The aim of our article is to discuss the potential of art education to enhance children’s culture. In so doing, we are contributing to a debate that began at the InSEA congress in Rovaniemi (2010) during the symposium on cultural diversity. The article is based on recent research and art pedagogy projects conducted by the writers in five European countries: Finland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. When comparing and evaluating these projects, we focus on the space given to children’s culture and on the power art has in constructing childhood as a social and cultural phenomenon. It was evident from the projects that enhancing children’s culture can be achieved in multiple ways, as cultural dialogues that can produce new understanding and places for further cultural encounters. The projects also made visible how childhood can be constructed and reconstructed through art both by and for children. The projects emphasized the responsibility art educators have for organizing art education that enables the social and cultural participation of children.

The aim of the article is to highlight and discuss the relationship between core activities in early childhood and primary education, with a special focus on aesthetic practice in relation to sustainability, participation, project work and learning environments. The two preschools presented, one in Finland and one in Sweden, work with ecology and sustainable education in their daily practice. The result of the study comprises a presentation of and reflections on photographs as visual representations of educational activities, learning environment settings, as well as daily educational work.

This article focuses on how children's rights in society can be manifested with cultural tools and through cultural participation. The article discusses cultural participation for, with and by children based on the core ideas of a Swedish governmentally initiated strategy implemented in the 1970s. The right for children to take part in cultural activities, to be culturally active and to express themselves is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Art education and visual activities for children in formal and informal cultural environments and the use of contemporary art will be discussed. An art-based project in collaboration between a cultural institution and preschool and younger children is described. The main purpose of the article is to analyse what impact the use of cultural participation and cultural tools has on children's collective experience and learning, as well as to discuss and contextualise the relationship between culture, preschool and school as it is influenced by global and societal changes, particularly the increasing visual impact in society through the use of digital media and multimodality. The results show how an art gallery visit and the use of cultural narratives, such as art educational activities at a preschool based on work with a picture book, create visual knowledge and contribute to children’s agency and understanding of equity as one of the aims in the early childhood education curriculum.

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