Artistic Activity and Child Well-Being in Early Schooling: Revisiting the Narratives

The relationship between children’s artistic activities and their well-being is framed within larger constructs of child health and safety, educational achievement and cognitive growth, and social and emotional development. Given that increasing numbers of young children around the world spend time in early care or school contexts outside of the home, this chapter focuses on the relationship between children’s artistic activities and their well-being through the lens of artistic activity as it is contextualized in early school contexts. Underlying assumptions about early schooling as a social and cultural enterprise, images of children as artists, and arts as pedagogy are examined in order to situate a reconsideration of the relationship between artistic activities and child well-being. Ultimately, this chapter raises questions about images of the child as artist that underestimate the young child’s emotional and intellectual capacities and explores an alternative emerging image that situates artistic activity as a kind of meaning-making that creates possibilities for more authentic spaces for child voices.