Research: 2-Curious: More than words
An innovative collaboration with Curious Minds that explores children’s ways of knowing through performing arts practices to contribute to the policies, curriculum and strategic thinking that govern their lives.
Research project
RESEARCH summary
- September 2018 to October 2021
In 2017, artist-animateur Charlotte Arculus was awarded a White Rose Doctoral Partnership (WRDTP) PhD scholarship to explore how performance arts practice might contribute to pedagogical practice with two-year-olds in ways that support language, literacies and communication. The scholarship, accredited by the Economic Social Research Council (ESRC), supports and advances collaborative and interdisciplinary work across education and childhood research, and into the world of arts practice. More Than Words is an innovative collaboration between Curious Minds and Manchester Met that brings both the strategic and policy work in Arts Education of an Arts Council Bridge organisation together with the cutting-edge work in early childhood research.
With a particular focus on two-year-old children, the project foregrounds children’s ways of knowing through performing arts practices to contribute to the policies, curriculum and strategic thinking that govern their lives. It will expand the concept of literacies, language and communicative capacities of two-year-old children, while also informing policy agendas around children’s wellbeing. The project takes place at a time of increasing focus on two-year-old children, driven by anxieties about school-readiness and a widening language gap that is tied to socio-economic status.
The project uses innovative 360 ̊ video techniques to create audio/visual data. This more-than-human technology observes in ways radically different to ‘framed’ video. It makes tangible young children’s entangled knowledge through relation and movement in ways that are not perceptible to the adult gaze or traditional video technology.
The project aims to:
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visualise the knowledge and capabilities of two-year-olds, particularly around communication and language
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co-generate understandings of improvisation in the temporal arts as a valuable pedagogical method for artists and educators
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contribute to the understanding of video as a generative mode of flexible, participatory, research-creation practice with young children
The research project has delivered a co-produced artist residency with Charlotte Arculus and Anna Daly at Martenscroft Children’s Centre and Nursery School. This culminated in an immersive event in the theatre space in Brooks Building that was open to participating children, families and early years practitioners.
Charlotte posts regular updates of the project on her blog, More than Words.
Project partners
This project was carried out with in partnership with Curious Minds and Martenscroft Nursery School and Children’s Centre.
Quote
In the field of early childhood, it is all too easy for certain kinds of complicities to become a threat to the order of things.
Research Outputs
Research outputs
Academic papers
- Arculus, C. and MacRae, C. (2020) Complicité: resisting the tyranny of talk, Global Education Review
Image
Images of research
Charlotte's image ‘Illuminating Arts Practices in Early Childhood with More-Than-Human Technologies’ was shortlisted in the postgraduate researcher category of the 2020 Images of Research competition. Find out how Charlotte captured her image.Researchers
Funding
With funding from
Manchester Metropolitan University
Contact
Contact us
For general enquiries about the Education and Social Research Institute’s children and childhood group, you can contact research group lead Prof Rachel Holmes.
