Living the arts: The City of Melbourne and ArtPlay

ArtPlay is the first permanent home for children's art and play in Australia. It is a distinctive combination of artistic, developmental and cultural features housed together in a custom-designed environment where children out of school are able to engage directly with artists and art-making. Inspired by The Ark in Dublin, it was established in 2003 by the City of Melbourne as a part of the artistic, creative and cultural development of Melbourne as a child-friendly city. In 2005, the Council provided funding for a pilot research study to identify and map engagement, learning and cultural citizenship for children undertaking ArtPlay's artist-led workshops. This study provided researchers with a unique opportunity to document, understand and analyse possible connections and interrelationships between children's engagement in artmaking learning and cultural citizenship. This paper reports on this investigation and some of the outcomes of that pilot study which focussed on six representative ArtPlay workshops.