little big bang: early years educator article

38 eye Volume 14 No 12 April 2013

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Little Big Bang: Creativity in Somerset

by Dr Susan Young

Phot

o by

Ric

hard

Tom

linso

n ‘The Take Art Little Big Bang project aimed to place creative practitioners

in children’s centres as part of the permanent team, on a long-term basis’

Eye Focus April 13.indd 38 22/03/2013 14:47

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eye Volume 14 No 12 April 2013 39

BEHIND THE Take Art Little Big Bang Project there was a radical idea. It went like this. If children’s centres aim to cater for all the needs of families with young

children, then creativity, arts and cultural activity are part of those needs and, therefore, should be part of a children’s centre’s o! er.

We are so familiar with a range of provision for families and young children that prioritises health and welfare, and basic learning, such as communication and simple skills, that to argue for creativity as part of the core o! er " not just an occasional or luxury add-on " may seem to be a radical idea to propose. However, the potential bene# ts are clear.

Not only is involvement in creative activities deeply enjoyable and rewarding, research suggests that creativity helps to develop important dispositions and abilities. For young children, creativity helps to build a foundation for learning and supports social and emotional development " for example, see www.handsonscotland.co.uk/$ ourishing_and_wellbeing_in_children_and_young_people/creativity.

For everyone, small children and parents alike, artistic and creative activity is a fundamental part of daily life and can contribute to emotional wellbeing and health. In setting up the project we were convinced that families and young children need creative activity as much as they need the usual types of provision in children’s centres, such as healthcare, family support, speech therapy, employment advice, and so on. Adding to the creativity for health and wellbeing rationale, the UNICEF report (2007) indicates that the UK ranks very low in comparison with other European countries in child wellbeing assessments. % e current coalition government that has identi# ed happiness and wellbeing as a major policy issue. Arts and cultural activity are associated with improvements in health and wellbeing.

It then follows that if children’s centres are aiming to serve the needs of very young children and their families through multi-agency teamwork – and good quality artistic and cultural activity is part of that o! er " then a creative professional should be one member of the multi-agency team.

Many children’s centres have visiting artists who may be funded as part of short-term projects, or who drop-in to lead single sessions, here and there. But what the Little Big Bang (LBB) project aimed to do was to place creative practitioners in children’s centres as part of the permanent team, on a long-term basis. A permanent creative practitioner

operating as a member of the children’s centre team takes up a quite di! erent role to the drop-in project artist. It was exploring and understanding this changing role that the project was all about.

Early years practitioners working in children’s centres clearly include playful and creative activities as part of their overall approaches to working with young children. In setting up this project we did not wish to imply that creative work was not already part of practitioners’ day-to-day o! ering. But the roles and responsibilities of early years practitioners seem to be ever-expanding, and we think it is unrealistic to expect them to be experts in all areas. Indeed, increasingly, there are areas of specialism becoming de# ned among the children’s centre workforce. Our idea in setting up the LBB project was that one team member could take a lead in creativity, developing artistic and cultural practice across the centre.

In addition to their active role ‘inside’ the children’s centre, the lead creative practitioners, or LCPs, as they came to be called, could also make ‘outside’ links with artists and arts organisations within the local community. Many arts organisations are being asked to network their activity within their local communities and to expand their participation, just as children’s centres are being asked to work within their localities, which means there are opportunities for exciting links.

However, someone needs to initiate and coordinate these connections " perhaps the LCPs could create these bridges and develop a range of innovative work that would bring the two sectors together.

When we planned the LBB project we hoped to establish permanent creative practitioners in all of Somerset’s children’s centres, but this ambitious aim would have been very costly. % e realities of funding resulted in the project being able to place three creative practitioners in three ‘constellations’, made up of three children’s centres each over a period of two years. As it happened, two years was long enough for the LCPs to discover how ‘long-termness’ changes the role and what its key elements were.

From the point of view of artists and creative practitioners who have worked in children’s centres this project may, at # rst glance, seem to be doing nothing new. % ere are numerous projects in early years settings that have looked at how creative approaches might be integrated and have worked closely with early years sta! . But there is a world of di! erence between an artist visiting a children’s centre and ‘delivering’ work as part of project that has usually been planned and funded by an outside agency and an artist who works in the children’s

Not only is involvement in creative activities deeply enjoyable and rewarding, it also helps to develop important dispositions and abilities, especially when it forms a permanent part of long-term provision.

Dr Susan Youngis a member of CREATE: Creativity Research in Education at Exeter;Exeter University

The Little Big Bang Project was an initiative by Take Art, funded by Paul Hamlyn, the Arts Council and Somerset County Council

For more information:[email protected] 01460 249450www.takeart.org/projects/entry/little-big-bang/


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Using projectors, lights, transparent materials and toys to project images and characters onto the walls as part of a story making activity

centre as an internal member of the team. I will explain the di! erences.

Most of the development work on artists working in educational settings has been carried out in schools. Here, the role and working partnership between artist and teacher have become established. % ese school-based ways of working have been drawn down in to the projects involving children’s centres, in$ uencing them heavily.

But children’s centres are very di! erent places to schools, and early years practitioners very di! erent professionals to teachers. While some of the learning from school-based project work can be transferred, much of it is not relevant. % e work of children’s centres spans many di! erent types of groups, often involving adults with children, and often with wider community and social aims beyond the narrowly educational.

% e expanded remits and repertoire of professional activity in the children’s centres call for expanded professional ‘toolkits’ " greater knowledge of child development birth to four, particularly in creativity and play; greater repertoire of approaches sourced from, not only education, but also community and therapeutic arts; and greater $ exibility in applying these according to situation and need.

WHAT ARE CREATIVE PROJECTS?Most creative and artistic work is designed and ‘delivered’ as ‘projects’, which bring with them certain structures and sets of expectations. % ey are typically planned to be short-term " with start, continuation and culmination, often marked by artistic product or performance " and grafted on to the existing work of the centre. % ey are not, therefore, continuous and embedded.

Projects are usually initiated by an external local agency, often an arts organisation. Funding is often dependent on aims being explicitly de# ned in advance and evidence of outcomes being provided at the conclusion. Ownership of the project is, therefore, somewhat inevitably held by the artists and initiating agency and there is less room for control and negotiation by the children’s centre sta! .

Project designers may be well aware of this imbalance but will have their hands tied in being able to do much about it. Many seek to include negotiation, collaboration, and ways of ensuring work continues beyond the life of the project, in order to increase ownership. However, it is fair to say that projects, being planned in advance, of # nite

photo by Richard Tomlinson


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length, self-contained and usually short-term tend to be ‘delivered’ as a ready-made package to children’s centres, reducing their ownership and the potential for integration.

In setting out ‘aims’, many projects will now identify perceived ‘problems’ as the starting point to justify their work. % ese problems are often related to social and economic circumstances of the families who will be taking part. % e project is conceived as a form of intervention, which is intended to act upon the problems and result in improvements. % is is often the justi# cation for the project grant.

% e LBB project deliberately avoided starting out from any kind of ‘problem’ located in the early years settings. % e problems, if any, we conceived as being located in existing models of early years arts and creative practice; we were deliberately not narrating our work as a form remedial work with the children’s centres or the families who visit them.

% ere was, therefore, a deliberate aim to recognise and build on assets, rather than de# cits, an approach that is more in keeping with a research method formally termed ‘illuminative evaluation’. % e aim was to create long-term, working relationships with the sta! and families so that the lead creative practitioners had the time and opportunities to recognise the assets, and to develop their work from these starting points.

HOW LEARNING SEMINARS CAN HELP DURING PROJECTSEvery month, the three LCPs met with the project management team and the researcher to share, re$ ect and discuss the project as it progressed. In these learning seminars the LCPs could re$ ect on current practice and plan next steps. For LCPs working relatively independently they o! ered peer-to-peer support in response to needs and a chance to share good ideas and discuss challenges. As such, the seminars o! ered a quality improvement model.

% e seminars also enabled the LCPs to narrate their own professional values and practices to themselves and to others. % is facilitated the development of their professional identity and autonomy and how this might connect with the values and practices in the context of working in children’s centres. In the current move towards inter-professional working, the opportunity for professionals to re$ ect, research and imagine alternatives is central to developing the ‘new professional’ that inter-agency working requires (Al-Rousi, 2011). We were developing the role of a professional early years arts worker.

% e seminars were also central to the research process in which we sought to understand how the role of the LCP might operate and what its key features would be. During the course of these learning seminars we arrived at 10 core ingredients for the lead creative practitioners. Each ‘core ingredient’ is now explained in turn.

Multi-competent creative practitioners% e two-year duration of the project o! ered ample opportunity for the LCPs to accumulate experience and develop skills, to acquire knowledge and to become ‘multi-competent’. Each of the LCPs had initial training to degree level in one art form but soon began to expand their skills base. % ey increased their repertoire of pedagogical approaches both within and beyond their own art form, accumulating ideas from one another.

% e dancer started to work with music and visual arts, the digital artist with movement and story, and so on. % ey also increased their repertoire of approaches across the spectrum of adult-led to child-centred, and the spectrum of process-led to product-led. % ey learnt to assess a situation and to decide what approach worked best. For example, in one centre, which had adopted principles of practice from Reggio Emilia, the practitioner adapted his practice to suit, in another where practice was more structured by the adults, he adopted a di! erent set of strategies.

What was important about the LBB project was that it did not aim to introduce a ready-made model of practice to each centre, but to connect with and build on the existing approaches present.

% e LCPs also increased their knowledge of how to work in a range of contexts (daycare, mother and baby groups, play and stay, nursery) with families, children and early years professionals. % ey expanded their knowledge of how to work across the birth to four age range. Working with babies and their parents or carers often requires a very di! erent approach to working with older children without parents present.

At the same time, their inter-professional skills for working with adults also developed.

% e two-year duration of the project also had another important outcome. % e practitioners, particularly the two who remained in post for the full length of the project, became very experienced, competent and e& cient. Short-term placements rarely allow artists to develop this range and depth of competence and experience so that, in # nancial terms, they represented excellent ‘value for money’.

% e best work seemed to combine specialist arts expertise together with expertise in community and early childhood creative activity. % e role became a kind of ‘arts social pedagogue’ with a mix of experience, knowledge and approaches.

% e social pedagogue role is found in Denmark, speci# cally, as well as other parts of Scandinavia. It is based on a fundamentally holistic concept in which the wellbeing of the whole child is the focus of work that combines elements of teaching, social work, counselling, playwork and childcare.

Knowledge of local context% e two artists who lived locally had personal knowledge and a sense of belonging to the local community. % is increased their commitment to their


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centres, community and local arts people, and helped to guard against the well-known problem of artists ‘parachuting’ in.

Even though they had local knowledge, the LCPs still found that they needed to spend considerable time and e! ort to develop links with local arts providers. Each agency has its own agenda and often its own language in which it expresses its vision and practice, which meant the LCPs had to # nd ways of linking in with these to suggest combined activities with children’s centres. % e bene# ts of this experience are that the LCPs have developed and strengthened their role as creative catalysts and leaders, with abilities to bridge artistic institutions and social/educational institutions.

Practice that evolves with the children’s centres Each children’s centre involved in the LBB project was distinct. We were surprised at how di! erent they were in organisation and the services they o! ered. % e centres were faithful to the de# ned ‘core o! er’, but their origins, whether in education and care, health or social care, had a direct in$ uence on each centre’s ethos, strengths and emphasis.

One important principle of the LBB project was that the creative practice should evolve in active partnership with the children’s centre sta! , parents and children. LBB practice was closely tailored to the centres’ needs and priorities. % is required resourcefulness and $ exibility on the part of the LCPs

and knowledge of a wide repertoire of approaches that they could apply according to context and need. In this way each LCP and centre could set its own tempo and # nd its own sense of direction and purpose. Although it was initially more challenging to evolve ways of working without following a ready-made plan of action, work that develops from needs, purposes and strengths of those involved is more relevant, e! ective and e& cient, and more likely to be sustained.

% e LCPs continually strove to combine good artistic practice, with practice that engaged with the range of community and participatory activities o! ered by the children’s centres. % is was a balancing act. % e LCPs found that they needed to continually challenge the belief that work for young children cannot be good art, with its own intrinsic characteristics and qualities, and that children’s playful imaginative process cannot be art-full and worthwhile. By planning special events, that grew organically from their work in the centres, the LCPs could challenge these beliefs through example.

Combination of ‘everyday’ practice with occasional ‘high points’ As the project progressed, the LCPs arrived at similar conclusions about the development of their practice. One described his practice as becoming ‘less precious’ and the other as no longer having the ‘same sense of big, or over-ambitious’. Both framed their outlook and approach as increasingly rooted in the day-to-day realities of the settings in which they were working, and as increasingly child and parent-centred.

One LCP described how she had moved on from, what with hindsight she understood (with considerable honesty) had been a naïve approach, where she would always be looking for an instant ‘wow’ e! ect in the early days of a project. She came to recognise, as her con# dence grew, that a more ‘solid, dense, yet understated approach’ o! ers more quality to the children’s experiences and learning. Both LCPs referred to being grounded and were in agreement that quality work emerges from this ‘everydayness’.

From the perspective of managers and sta! in the children’s centre, the LCPs’ practice developed to become more integrated and, as such, it had consistency and continuity. One manager, who had a great deal of experience of short-term, ‘high visibility’ projects, stated that this alternative long-term approach resulted in outcomes that were far deeper for children.

Both LCPs reported that the project had given them a quantity of substantial, practical experience, with the result that their work became increasingly e& cient. % eir planning and preparation became much quicker at the same time as their work became richer. % us, we can say that the long-term placing of creative practitioners leads to work that is both more e! ective and more e& cient.

% e children’s centre sta! most appreciated the continuity and integration of Little Big Bang creative practice into the everyday running of the centre.

Using the environment, puppets and characters to tell an interactive story in the park

photo by Richard Tomlinson


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% is kind of practice is, however, low visibility. % e project team also realized that there is a place and value for high visibility events and displays.

% e LCPs combined both dimensions and created occasional ‘high points’. % e team learnt that if work is only of the ‘everyday and blended’ type, there may not be the high points that create interest and inspiration. % e LCPs achieved a good balance and, at its best, the ‘everyday’ work, its relationships and qualities, and its processes, would be brought into a # nal product in the form of a display or event. % us, one embodied the other. Most importantly, the products emerged from the relationships and work that were established within the centres in an organic way.

Time heavy, resource light% e project recognised that time needs to be invested in building trust and strong relationships with all involved – sta! , parents and children. % e Little Big Bang project built that time in to the project structure. % e LCPs were also able to bridge what has been called the ‘approachability gap’ in working with parents. So, for example, time spent eating bacon sandwiches with a Dad’s group reaped long-term bene# ts in relationships and built the trust to support fathers in taking part. Yet artists in short-term projects rarely have either the opportunity, or feel justi# ed, in taking time to forge trusting relationships when delivery and outcomes are the priority.

As the project progressed and the LCPs gained in experience, the actual resources they used with the children became simpler, portable and inexpensive. Yet these simpler materials had greater potential for creative play. One LCP travelled with large boxes of scrapstore materials in the boot of his car that could be used in a multitude of ways.

Longevity and continuityTwo years was a long enough period to allow for the continuity that had been a key project aim. It also allowed for an exploration of the rewards, issues and challenges that accompany a long-term integration in to the children’s centre teams. From the artists’ point of view, they arrived with experience of short-term projects that deliver activities for which, very often, time and money are tight and quick results expected.

% e shift in gear to a project that ran across two years without short-term expectations took some getting used to. With time, patterns of working settled in to a style of working that was based on long-term integration.

Shared values and rationale% e Little Big Bang project shifted between two primary cultures and their ideologies; the arts world and the early years institutional world, which meant that the LCPs were translating between the two.

In some instances they could easily # nd common ground as, for example, with a local artist who had a particular a& nity for working with young children

and opened her studio for a visit or with a children’s centre teacher who had particular knowledge and enthusiasm for the Reggio Emilia approach.

In other instances, the LCPs had di& culty # nding common ground upon which to explain their work, develop practice in the children’s centre or develop links with artists and arts venues.

What this demonstrates is that discourses and terms do not necessarily carry the same meaning for professionals with di! erent backgrounds. % ey are not neutral but carry implications for roles and professional relationships, and are underpinned by deeper ideologies and conceptions.

One of the challenges of inter-professional working in children’s centres is to # nd common language, communication systems and the right terms, but also to explore the values that underlie these. It was also important to establish a clear understanding of roles and contributions. % is always takes time, but is time that is essential to allow for because without this period of negotiation, professionals will not be working to shared aims, priorities and values; and time and e! ort could be wasted.

Professional credibilityI have already mentioned the value of creative practitioners and artists having a de# ned, professional identity. Within the multi-professional teams in children’s centres di& culties in working relationships are likely to centre around issues of identity, expertise and power. % e creative freedom and imagination of the artist were sometimes in tension with the forms of control and regulation that children’s centres are subject to and/or impose. Risk and safety issues could be rigidly imposed in children’s centres and risk, messiness even, is intrinsic to creative activity.

Early years settings could run to systems and schedules that diminished, rather than extended, the possibilities for open-ended, imaginative activity. With time and experience, as trust and understanding grew between the children’s centre sta! and the LCPs, these ‘territorial’ boundaries tended to loosen.

Occasionally, the LCPs felt their own approaches, ideas and values in relation to practice with the children were thought to be less important and were overlooked in favour of the ‘authoritative’ forms of expertise that prevailed. National policy and institutional structures still give priority to the core areas of health, basic learning, and so on, and for as long as this continues, arts professionals will face an uphill struggle in trying to shift the value and importance given to their work.

Supportive and vision-sharing management % e LCPs could work most e! ectively in those children’s centres where there was strong leadership and a positive ethos. % e head of centre played a crucial leadership role, facilitating collaboration and setting the ethos of the centre. % e most e! ective


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heads of centres were particularly good at promoting teamwork and empowering sta! .

It is well recognized in early childhood practice that the quality of leadership is key in ensuring quality of provision and practice, and certainly this was born out in the LBB project. In those centres where the manager was convinced of the value of creative practice and provided active support, the LCPs $ ourished in a climate of positive appreciation and support.

% e management of the LBB project was two-sided. Overall, project management was handled by Take Art and day-to-day management handled by the children’s centres. % is sometimes placed the LCPs between di! erent organizational structures, cultures and agendas, which they then had to negotiate. However, many professionals working in children’s centres span di! erent organisational cultures, and this is part of the challenge of multi-professional teamwork.

Re! ective practice % e monthly learning seminars were a core part of the project structure and ful# lled its action research dimension. % ey encouraged the development of re$ ective practice among the project team.

Typically, emphasis in early years arts projects is placed on delivery, outcomes and the creative activity itself. Seminars and re$ ective practice are important because they recognise that change requires new, professional ways of thinking, acting and being, rather than just accumulating ‘on-the-job’ skills and knowledge. For the agencies who commission and manage early years creative practice it is important to provide strategic and practical support for the learning and development of such practice.

However, we found that the inclusion of seminars does not necessarily ensure that re$ ective thinking takes place. Initially, the LCPs commented that the monthly seminars lacked structure. To one LCP, the open-ended nature of action research; the sense that ‘we were making it up as we went along’ created uncertainty at # rst and she was critical of the approach. A simple reporting procedure was then introduced and helped to provide more structure.

In addition, the seminars sometimes had to ful# l a dual purpose as management meetings, and there was not always a clear delineation between administration, management and research/development. % e analysis and theorizing of what you do, that is part of the re$ ective practice process, can remain in tension with the apparently more pressing practical concerns.

WHATARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY?% ere are a number of important learning points to draw out of the Take Art Little Big Bang project that could in$ uence wider policy decisions. Clearly, the major implication for policy in both the arts and early years sectors from the project is its core principle of arts provision as an integrated, long-term, permanent presence in children’s centres, and for early years arts professionals to be employed as core and essential members of the team.

% e role of the early childhood arts professional needs to be understood as distinct – an arts social pedagogue – and requiring its own distinct body of skills, knowledge and understanding that bridges both the arts and early childhood sectors. It is not an artist-in-education role, simply transferred down to early childhood, nor is it an artist-in-residence who is temporary and additional.

% is raises further issues, however. % ere is currently no professional recognition of the role, nor any requirement for artists working in early years settings to be quali# ed, even to a minimal standard. A system of accreditation and accountability will help to drive up standards and raise professional credibility.

In 2006, the Roberts Report " Nurturing Creativity in Young People, recommended establishing a ‘best practice’ recognition scheme for creativity in early years settings with associated workforce development for education and creative practitioners.

More recently, the Nutbrown review has highlighted the importance of quali# cation structures in the early childhood sector. At the same time, those who employ arts professionals – children’s centre managers, parents and arts organisation administrators " need to be experienced enough to know what good quality practice looks like and to demand it of the professionals they employ.

As the Little Big Bang project revealed, the best practice to serve children’s needs is ‘everyday’, consistent, continuous and low visibility. Many arts projects, however, are attempting to o! er work that is special, not consistent and high visibility. eye

ReferencesAl-Rousi S (2011) Interorganizational dynamics and

trends: system-wide thinking; in Trodd L, Chivers L (Eds) Interprofessional Working in Practice: Learning and working together for children and families. Open University Press: Maidenhead

Roberts P (2006) Nurturing Creativity in Young People A report to Government to inform future policy. Department for Culture Media and Sport, London

Key pointsO Involvement in creative activities is both deeply enjoyable and rewarding, and

research suggests that it helps to develop important dispositions and abilities across all areas of learning

O Too often, artistic involvement in children’s centres tends to be of the short-term, high impact variety, usually outsourced to an external organisation

O The Little Big Bang project sought to place creativity and art at the centre of provision with permanent, long-term collaboration with artists

O The role of an artist in a centre should be seen as unique and distinct from other roles with its own skills and responsibilities

O The Take Art Little Big Bang project revealed that the best practice to serve children’s needs is ‘everyday’, consistent, continuous and low visibility
