Children’s universes in the edges of informal learning environments with dance, music, and visual arts

In this paper presentation, I explore children’s different ways of participating in creative, artistic, and crossfield aesthetic activities with music, dance, visual arts, and poetry in informal learning environments in two different Zealand clubs for after-school activities. I focus on how children and young people, through bodily actions, create their own aesthetic experiences, understandings, and universes in the edges and the cracks of the various creative frameworks that adult artists and educators establish with a focus on inclusion, equality, and openness.

The paper’s empirical material consists of observations and interviews in the after-school activity clubs over approx. eight days spread over autumn 2024 in the Klub Skabertrang project. The primary partners in the project are the culture school and leisure clubs in Roskilde, the regional theatre Aaben Dans, and University College Absalon. Since 2021, in various formats (Boysen, 2022), the partners have collaborated to develop an art educational approach to and vision of working with children and young people in an interdisciplinary, creative, and inclusive community.

With my background as a dancer and choreographer, I apply a broad choreographic research approach (Pedersen, 2024) to disclose unexpected, disturbing, or sometimes barely noticeable movements and actions.