Changing Play – writing, researching and learning in an early years arts project

Anton Franks,Pat Thomson

doi:10.1080/17457823.2019.1579659

Abstract

ABSTRACT‘Changing Play’ is an ongoing project initiated by education curators from the Serpentine, a prestigious London art gallery, working with the Portman children’s centre nursery. Viewed by curators as a collaboration between artist, children’s centre staff and parents, and the gallery, Changing Play combines art and action research, and expands the boundaries of the gallery. In the words of one of the education curators, ‘the project is about social change’. It is not for the gallery curators to develop proposals but to ‘co-develop work’. Ethnographic evidence employing narrative, visual arts informed analysis is being used by the gallery to report to funders, inform iterative planning and inform future directions. The paper focuses on methodological questions on ways in which ethnographers might meet artistic projects both during and after being in the ‘field’. It takes the form of a ‘loose parts’ montage which reflects the ways in which the art project was conducted.

Highlights

In early childhood, there is no important difference between play and work, art and science, recreation and education - the classifications normally applied by adults to a child’s environment: education is recreation, and vice versa ... (Nicholson 1972, 5)
Sitting against a wall of an outdoor play area attached to a nursery on a warm afternoon in central London, is a researcher, Anton Franks, pen poised, notebook in hand
Part of an early childhood centre, the nursery has for some time participated in a communitybased arts programme run by education curators working out of the Serpentine, a well-known London gallery

Summary

Introduction

There is no important difference between play and work, art and science, recreation and education - the classifications normally applied by adults to a child’s environment: education is recreation, and vice versa ... (Nicholson 1972, 5). Part of an early childhood centre, the nursery has for some time participated in a communitybased arts programme run by education curators working out of the Serpentine, a well-known London gallery.

Results

Conclusion