Engaging Young Children and Families in Gallery Education at Tate Liverpool

Beyond Words: Engaging Young Children and Families in Gallery Education at Tate Liverpool, is a three-year ethnographic case study that explores what happens when preschool children, parents and nursery practitioners from a Sure Start Children's Centre, visit Tate to participate in an extended series of gallery visits and workshops with artists. This article explores the potential value and tensions of those creative and cultural experiences, particularly for young children and families, by critically examining different perspectives, discourses and possible constructs of effective creative engagement. This research contributes to the debate on ways of engaging children and families from marginalised communities in cultural visits and creative practices by opening up existing discussions on poverty, matters of inclusion, negative stereotypes and dominant educational discourses. Insights from parents are included and their feelings are related to the 'symbolic violence' often felt by parents and children throughout their education from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This research explores how Tate Liverpool developed relationships with a diverse family audience, through developing relationships with children and adults over repeated visits, as an important way for offering continuity and a sense of belonging, particularly for families who may not traditionally visit art galleries. In doing so, it makes a case for galleries to be considered as democratic, inclusive and rhizomatic learning environments, where artist educators act as 'dreamkeepers'. Dreamkeepers can offer the space for extra emotional, social and intellectual support needed for healing from educational injury and for restarting a learning journey.