Teaching art to children: Opening a child’s mind to the world of imagination • FRANCE 24 English

well it’s time now for our entre segment and today we’re going to be talking all things art and specifically how to get children excited about it to talk about this i’m joined by charlotte wilkins who’s an art historian and guide charlotte what might be the benefits then of introducing art to children so early well i think definitely art is all over us we have art in public parks and churches and schools and um really art is a way of expressing ourselves and it’s a way of seeing the world and with children we might sometimes feel daunted about how to introduce them to that because it’s such um well yeah sometimes if we’re not experts it can seem difficult but when we do that early it um enables them to um to to get very connected with themselves to look carefully and um it really encourages them to be mindful as well and look um to look for the details in things and what about taking children to places like museums i mean how could that be practical to kind of keep uh a young child’s attention for that long in a place like a museum or a gallery i think definitely just keep it light um it’s best to aim for places that are free uh paris city museums for instance are a great place to start because they are free of charge and you can go in and out with no pressure i love for instance the pipelle or the carnival museum which have rich and diverse collections and the pipella even has an outdoor space so you can pop out if you need to as well and by the time kids reach school they might already be showing signs of some picasso flare or some might be not even be interested um how do you tackle this kind of school age group well with um school age children i would say it’s um about sparking their curiosity and then keeping them engaged um some museums offer tools like audio guides or games booklets that you can download which enable them to actually um engage with the art but you can also do this very simply by um getting the kids to um act out with the art i enjoy making children mimic sculptures for instance uh to make them feel in their bodies the intention of the artist um you can also ask them very open-ended questions um what is it you’re seeing what do you think the artist was trying to show us uh you can get them to encourage them to invent stories about the art as well that’s another great way of doing it and i see that you’ve got some books there that’s another tool i suppose that you can use absolutely so um this one i would say is great for preschoolers it’s about uh getting them to look carefully so this one is by uh the lou and it’s where is hippo hiding uh my little toddler loves this one and it encourages you to find an egyptian hippo in various um paintings and sculptures from the lou you can also uh try this one which is great to get children into the milestones of art then if you have a very inquisitive child like mine that asks how things work how things were made this is a great one to go with by osborne how art works and if you happen to have a crafty kid by all means um in well introduce them to different artists um um way of production and get them to work on projects according to what different artists are doing for instance make cave f handprint art like a cave man artist or a cubis collage like picasso yeah i certainly wish that my art classes were like that when i was in school um how could parents get technology and multimedia involved here i mean that might be something that could appeal to teenagers or twins yes definitely teenagers will not want to be lectured at so you really want to avoid that at all costs um technology is a good entrance point so for instance if you go to an edgy contemporary art museum like the pelle de tokyo uh there’ll be immersive installations there that can get them interested failing that you can also um give um older children a camera and get them to zoom in on quirky details you can also uh go street art hunting um if you are in paris or even all over france you can go um chasing space invaders and then uh use the app which allows you to uh gain points and that works well and you can also use videos on youtube there are lots of resources out there and i would say use humor even though art is all about big subjects like truth beauty it doesn’t always have to be so serious and sometimes keeping it light works best uh for instance if you have uh teenagers uh you could show them a short video about how or why um babies in medieval paintings look like shrunken down old men as opposed to babies uh a fun way to just keep them engaged without making it too heavy yeah it’s certainly true that we have this kind of perception that when you have to talk about art to young people we’re getting really into the nitty-gritty and the history of art but it doesn’t have to be uh quite so serious does it no i would say definitely um keep things light start young to spark their curiosity and then let them lead um and basically um be creative and curious alongside them and yeah just try to get them to enjoy it thank you very much charlotte wilkins you are an art historian and guide here in paris very interesting thank you very much for your insight thank you for having me

In this Entre Nous segment we’re focusing on art – but more specifically, how to get children excited about it. We speak to Charlotte Wilkins, an art historian and author who tells us about the benefits of introducing art to children early on.
#art #children #imagination

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