Risking It: Transformational Art in Primary Education

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, children’s access to risky activities and play has significantly decreased despite the mounting evidence that it supports children’s development. Discourse on children’s citizenship and right to engage in risky activities has been examined in the fields of child psychology, geography, urban planning and more recently, socially engaged arts, but there has been very little work investigating how the socially engaged arts practice can create an enabling environment for risky play situated inside the walls of the traditional school. Working across two campuses of a primary school in a regional city in south-east Australia with children (aged 9 to 11 years), this project u..