Last week I attended the Children are Now Exhibition and Assembly at the Talbot Rice Gallery in partnership with Moray House School of Sport and Education. It was a fantastic day with children hosting and leading the event from Q and As, to music and performance. Election which was commissioned and co-created by young people as part of Imaginate’s Creative Encounters project was performed. My favourite part of the day was when adults and children worked together to deconstruct the traditional conference room space of the gallery transforming it into dens and playgrounds.
So often children’s rights researchers are at conferences full of adults in the space talking on behalf of children so to have children leading an event was refreshing and shows the possibilities of sharing spaces and knowledge if we are to re-imagine together.
After the Assembly I attended the lecture on Childism by distinguished Professor John Wall (Rutgers University USA). This inspiring lecture reinforced ideas that are fitting into my PhD’s theoretical frameworks. Wall defines chidlism ‘as feminism but for children’ synonymous with other movements like anti-racism and decolonisation that seeks to overcome the adultism that discriminates children based on age. It is a theory rooted in intersectionality, intergenerationality and empowerment, that values children’s knowledge and experience as children.
Overall, it was a day that provided hope that by deeply listening to and collaborating with children it can led to reimagined social change and made me reflect on the important role of creativity and the arts in that transformation of overcoming adultism and bolstering children’s rights.