Abstract
Children’s lived experience of many public institutions, such as museums, still tends to be constructed by adults for rather than with them. Even in play, dedicated spaces are increasingly commercialised and organised with children having little say in the type of activities they are involved in. This is in stark contrast to the effort being put into improving access and promoting inclusivity in many of these sites, and a wider narrative, especially in the Global North, of developing children’s agency and encouraging them to become active citizens. Children’s agency is relational and performed through social relations within different spatial and temporal contexts. Part of these spatial and temporal contexts are influenced by what some scholars call ‘imagined geographies’. For Edward Said, how we imagine people and places helps shape our understanding of the environment we live in and defines ourselves. And, as Maxine Green has suggested, it makes empathy possible and permits us to give credence to alternative realities. But what might these alternative realities look like in the context of how children construct and use some public institutions? And how can inclusive spaces allow children to create counter discourses and resist adult hegemonies? This paper highlights some of the imagined geographies children create. Based on qualitative research undertaken with a class of 6-7 year old children in Helsinki around creating and packing a ‘box’, it considers some of the motivations and preferences of children and possible tensions with the practical and symbolic ownership of space by adults.
Presenters
Kemal AhsonSenior Researcher, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Museum Transformations: Pathways to Community Engagement
KEYWORDS
CHILDREN, IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES, AGENCY, INCLUSIVITY, SPACE
