College of Social Sciences

Macarena García-González, who recently joined the School of Education, tells us about her new project exploring how children’s literatures, arts, and media might challenge exclusions. The research will combine arts-based inquiries with narrative interviews and will work in collaboration with Prof. Evelyn Arizpe.

The project CHILDCULTURES seeks to provide models for rethinking children’s participation in culture production and consumption. It is conceptually framed by recent developments in the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, the ethical and epistemological standpoints of feminist new materialism, and critical approaches in children’s literature and culture studies. We will inquire into the claim that reading (quality) literature makes us more empathic or better citizens, as well as into the shifting assumptions about the importance of reading literature in relation to other forms of cultural consumption. This project is shaped by an acknowledgment that we live in a time of uncertainties and crisis—climate crisis, pandemics, growing populisms— in which culture can provide us with new and affective repertoires for living together. Cultural production is often praised for facilitating inclusivity: this project inquires with a critical approach to adultism, how such inclusivity could be understood, fostered and embodied.

The project was designed to collaborate with the Consortium and students of the Erasmus Mundus International Masters in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture (CLMC) led by Prof. Arizpe in the School of Education. The Consortium includes Aarhus University, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Tilburg University and the University of Wrocław.

In a first work stream, we will work with the CLMC students exploring different understandings about the power of fiction and arts in relation to literary and media cultures. Through interviews and arts-based methods, the project charts possibilities to think about inclusivity and about the role that participatory initiatives may have in challenging discrimination.

A second work stream involves research with children, inquiring into how they recommend certain cultural materials for and by children and how such recommendations may be related to various axes of exclusion, most importantly to adultism. This section is organized in collaboration with various partners:

• Research group JOVIS.com of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona;
• Tantagora - a Barcelona-based NGO working on reading mediation and cultural promotion;
• IBBYCat - the Catalan section of the International Board of Books for Young People and its child juries for literary prizes;
• #EstoTbn - a platform for intergenerational cultural promotion in Chile.

Finally, the project involves a theoretical development of the notion of children’s cultures and collaboratory research which is conducted in partnership with Prof. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak, coordinator of the CMLC programme at the University of Wrocław.

---

CHILDCULTURES is a transdisciplinary research project originally awarded as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie (MSC) incoming fellowship by the European Commission. As is the case with other MSCs awarded this year, it will now be funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

First published: 30 November 2022