Engaging Young Children and Families in Gallery Education at Tate Liverpool

Abstract

Beyond Words: Engaging Young Children and Families in Gallery Education at Tate Liverpool, is a three-year ethnographic case study that explores what happens when preschool children, parents and nursery practitioners from a Sure Start Children's Centre, visit Tate to participate in an extended series of gallery visits and workshops with artists. This article explores the potential value and tensions of those creative and cultural experiences, particularly for young children and families, by critically examining different perspectives, discourses and possible constructs of effective creative engagement. This research contributes to the debate on ways of engaging children and families from marginalised communities in cultural visits and creative practices by opening up existing discussions on poverty, matters of inclusion, negative stereotypes and dominant educational discourses. Insights from parents are included and their feelings are related to the 'symbolic violence' often felt by parents and children throughout their education from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This research explores how Tate Liverpool developed relationships with a diverse family audience, through developing relationships with children and adults over repeated visits, as an important way for offering continuity and a sense of belonging, particularly for families who may not traditionally visit art galleries. In doing so, it makes a case for galleries to be considered as democratic, inclusive and rhizomatic learning environments, where artist educators act as 'dreamkeepers'. Dreamkeepers can offer the space for extra emotional, social and intellectual support needed for healing from educational injury and for restarting a learning journey.

It's our museum too: co-producing research in a university museum through a nursery residency programme

“…Sadly, the failure to do this might have compounded the sense in some of the playgroup staff that the museum was not a place for them or the children in their care. Wright also found practitioners were uncomfortable visiting the gallery with young children within their project at Tate Liverpool (Wright, 2020). She reflects on the inherent tensions within pursuing a co-constructive, child-led and embodied approach in a gallery space which is perceived as being hands-off and laden with rules (p. 747).…”

La inclusión social en los museos de arte chilenos: Un análisis de los factores de accesibilidad, diversidad y equidad

“…Algunos artículos se acercan desde la perspectiva del aprendizaje global en los museos (Candlin, 2003;Falchetti, 2020;Ismaeel y Al-Abdullatif, 2016;Marín-Cepeda et al, 2017;Sayers, 2014;Vidal et al, 2019), otros lo enfocan a la formación y/o estancia de estudiantes universitarios o de escuelas secundarias en los museos y/o para el personal ya integrado (Kreuzer y Dreesmann, 2017;Muzi, 2019;Taylor, 2017). Sin embargo, la mayoría de los autores reportan estudios sobre la participación y/o el fortalecimiento de la comunidad a partir de la participación en museos, estudios de caso o evaluación de programas (Anila, 2017;Martins, 2016;Mithlo y Sherman, 2020;Pablos y Fontal, 2020;Rivero et al, 2018;Wright, 2020). Finalmente, algunas publicaciones analizan actividades relacionadas con el arte que pueden ayudar a mantener o mejorar el estado cognitivo y mental de algunos colectivos visitantes (Belver et al, 2018), de este modo encontramos estudios como Belver y Hernández (2019), González-García (2017) o Monzó et al (2019) quienes investigan los efectos y ventajas de programas especiales en colectivos concretos como personas con demencia o Alzheimer.…”

“…En este sentido, Candlin (2003) y Grek (2009) en sus estudios de público concluyeron que los visitantes acuden a los museos mayormente para recibir informaciones y conocimientos nuevos y estos, según Vidal et al (2019), se pueden adquirir más fácilmente si se establecen diálogos en el entorno museístico. Por lo tanto, los programas educativos deben estimular a sus visitantes considerando temáticas, planes y puntos de vistas diversos (Grek, 2009;Wylder y Meale, 2009), así como aumentar y desarrollar la creatividad (Wright, 2020), las habilidades artísticas, cívicas y científicas (Rodrigues Alves dos Santos et al, 2020;Falchetti, 2020;Bazan et al, 2021) y el pensamiento crítico (Sayers, 2014).…”

Learning Together? What Are, and What Could Be, the Experiences of Adult Participants to ‘Family’ Workshops in an Art Museum

“…Other studies have paid particular attention to the ways in which galleries may best serve families that may have previously found art gallery contexts to be uncomfortable, and ‘not for them’. For example, Wright (2020) has discussed the ways in which Tate Liverpool was able to build a community of learning with under‐served families through an innovative and long running partnership with a local nursery. Significantly, Wright’s study also recorded the learning experiences of adults visiting with the children and describes the way in which one mother who regularly attended the bespoke family sessions ‘became confident and interested in looking and thinking about her own and other interpretations of artworks’ (Wright 2020, 749).…”

“…For example, Wright (2020) has discussed the ways in which Tate Liverpool was able to build a community of learning with under‐served families through an innovative and long running partnership with a local nursery. Significantly, Wright’s study also recorded the learning experiences of adults visiting with the children and describes the way in which one mother who regularly attended the bespoke family sessions ‘became confident and interested in looking and thinking about her own and other interpretations of artworks’ (Wright 2020, 749). Wright’s study notwithstanding, the collection of adults’ perspectives or experiences following participation in family programming is rare.…”