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Door eighteen / advent calendar | Guest editors blog
2012-12-18

Door eighteen / advent calendar

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This is an image from a workshop on Early Years and Health which I facilitated as part of a professional development symposium earlier this year. "Creative Connections" was a two day event produced by Helium children´s arts & health and took pace in Mullingar this March. Artists, Teachers and Community mothers came together to explore the possibilities of Early Arts experiences- through talks and presentations, but also through practical workshops.

Meeting practitoners and sharing expertise and inspiration are vital to any artform-in Early Years Arts, the experts are artists and nursery teachers alike. When I first got engaged in the field, opportunities which provided space for co-learning, observing practice and experimenting were -and still are- major sources of learning.

Early Years Arts UK (www.earlyarts.co.uk) pool information about opportunities in the UK, Small Size (www.smallsize.org) offer workshops and training opportunities through their European partner organisations and share info on festivals all across Europe dedicated to Early Years Arts. And of course there s a great opportunity just now for european peer learning & exchange through Sligo Arts office, Kids Own and the model (news on the practice site).The Arts Council can fund training trips for example through the travel and training award or bursaries. (This is an incomplete list of many opportunities available).

A documentation on the Creative Connections seminar can be found on Heliums Webpage: http://helium.ie/wordpress/index.php/creative-connections-learn-all-about-what-happened-at-our-seminar-and-workshop-exploring-arts-health-and-early-years/