Art Together Toolkit
Developed by Art at the Start
About
Art at the Start is a research project led by University of Dundee, in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts. The project explores the impact of engaging with the arts on young children’s well-being, development and attachment relationships. We are looking to create an evidence base for the social consequences of art making in early childhood.
The Art Together Toolkit has been developed by researcher Holly Rumble, to provide the visual art sector with a simple method of recording children’s experiences in a public family art session. It draws on an observational checklist designed by Art at the Start for therapeutic sessions, but has been adapted to include details relevant to public art settings. The toolkit also includes a guidance document for conducting observations ethically, analysing your data, and reporting your findings.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
In summary, the arts organisation appoints an observer to greet participants at the start of a session, offer them the option of being included in the observation, and then observe each participating child/caregiver for 5 minutes.
Their observations are recorded in a structured checklist of 14 child experiences, with two examples of what each experience might look like.
After these anonymous checklists are completed, the data are entered onto a spreadsheet, which takes about 4-5 minutes per child.
Please share your findings with us, so we can collate an open access dataset on this site.
WHY SHOULD I SHARE MY FINDINGS?
We have undertaken two literature reviews, which found that there is only a very small amount of published evidence about the psychological impact of visual arts participation on young children.
Most studies are either in a clinical setting (art therapy), or in other artforms such as music or movement.
We hope that by using the same tool across a range of visual arts organisations we can start to gather a stronger body of evidence for our sector.
You can read the first literature review here.
Get in touch
If you have any questions about using the toolkit, please get in touch.
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Holly can also be reached via LinkedIn.
Art Together 