Children’s play and the artist’s creative process have many common features. They are both characterised by interests, wondering, curiosity and creativity, just as they are both completely dependent on the imagination of the participants. It is the imagination that enables us to see the things that are alternative; the imagination is thus the foundation of our creative power. Without our imagination, we could not update the goals we did not know we were looking for in the first place. Without imagination, the artist would always create the same – and the artist’s work would lose its strength. Without imagination, the child’s play would wound up in circles and the game would stop.

The Artist Revisting lets the artists and the children experience the creative process together

With the strengthened pedagogical curriculum, children’s play has regained the focus from adults in day care institutions. The curriculum also focuses on the child as an active participant in their own development. It is not only the pedagogical staff and the management that must develop the child, but the child must, within the framework of the pedagogical staff and the management, be actively participating in the creation of his or her own everyday life in the day care institution. With reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which focuses on the child’s right to play and participation, the strengthened pedagogical curriculum emphasises that childhood has a value in itself and that the pedagogical learning environment must be based on a child’s perspective.

But what does this change mean for children in day care when they encounter the arts? Will art be harder to be implemented in the new curriculum in the day care institutions, or will the new day care law from 2018 be a catalyst for diverse creative collaborative projects?

Behind the project The Artist Revisiting are several cultural institutions, such as a local dance theatre, a music school, day care institutions (placed in the countryside and in the city), and forthcoming nursery teachers, all facilitated by the self-governing institution Swinging Europe as project manager. The changes in the pedagogical curriculum are our opportunity to create a large art project, where we together – across institutions, ambitions and competencies – can develop a new – simple – strategy for letting children in day care meet performing artists.

In the same way that children’s play has a value in itself, the artist’s competencies and work also have a value in themselves, and if these two things are put together – the child’s play and the artist’s competencies – we can create a completely new strategy for performing artists meeting children in day care.