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

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Modes of ethnographic research
• ethnographic writing
• community-based arts and play
• gallery sponsored community-based arts and play
• community-based arts and play curation
• community-based arts and social change

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Anton Franks http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9144-3485

Pat Thomson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4801-0000

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.