Earlyarts Blog

What it is that the artist brings that is unique to the early years setting; What is the difference between art and play; and what added value does the arts bring to a child's development and learning experiences? Orla Kenny from Kids' Own gives you the answers.

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The Early Years Strategic Roundtable is a national alliance of organisations supporting creative experiences in the expressive arts for children in their early years. Funded by Youth Music and hosted by Earlyarts, it brings together organisations from the Early Years and Arts sectors with a national remit, as well as the Youth Music-funded regional Early Years networks.

The Roundtable works strategically to influence policy and practice, and to ensure national coherence, aspiring for all children in their early years to have sustained, high quality, creative experiences in the expressive arts. This post gives an update on some of the things we've been focussing on.

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Earlyarts Director Ruth Churchill Dower responds to recent comments by Childcare Minister Elizabeth Truss in the Guardian and outlines why they could lead to a shift from the three Rs back to the three Ss.

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June O'Sullivan Earlyarts Board Member and CEO of London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) shares an experience of a young girls musicality and what we can learn professionally from a rendition of Adele's, 'Someone Like You'.

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The Just So Festival began when we asked what we really wanted for our own children. We dreamt of a whole weekend of inspiration, taking them away from their everyday lives and propelling them into a wonderland of creativity, where anything and everything was possible. Armed with a sense that our children’s lives were too structured, too sanitised and too formal, in 2010 we held our first arts festival in a beautiful woodland venue.

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Daniela Miscov of Artelier-D in Bucharest, explores what children need and how we can document their needs better when we engage with them in an artistic and creative way.

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Ruth reflects on the ten most poignant moments of 2012 for Earlyarts. Its hard to believe so much actually happened in only one year and, in fact, it took a while to narrow them down! But we got there in the end. Grab a cuppa and enjoy our best 10 moments.

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The final blog post in the Earlyarts post UnConference quality series is an engaging discussion with Head of Children's House Montessori Nursery and Earlyarts board member, Nathan Archer.

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Earlyarts continues to explore the importance of quality with Jo Belloli, Associate Producer for early years at Polka Theatre.

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Earlyarts continues its exploration into the world of quality in early years creativity with an engaging Q & A with London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) CEO and Earlyarts board member June O'Sullivan.

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Earlyarts continues its exploration into quality in early years creative practice with an in-depth interview with Creative Minds Yorkshire Ltd's Creative Consultant Sarah Gordon.

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Earlyarts talks to early years consultant and UnConference delegate Geraldine French who gives an insight into her views on quality, why it's important as well as ideas derived and advice for others post UnConference.

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Amazingly, almost a month has gone by since the Earlyarts UnConference and we’re absolutely thrilled with the quality of experiences everyone has reported having, and the discussions that are coming out of this, all very different. Reading through the feedback, it struck me that the range of peopl Tags: UnConference, quality, early years, creativity, national literacy trust, brain development, babies Read More

Its a question we've been asking ourselves for years. Until recently that is, when the answer arrived via a superb opportunity for collaboration! We're really excited to be working with Moonbeams3 at the mac in Birmingham in preparation for Earlyarts 2012 International UnConference. As our Tags: mac birmingham, Moonbeams, UnConference Read More

Part Two of my experience at Tate Modern for the Worlds Together conference. Firstly, I surprised myself by enjoying Damien Hirst’s exhibition, In and Out of Love. Being a paraglider pilot, I have a deep affinity with free flight and I hold in awe any animals that can do this naturally. Hirst’s Butt Tags: Tate Modern, Estelle Morris, Carlina Rinaldi, Frederick Douglass, Stephen Seidel Read More

I am basking in the glow – not just of my summer holiday (which was fantastic and made a long-held dream come true – more of which later), but of spending three days being inspired by some of the most beautiful examples of imagination that I’ve experienced in a while. I’ve been at Tate Modern Tags: Paraglider, Mont Blanc, RSC, Tate, Worlds Together Read More

Well it's been a whirligig of events recently, starting with dancing at the Nursery World Show back in February and ending in speaking at two Nursery World conferences recently in Manchester and London. Flanked by Nursery World, I have also been immersed in a number of other worlds recentl Tags: leadership, estelle morris, nursery world, EYFS, OfSTED Read More

Recently I have rediscovered the (rather addictive) fun of doing a jigsaw with my 10 year old son. Rather like me, he puts on his rose coloured glasses in the face of any challenge and refuses to believe it can’t be done. It’s the one activity where we sit with our heads so close together whilst sta Tags: creativity, cultural education, henley review Read More

 I’ve been struck in recent weeks by people’s incredible willingness to engage and offer support for something they believe in. Colleagues sending in heartfelt letters of support for funding bids, or trainees taking a step out of their comfort zone during a creative session and finding a strong Tags: earlyarts, nursery world show Read More

There's something very beautiful in watching a parent take their baby seriously, understanding that their expressions are full of genuine communications, and offering positive responses to stimulate even more expressions, even if they can't quite translate baby's language. Very beautiful a Tags: culturebaby, childrens charter, national literacy trust, oogly boogly, EYFS, Foundation Years Read More

For me, a walk through Nottingham city centre is like stepping back in time as I experience some of the funny (and cringe worthy) memories of my childhood rising from deep inside. All the shops have changed (except good old M&S), but I can still see those places that held special significanc Tags: Theatre in Education, Nottingham Playhouse, theatre for families Read More

One of my favourite pieces of research is Young Brains commissioned by DFES in 2007, and has helped me form ideas around how we can facilitate more meaningful experiences for babies through creative learning environments. I discussed this briefly in my presentation to Cork College conference on arts Tags: harvard, babies, brain development Read More

Very exciting to see Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester Museum and Manchester Art Gallery bringing a focus to the key issue of how we support babies and very young children to develop their 'cultural capital' through their forthcoming conference Culturebaby. Cultural Capital is a term being increasin Tags: manchester art gallery, manchester museum, culturebaby, whitworth art gallery Read More

On Saturday, the wonderful Barbara O'Meara (Head of Early Childhood training and creative early years action research programme at Cork College) hosted an international conference on how the arts makes a difference in early learning. With a grand line up of fab speakers, includin Tags: starcatchers, earlyarts, early years, childrens creativity Read More

Tuesday saw me meeting with some incredible social entrepreneurs from 7.30am at the Clearly So conference. Far from yawning, we had an action-packed day debating the existing challenges and potential alliances between social investors and social enterprises like Earlyarts, all of whom had one purpos Tags: social enterprise, social investment Read More

We thought the focus would be on children, learning and development. We were somewhat taken aback when we wordled the revised EYFS document... Tags: children, earlyarts, development, learning, EYFS Read More

In submitting our response to the revised Early Years Foundation Stage which you can see here, there were a number of key concerns that we decided to focus on, including:  1. The need to differentiate between how creative processes should underpin the entire framework, rather than just the spe Tags: school readiness, EYFS, early years foundation stage, creativity Read More

I was amazed to discover recently that I could remember some of the words and most of the tunes to the songs in my very first school play in 1975 atBramcote Hills Primary School. We were doing Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat which was musically quite challenging for a six year old. I Tags: primary curriculum review Read More

Fantastic intiative to help children think more broadly about philosphical issues reported on today. I just pity the poor educationalists who are stuck with the regimented idea that education is only and all about core subjects, and that these will be enough to provide the resilience that our c Tags: childrens philosophy Read More

Well, I could be falling foul of a little twitter account which basically helps me and a few chosen friends keep up to speed with the latest developments in working life (or shamelessly use it as an advocacy / PR platform for our products). But generally we are all subscribed to various excelle Tags: primary curriculum review Read More

I was in France recently having a fab time with the kids over half term, and one night we decided to take them out to a beautiful little pizza place we know in the heart of a tiny village - packed every night of the week. Food and Frolics were great but I noticed how the young child on the table nex Tags: good childhood Read More

Don't get me wrong, there's lot of good things coming out of the debate around the primary reviews, not least the increased focus on play, curiosity and creativity. However, I dont know about you guys but I find there's something a little worrying about the ongoing attempts to fit quarts into pint p Tags: primary curriculum review Read More

Just found a lovely video in fact of the said drawing of dinosaur which shows a little more understanding of how characters and stories are built through imaginative ideas that evolve as the images become real on paper (or in this case, tissue). Tags: early years, creativity, childrens drawing Read More

It might look like I have inserted this back to front, but no! This was a picture I found recently of a dinosaur drawn by my daughter Chia when she was 3. I was struck by how accurate the representation was for someone with such a wild imagination (I was expecting several more legs than this!) and h Tags: early years, creativity, childrens drawing Read More