Bringing little lights to early years - a pilot project
Published on August 13th 2024.
Little Lights was an Early Years pilot project we delivered in collaboration with two Bristol Nursery settings - Little Hayes Nursery in Fishponds and Hartcliffe Nursery and Children’s Centre. Facilitators Rebecca Braccialarghe and Claudia Collins visited weekly over a period of five weeks in June and July; alongside Creative Learning Project Manager Mike Akers. Each session started with a creative provocation that the children were free to respond to in their own way. The aim was to then closely observe their interests and use this information to plan future provocations by following the children’s lead.
The project was a development of creative conversations stimulated by our spring production of Igloo; particularly the Play Session which immediately followed the performance. This session aimed to afford children the opportunity to take the lead in creating the content of the activity; in collaboration with the TL facilitator, who skilfully intervened as appropriate to provide provocations (in this case, materials and props seen in the performance). These interventions scaffolded and enhanced the children’s journey through the session. Little Lights took a similar approach but was delivered in the Nursery setting and without the performance to act as the stimulus for creative play.
Creative play
Photos by Ed Felton.
The sessions in both settings were a great success with fascinating insights into individual children’s play and conception of the world. Rebecca began with some of the props and materials from Igloo, which several children at Little Hayes had seen at Oldbury Court Children’s Centre. At Hartcliffe, Claudia was based in the Blue Room - a small space off the main classroom. Her starting point was to dress the space with lots of blue coloured objects and materials, literally turning it into a blue room. From these opening offers the journey of each project developed organically, with observation and discussion of the children’s interests being at the centre of the planning process, leading to a truly bespoke co-created experience for all.
Tanya Tooby - deputy head teacher at Little Hayes, described the sessions as ‘wonderful…. The children were so engaged.’ As a practitioner in a busy setting with many pressures in terms of need, staffing and resources, she really appreciated the opportunity to reflect on observation and documentation from the sessions, ‘It was good to experiment with stepping back a little further and delaying intervention,’ she said.
Building on our evaluation and learning from Igloo, this pilot project further demonstrated the positive impact and value of child led creative play in early years. It provided learning for the children, the settings and the artists alike. We look forward to continuing to develop our understanding of this approach to work with the early years in future projects.
Little Lights
Stories being told at Little Hayes Nursery. Photos by Ed Felton.