In this post I consider the gap between academics/non-academics in children’s art education. A contestable claim but something I believe is worthy of further discussion. I reflect upon my experience of moving from working as a full-time learning curator in an art museum to full-time PhD researcher and what I have learnt along the way.
This post reports on the ‘Space, materials, the body: Researching young children’s experiences in museum’ symposium held at Manchester Metropolitan University on May 23, 2017.
Last week I had my final day of data generation in Manchester. Over the past couple of months I have been fortunate enough to have worked within a fantastic team comprised of an education curator, artists, teachers, children and parents. This time has been such an intense period of development, growth and expansion for my research and all of us on the team. I will spend the next couple of months writing up and theorising my findings before starting the second stage of fieldwork in 2017. At times it can be strange working with children in education settings. You have this intense period, whether it be a school year, or a series of repeat visits to a museum, or even a single workshop, where a particular group of little humans become the centre of your creative and intellectual being. You see them change and develop in their thinking, communicating and curiosities about…
In this post I reflect on my decision to move to England to do my PhD. This month marks one year since I arrived in England. The title of this blog is misleading in that it is dramatising something that really was not such a big thing. Moving countries or cities is never easy but the process is broken down into such small steps that the change is not as overwhelming as it may seem to an outsider. The one thing I wish I had known before moving to England was how much I would love my work, studies and life here. Doing so has opened an expanding world of possibilities and connections, many of which I never knew existed. The decision to do my PhD was bundled up in a handful of other life decisions, none of which were particularly easy to make. There were tears, long philosophical conversations with family and…