Young children have become an increasingly important audience for museums around the world. While many cultural institutions offer something for children, approaches and practices towards this audience vary dramatically across…
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…
‘We play because we are human, and we need to understand what makes us human, not in an evolutionary or cognitive way but in a humanistic way. Play is the…
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…
This post explores 'Noguchi's Playscapes' - an exhibition on display at SFMOMA from July 15–November 26, 2017.
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…
Over the next month, I am going to have a go at writing a handful of posts on techniques for facilitating young children’s creative learning with and through art. Each post will…
