Abstract:In March 2012, Contact Inc., a community cultural development organization based in Brisbane, Australia, launched the project 'Walking Neighbourhood: hosted by children'. This project sought to engage young people in the negotiation of a large urban space, as well as provoke an awareness of child actualization by challenging existing understandings of the role young people play as active citizens. By asking a group of children, aged between eight and twelve, to navigate their way through a large urban space an… Show more
“…In this sense, the parents and children reflect Clements and Waitt's (2018) notions of “anticipated affective atmospheres of safety that circulate” in this case between the mobile child, their parent, and the presence or absence of safe affordance in light of potential traffic dangers. The notion of danger pervades this relationship with space, emanating from parental responses to perceived danger but then internalised by the child such that a reactive safety agenda becomes dominant in the negotiation of space (see also Hickey & Phillips, 2013). Julia, for example, gestured to us to move further down the road to cross safely.…”
Section: Preschool‐aged Children's Experiential Urban Landscapes and mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…She and others automatically took our hands or the hands of their parents when we crossed roads. Often, we were reminded to look left and right or parents asked their offspring “what to do at a crossing.” As Jodie highlights, cars are a powerful force dangerous for pedestrians or cyclists of all ages: From a young age, children seem to obey and learn to live with the car‐dominated configuration of many Western cities (Collins, Bean, & Kearns, 2009; Gustafson & van der Burgt, 2015; Urry, 2004) and also understand that their needs in such places are not always recognised (Hickey & Phillips, 2013; Mitchell, Kearns, & Collins, 2007; Smith & Kotsanas, 2014).…”
Section: Preschool‐aged Children's Experiential Urban Landscapes and mentioning
An increasingly well‐developed body of research uses neighbourhood walks to better understand primary school children's experiences of local environments, yet virtually nothing is known about preschool‐aged children's connections to their neighbourhoods. A reason for this omission is the commonly held view that preschool children lack competency to reflect on lived environments beyond playgrounds, kindergartens, and other confined settings that dominate early childhood. However, preliterate children walk around, use, and create intimate relationships with local environments as shown by 10 children aged 3–5 years from Dunedin in New Zealand during go‐along interviews. We asked each to walk us around their locale, explaining and pointing out favourite and less beloved places and activities. In this article, we advance two arguments: first that preschoolers are knowledgeable meaning makers of place; second that walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and provides a way for preliterate and preverbal children to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of their spatial worlds, including as research participants. We challenge the idea that children of this age lack large‐scale spatial competency and understanding. Walking with them generated an in‐depth appreciation of their experiences of environments and revealed deep connections they had with their locales at varied scales. The work enables us to offer novel insights into spatial competency, sociospatial complexities, and the multiple dimensions of young children's wellbeing affordances in urban environments. Such insights are highly relevant for geographers, planners, and others who shape children's urban environments.
“…In this sense, the parents and children reflect Clements and Waitt's (2018) notions of “anticipated affective atmospheres of safety that circulate” in this case between the mobile child, their parent, and the presence or absence of safe affordance in light of potential traffic dangers. The notion of danger pervades this relationship with space, emanating from parental responses to perceived danger but then internalised by the child such that a reactive safety agenda becomes dominant in the negotiation of space (see also Hickey & Phillips, 2013). Julia, for example, gestured to us to move further down the road to cross safely.…”
Section: Preschool‐aged Children's Experiential Urban Landscapes and mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…She and others automatically took our hands or the hands of their parents when we crossed roads. Often, we were reminded to look left and right or parents asked their offspring “what to do at a crossing.” As Jodie highlights, cars are a powerful force dangerous for pedestrians or cyclists of all ages: From a young age, children seem to obey and learn to live with the car‐dominated configuration of many Western cities (Collins, Bean, & Kearns, 2009; Gustafson & van der Burgt, 2015; Urry, 2004) and also understand that their needs in such places are not always recognised (Hickey & Phillips, 2013; Mitchell, Kearns, & Collins, 2007; Smith & Kotsanas, 2014).…”
Section: Preschool‐aged Children's Experiential Urban Landscapes and mentioning
An increasingly well‐developed body of research uses neighbourhood walks to better understand primary school children's experiences of local environments, yet virtually nothing is known about preschool‐aged children's connections to their neighbourhoods. A reason for this omission is the commonly held view that preschool children lack competency to reflect on lived environments beyond playgrounds, kindergartens, and other confined settings that dominate early childhood. However, preliterate children walk around, use, and create intimate relationships with local environments as shown by 10 children aged 3–5 years from Dunedin in New Zealand during go‐along interviews. We asked each to walk us around their locale, explaining and pointing out favourite and less beloved places and activities. In this article, we advance two arguments: first that preschoolers are knowledgeable meaning makers of place; second that walking with them is a key step to understanding their life worlds and provides a way for preliterate and preverbal children to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of their spatial worlds, including as research participants. We challenge the idea that children of this age lack large‐scale spatial competency and understanding. Walking with them generated an in‐depth appreciation of their experiences of environments and revealed deep connections they had with their locales at varied scales. The work enables us to offer novel insights into spatial competency, sociospatial complexities, and the multiple dimensions of young children's wellbeing affordances in urban environments. Such insights are highly relevant for geographers, planners, and others who shape children's urban environments.
“…T.ex. kan vi se hur offentliga platser är designade med vuxna i åtanke (Hickey & Phillips, 2013), och det anses ofta vara en vuxen domän som barnen gör intrång i om de inte följer de implicita normerna att inte höras och synas (Bessell, 2017). Lundy (2007) menar dock att det inte räcker med att endast erbjuda barn möjlighet att uttrycka sina angelägenheter utan staten ska -enligt lag -också erbjuda barnen en plats där det finns en publik som lyssnar och reagerar på barnens angelägenheter.…”
Denna artikel intresserar sig för hur förskolan skulle kunna erbjuda barn möjlighet att uttrycka sina angelägenheter om offentliga rum på offentliga platser. Teoretiskt är artikeln baserad på filosofen Isabelle Stengers diskussion kring behovet att skapa en annan vetenskap som aktivt deltar i att skapa ett demokratiskt hållbart samhälle, och på den ANT-inspirerade filosofen Annemarie Mols resonemang om empirisk filosofi i syfte att uppmärksamma hur olika praktiker skapar olika offentliga verkligheter. Artikeln visar hur forskare tillsammans med en liten grupp förskolebarn i åldrarna ett och ett halvt till tre år aktiverar offentliga platser såsom en buss, en tunnelbaneresa och en gång- och cykeltunnel i centrala Stockholm. I dessa empiriska aktiveringar uppstår nya offentliga praktiker som markerar en kollektivt deltagande sångpraktik på bussen, hur en kinestetisk praktik av direkt närvaro uppstår i tunnelbanan och där de förkroppsligade och sensoriska kontaktzonerna etableras genom en annan praktik av att läsa väglinjer.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT
Curating a Context for a Preschool Practice in Public Spaces – Another Direct Democracy Emerges
This article is interested in how the preschool practice could offer children the opportunity to express their concerns about public spaces in public places. Theoretically, the article is based on the philosopher Isabelle Stengers consideration of creating Another science which participates in creating a democratic sustainable society, and in the ANT-inspired philosopher Annemarie Mol’s reasoning about Empirical philosophy in order to pay attention to how different practices create different public realities. The article shows how a researcher together with a small group of preschool children aged one and a half to three years activate public places such as a bus, the underground metro and a walking and bicycle tunnel in the central of Stockholm, Sweden. In these empirical activations new public practices emerge which demark a collective participating singing practice on the bus, a kinesthetic practice of direct presence emerges in the underground metro and where the embodied and sensorial contact zones are established through another practice of reading road lines.
“…The blurring of teacher/learner relationships articulates diverse conceptions of public spaces and is far from being adult driven. Children teach and learn in unique and divergent ways, across political, popular and concrete public places as they walk the streets to revolutionise inequalities; to speak about their families and the important things in their lives, or to gently teach heartfelt knowledge about places that carry meaning in interactive and productive ways (Hickey & Phillips, 2013).…”
Young peoples' worlds are valid and authentic spheres of knowing that communicate a range of issues. Through little aesthetics the artistic work in this project engages with what HickeyMoody (2014) terms 'little publics spheres ' (p. 117). Artistic expression is one way for adults to engage with children's little public spheres. Situated within the larger field of public pedagogy little publics acknowledge the civic, social, economic, political worlds of young people. Through artistic re-presentations, we position little publics as a way to foster intercultural understanding and expression of self. The international collaboration between Gallery Sunshine Everywhere and Eritrean Australian Humanitarian Aid draws on the relational worlds of children through art. Drawings from two schools in Kassala, East Sudan were given to students at Flemington Primary School, Melbourne, who wrote evocative stories in response to the drawings. These little public expressions invite adult worlds into the intellectual presence of young people's perceptions and re-locate the roles of learner and teacher within and beyond structures of formal schooling. The concept of little publics validates children as important producers of culture, knowledge and learning contexts.
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