Network Principles

• Children are human beings in their own right, who have the potential to be full of power, imagination, curiosity, ideas, strength of purpose, wisdom, inspiration, joy, friendship and trust. They are good people to be with.

• Adults can be partners in children's play, and can enable and enhance the experience by coming alongside children, listening to their ideas, facilitating their voices and languages, supporting their explorations and discoveries and offering a legitimacy and credibility to children's learning by making it more visible to others.

• Adults and children can build effective learning environments together, where both are learners, and can facilitate deeper levels of understanding by offering adequate time, space, respect and support for children to design their own learning journeys.

• Creativity has an important place in terms of the processes, environments and characteristics of successful learning, and can help to build confident, competent, expressive, thoughtful, well balanced and happy children. Creative practice is not synonymous with arts practice, but early learning can be supported and enhanced through the collaborative relationships between artists, early years professionals, health and social care professionals, children and families.

• The arts also provide a fundamental pathway to expressing and defining our cultures and identities. They can aid the realisation of a child's full potential and well being as an individual, and help to create a sense of belonging within their communities. Opportunities to participate in, experience and practice different art-forms and diverse cultural activities can have transformational impacts on children's development and should be promoted as an important route to support family learning. This is not the same as embedding a culture of creative learning within a setting, which is equally as important and not necessarily arts based. Both approaches are complementary and mutually beneficial.

• Artists or creative professionals can bring different skills, observations, reflections and perspectives to creating learning environments that investigate, support, express, respect, protect and promote children's ideas. As co-constructors in learning, they can offer new ways of thinking outside of the regimented approaches which can also enhance the work of education, social and child care professionals. The reverse is also true, and the journey of the creative professional can be greatly enhanced through experiencing the skills and understanding of the early years or social care professional.

• Artists, Teachers, Practitioners, Families and support workers can work together to harness the characteristics, resources, skills, cultures and knowledge needed for an ongoing active learning environment, one that has purpose for their children and themselves. The starting points for such relationships should be less focussed on statistical outcomes and more focussed on discovering the processes most suitable for harnessing children's interests and identities. It is the responsibility of us all to try to bring meaning and purposefulness to our work and play, and to continually question why we are doing what we are doing.

• An active learning environment is one that promotes an ongoing ‘researchfulness' - one that is documented, made visible and learned from at every opportunity. Opportunities should be set aside specifically for all professionals and families to reflect and re-plan. The purpose, objectives and policies of any setting, project or institution, should be inextricably linked to its practice through documentation, reflection and review, so that all strategic thinking and planning can be informed by the individual needs, ideas, identities and directions of children and their families.