Visual rhythms: facilitating young children’s creative engagement at Tate Liverpool

ABSTRACT

This paper sets out to demonstrate the creative engagement of a group of three and four year old children at Tate Liverpool Art Gallery and how this was facilitated. The paper starts by providing background on the project at Tate Liverpool and to a pedagogy of engagement. In doing so its value of creative engagement within the context of gallery education and the perceived barriers that can sometimes prevent or restrict young children’s engagement are acknowledged. It progresses to show how artworks were used as provocations for encouraging children’s creative engagement as part of workshops in the gallery space and the creative engagement signs that were observed. Vignettes of children’s spontaneous responses are used to illustrate and analyse their engagement, and how this was facilitated by artists. Most significantly, the paper presents ‘visible rhythms’ as a new phenomenon or ‘signs’ of creative engagement. Through a facilitation of curiosity and self-discovery over sustained periods of time, as part of an environment where power is shared, children’s engagement was observed as they expressed themselves through their ‘visible rhythms’.

KEYWORDS:

• Gallery education
• early years
• arts-based learning
• creative
• engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.