Abstract
The Art & Wonder: Young Children and Contemporary Art Research Project is a collaboration between the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, and Macquarie University, working with children, families and teachers from Mia Mia Child and Family Study Centre, and Lalor Park Kids Early Learning (Blacktown City Council). Our research explores how very young children encounter contemporary art in a gallery space, and how rich pedagogy might emerge from these encounters. There is an emphasis on revisiting and returning over time – building connections and establishing relationships with spaces, materials, artists, artworks, and exhibitions. The reflexive reshaping of pedagogical approaches and work with/in early childhood pedagogy has also transformed the ways in which other educational programs with older school groups and adults at the gallery are now designed and facilitated. In this paper we focus on the effects of very young children’s visibility in a public cultural institution; their participation rights as cultural citizens; notions of reciprocity (revisiting, returning, establishing reciprocal relationships with artists, educators, materials, artworks…); and pedagogically, the ways physical and metaphorical open spaces can be created in the context of a large contemporary art museum, within which very young children’s embodied responding to complex aesthetic experiences can take flight in generative, rich, and unexpected ways.
Presenters
Amanda PalmerEarly Learning Coordinator, Audience Engagement, Museum of Contemporary Art, New South Wales, Australia Clare Britt
Honorary Lecturer, Macquarie School of Education, Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
ECEC, Museums, Galleries, Contemporary, Art, Children, Pedagogy
