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

Abstract

After many years of teaching across Early Years and Key Stage 1 in Liverpool and Cheshire, and as a Deputy Head teacher, Naomi led Early Childhood and the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Early Years Teacher Education programme at Liverpool Hope University. Most recently Naomi is at Liverpool John Moores University teaching across Early Childhood and Education Studies and leading the MA in International Approaches to Early Childhood Education. Her doctorate focused on developing pedagogical participation for young children and Continued Professional Development for teachers and early years professionals across the sector. This continues to be a research interest evident in her published work and in the working partnerships she has developed with educators and creative professionals in the field of Early Years, creativity and participation. Naomi is currently working with Family curators at Tate Liverpool nurturing a sense of self through artwork as a provocation for philosophical enquiry. She also engaged in the initial stages of a collaborative comparative study involving 4 universities looking at the 'multiple identities of Early Childhood students for a quality workforce'. Denise Wright As a teacher, consultant and artist in residence in the Liverpool community for more than 15 years, Denise uses a range of creative approaches to engage children across a variety of settings, including residential settings for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, mental health services and more recently working with very young children and their parents in different early years settings. As part of her PhD, Denise has been working closely with Tate Liverpool, liaising with organisations and supporting nursery practitioners, children and families. In this role Denise has supported the gallery to better understand the needs of young children and families visiting the gallery, particularly children and families from marginalised communities. Recently Denise has been commissioned by Tate to develop and lead the Tate Family Collective, a new initiative for engaging families. Denise also lectures in Early Years and Inclusive Education at

Glitter, flashlights, and building pillows – about physical prerequisites for creativity

“…Those possibilities must be activated by human interaction or communication. Mcleod et al (2017) name materials and spaces that stimulate creativity as open ended, which indicates that there is a wide variety of affordances. Vygotsky (1995) described human actions as either reproductive or creative and combinatorial.…”

Perspectives on Inclusion: Close Encounters of the Creative Kind

“…For example, involving community learning initiatives and seeking to include often-ignored groups (i.e. mental health service users (McKeown et al 2016), young people outside of education (Briggs Kemeza 2019) and very young children and their families (McLeod et al 2017).…”

Engaging Young Children and Families in Gallery Education at Tate Liverpool

“…2010; Crowley & Jacobs 2011). More recent research has concentrated on children’s movement in museums as intentional ‘multimodal’ choices of thinking‐in‐action (Sheets‐Johnstone 2010; MacLure 2013; Hackett 2014; MacRae et al, 2018; Holmes et al 2019), or ways in which young children’s deep‐level learning and concentration can appear as a physical rhythm (McLeod et al 2017; Wright 2020).…”