Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our presentation shares learning around young children\u2019s art museum experiences. We highlight how arts and cultural institutions can become dynamic community spaces for fostering creativity, connection, and agency for young children.
\u00a0
Museums and galleries have an important role to play in supporting communities, especially during times of increasing social division. This includes how babies, young children and their families, are seen and supported. Our research builds on the Fitzwilliam Museum\u2019s innovative early years programme to understand how this unique environment can nurture and enable new ways of thinking about childhood, belonging, and the role of culture in fostering inclusive, welcoming communities.
Our work uses qualitative data, generated using participatory and arts-based approaches including observation, photography, scrapbooking, mapping, creative play, and collaborative data analysis to help us understand how children and families experience the Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have identified four key elements of young children\u2019s museum encounters: the building, the collection, the experience, and the atmosphere. Each of these enables multiple possibilities for young children and those who care for them to think differently, challenge existing narratives, and engage with something new. Children can become leaders and decision makers within their families; adults can re-consider themselves as learners; experiences can be shared with members of communities we may not encounter anywhere else: and we can connect with people, places, and times beyond our immediate everyday world. This opens up space to be and to think differently, making hope possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n