DANCE, COMMUNITY, EDUCATION, CO-CREATION

Region: Hovedstaden
Municipality: Elsinore
By: Elsinore
Year: 2019/20
Artist: Yasmin Elvira Steenholdt
DAILY OFFER: Children's House Rosenkilden

We have created a new culture of play among the children. This new play culture has given the children a new approach to each other's input and ideas in the development of play. We have created a common language which we see results in the children having a more inclusive approach to each other both in everyday life and in play.

We feel that our authority towards the children has been strengthened through PlayArt. LegeKunst has created a tool that, more often than not, resolves everyday conflicts in a positive way, where neither child nor adult is left as the "loser". We have realised that PlayArt is a tool that can be used to create easier transitions for children in their daily lives. We see that the children have been given the tools to use PlayArt to act in and accommodate situations that are usually challenging for them.

We have built a partnership where our mantra is "Yes and..". This creates a huge sense of security, knowing that no matter what you say, your colleagues/friends will always say "Yes and..". This reassurance makes it easier to dare to let go of control and thus dare to let go completely and just go with the flow of creative ideas and discoveries.

We see that the vulnerable children are not overworking in the community in the same way as before PlayArt became part of our daily life.

In the next section we will tell you about two sunshine stories:

P is a girl who has undergone a great development. P has had a negative status in the community. This is because she does not use her language but instead screams. She has difficulty making herself understood to the other children and adults. She has, through PlayArt, created educational tools that she can use in everyday life. For example, P has built a new play relationship. Before, P went from game to game all the time, but now we see that she stays longer in one game. PlayArt has thus helped P to change her status in the community to a more positive one. She can better accommodate the adults' boundary setting in general, P's relationship with the adults has changed. P now understands that the adults are there for her and that we want to help P make her special qualities valuable to the community. We saw this clearly one of the first times in the PlayArt programme when she suddenly screamed very loudly - and we asked "What's going on?" P answered, still screaming "Spiders!!!" then the adults and a lot of children, together with P, ran away from the area where the "spiders" were....

Another sunshine story is about a girl we call M.

M's self-esteem has been strengthened through LegeKunst. Although M occasionally falls back on her weakened self-esteem, she can be helped back through the PlayArt approaches. M has had experiences of success. The free environment of LegeKunst has given M the confidence to try out her ideas without thinking anything was right. We see that she has got better with transitions in everyday life, for example. Together, M and the adults have built new strategies to create ease in transitions. Ease consists, for example, in having a more playful approach to transitions.

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