the Moderna Museet, Stockholm and artist Palle Nielsen created The Model – a social experiment involving 20,000 children, an indoor playground and no rules. The Model positioned children’s play as…
This is a repost from the Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies (CRACL) blog. The original post was written by Pat Thomson, Professor of Education within the School of Education,…
