Young children in the museum – exercising agency through cultural engagement
by Nicola Wallis
Freedom to find new fascinations | Credit: Nicola Wallis
What is a museum? A fun day out? A space where artefacts can be cared for and protected? A place to learn about ourselves and our past?
Fundamentally, museums are political spaces (Gray, 2015). What is included in them - and equally as important – what is excluded or not displayed in them, is a matter of intense controversy. Museums are the battle grounds of culture wars (Mintz, 2022), where competing agendas to be heard, memorialised, and understood can come into conflict.
Museums matter because they have a voice in civic dialogue. They hold the narratives about who we are, and what we believe is important. They can shape national, local, and cultural identities and are powerful arbiters of social interaction and relationships. Whose stories are told? Who does the telling? Which structures are maintained, and which are challenged? Decisions made in and by museums have implications that reach far beyond their physical walls.
How does this matter to children? Who is in the museum is as politically important as what is found there. This is because engaging with museum collections and narratives is a form of democratic and civic participation. While museums can, and do, perpetuate existing political hierarchies, they can also be sources of power in resisting and challenging these.
In museums, we have more freedom than in more formal educational settings such as schools and nurseries (Falk et al., 2006). These are places where children alongside adults, are able to make decisions, exercise agency, and make choices about their own learning and experiences (Manyukhina et al., 2023). Furthermore, they facilitate children to take lead (Clarkin-Phillips et al., 2014; Weier, 2004) and to have a tangible impact on the space. Thus, museums are places where we can build a sense of our own identity and power, not just through the objects on the walls and in the cases, but through the ways in which we interact with them. They are places in which young children may exercise their cultural citizenship (Mai & Gibson, 2011).
Children can guide the adult's gaze | Credit: Nicola Wallis
Creating connections | Credit: Nicola Wallis
My research shows that children have enormous capacity to engage with museum objects and spaces in ways that are personal to them, in ways that are connected to material and physical experiences, and in ways that connect them with a wider social group. They build complex interactions and relationships with the museum, which is often seen as reserved for those already initiated into existing power hierarchies. This calls into question the notion of museums as static spaces that are reserved for elite groups of highly educated individuals, and instead opens up a potential for dialogue in which young children may play an active role.
In my presentation at BECERA, I will share some examples of young children’s engagement in museums and discuss what this means for more equitable, inclusive, and civically-responsible institutions and the broader social and cultural implications. Museums are places of possibility: through connecting us with times, places, and creative imaginations that are different from our own, we learn that our own circumstances are not fixed (Hein, 2005). Things have been different in the past, they are different elsewhere, and can be imagined differently in the future. Children’s engagement with museums could be a route to challenging existing structures and hierarchies as they are supported to make their own connections, exercise their own agency, and be heard as cultural citizens. Museums have a responsibility not just to preserve artefacts from the past but to use these to connect young children with their own cultural power. In this way, museums play an important role in nurturing democracy by opening dialogues and supporting young children’s agency.
References
Clarkin-Phillips, J., Carr, M., Thomas, R., O’Brien, C., Crowe, N., & Armstrong, G. (2014). Children as teachers in a museum: Growing their knowledge of an indigenous culture. International Journal of the Inclusive Museum. https://doi.org/10.18848/1835-2014/cgp/v06i04/44464
Falk, J., Dierking, L., & Adams, M. (2006). Living in a Learning Society: Museums and Free-choice Learning. In S. Macdonald (Ed.), A Companion to Museum Studies (pp. 323–339). Blackwell Publishing
Gray, C. (2015). Museums as Political Institutions. In The Politics of Museums (pp. 150–170). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137493415_5
Hein, G. (2005). The role of museums in society: Education and social action. Curator, 48(4), 357–363.
Mai, L., & Gibson, R. (2011). The rights of the putti: A review of the literature on children as cultural citizens in art museums. In Museum Management and Curatorship (Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 355–371). https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2011.603930
Manyukhina, Y., Haywood, N., Davies, K., & Wyse, D. (2023). Young children’s agency in the science museum: insights from the use of storytelling in object-rich galleries. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2023.2244645
Mintz, S. (2022). Museums as Cultural Battlegrounds. Inside Higher Ed Blog.
Weier, K. (2004). Empowering Young Children in Art Museums: letting them take the lead. In Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (Vol. 5, Issue 1)
Having previously worked as a primary and nursery teacher for 14 years, Nicola is now a practitioner researcher at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, focusing on early childhood. She has developed innovative museum learning programmes for babies, young children, and those who care for them, as well as extended engagement projects with early years settings and training opportunities for educators. Nicola is currently studying for a PhD in young children's engagement with museum objects & spaces at the Centre for Research in Early Childhood. Her research draws on participatory methodologies to explore the role of early arts and cultural experiences in supporting democratic engagement and social justice.
As well as presenting her research at BECERA 2024, Nicola will also sit on the conference panel.
Contact
Fitzwilliam Museum profile | X | Instagram
Publications
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Nicola Wallis & Kate Noble (2022) Leave only footprints: how children communicate a sense of ownership and belonging in an art gallery, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 30:3, 344-359, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2022.2055100
Sofia Eriksson Bergström (2021) Glitter, flashlights, and building pillows – about physical prerequisites for creativity, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 29:2, 278-292, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2021.1895271
Despina Kalessopoulou, Tryfeni Sidiropoulou, Eleni Sotiropoulou & Foteini Psatha (2023) Exploring social justice awareness in young children's shopping pretend play at ECEC settings and museums, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2023.2227366
Ellen Yates & Judith Szenasi (2021) Positioning children as artists through a ceramic arts project and exhibition: children meaning making, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 29:2, 303-318, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2021.1895267