Art and Play from the Beginning

Cultural Education for Young and Very Young Children

From the very start children have a right to full participation in a cultural and artistic life. Artistic processes, events and works can facilitate aesthetic experiences for children which their day-to-day lives do not offer. The encounter with a variety of arts – ranging from music, sound, dance and moving to the artistic traditions of storytelling, the circus or artistry up to literature, theatre, play, photography, film and media – in their surroundings as well as in institutions for the education of children and teenagers or cultural institutions such as libraries, theatres, concerthalls, museums hold in store valuable impulses and important educational experiences. The different forms of artistic expression and use of media carry with them specific qualities which can create an impact in their interdisciplinary interaction. The child experiences an integrated space of experience and does not distinguish between the categories as adults tend to.

Art, culture and play in all of their forms should be accessible to children. Children playfully develop their capacities to imagine and express, nurture their perceptive faculties and develop artistic skills by experiencing artistic events and dealing with art hands-on. This strengthens children to orient themselves in their day-to-day lives and deal with themselves and others.

The following position paper put together by the members of the „Bundesvereinigung Kulturelle Kinder- und Jugendbildung (BKJ)“ is meant to demand high-quality possibilities of cultural education from the very start. The institutions associated with cultural education for children and teenagers assembled therein formulate what quality in an educational practice for young children means and which development needs can be identified to implement them.