Hi everyone and welcome to ArtPlay Children Learning. My name is Dr. Louisa Penfold and in this episode we catch up with Liz Clark, an early years dance artist who has produced and starred in fantastic interactive children's performances including Sponge and Shiny. Based in the East Midlands of England, Liz Clark is a dance artist who has been a member of the is the director of the Turned On Its Head Dance Company, an organization that produces creative movement and dance opportunities for young children and families.
Liz is also a lead artist on Talent 25, a 25-year research study run by Demonte. University looking at the importance of the arts in babies lives. In this episode Liz tells us a bit about her background and shares some fantastic ideas for how parents can integrate dance and creative movement at home. So I'm a community dance artist primarily and I've been working in the field for about 30 years.
I started my career, my life in dance doing ballet and that was going to be my trajectory. I was going to be a ballet teacher. But I became more interested in working with communities of people and in the power of dance really, to be able to transform lives, the power of dance for learning.
And I went into my community practice after doing my degree, working from cradle to grave really. I worked with everybody from tiny babies right the way through to... older people but started to specialize about 16-17 years ago I started to find a real niche in kind of early years and a real happy place for me so since specializing in early years my practice has cut across many fields so I've worked in educational settings in nurseries I've worked in research so I'm currently lead artist for a research project in Leicester looking at the impact of creativity on babies and I also make interactive performances for very young children. I'm really excited to delve further into the adult and child relationship and what that can mean for both the adult and the child and the power sharing that can happen between artists and very young children and so I think that's probably my lifelong work. going forward really is kind of investigating movement um for reciprocity um i'm absolutely fascinated by the moving body and what the moving body can tell us um babies move before they do anything else so my children were born um they uh the first thing they did was, you know, move up towards me, snuggle into me.
And just how important it is to read body language and what body language can tell us. So those things together are kind of like the kernels of my practice. Awesome.
Okay. And could you tell us like specifically about like a couple of different projects that you've worked on in the past, whether it's been like, you know, a children's theatre, you know, production or like... you know some workshops in schools just I guess to give an idea of like you know some concrete um examples of different things that you've developed and done with kids so yeah so I'll tell you a little bit about um the second show that I created which was called shiny um so this is um it's an immersive experience for babies and children and and the children have open access to the performance space at all times and the performance is part choreographed, part improvised so that the children's responses in the moment can be taken up by the dancers and woven into the performance. So that piece of work was created. I started dancing in that piece when I was in my late 30s and my, the other half of the company was in her late 40s and I think we both felt like we were at a stage in our careers where we wanted to make something where that worked for all children.
We wanted to create something that was really inclusive and really accessible. When my first child, my first birth child was born, he was hard of hearing. And I used to try and take him to theatre productions. And he always used to try and charge the space because he couldn't engage with it on an auditory level.
So he was always trying to be right in the thick of everything, trying to be on stage with the performers. And so there was lots of theatre that didn't really work for him. because it required children to stay back in their seats.
And so I wanted to make theatre that would work for him and for children like him, who wanted to be right there in the middle of it. So I think, you know, your parents and your teachers who listen and read your blog, I think they'll all know a child who is like that. They'll all know a child that when an artist comes into school or they take their child somewhere... they'll go oh you know I feel our anxieties are raised because we want to know that our children are going to be included we want to know that our children are going to be celebrated and valued what we created in that was we actually created a piece that actually contained a lot of surprises both for us it certainly kept us on our toes as performers and creators because we never knew from show to show what was going to happen there were whole sections that were purely improvised um i can give you a link to the to the trailer from the show as well so people can see what i'm talking about and in that you'll see children's authentic movement children having a response to us to the materials that we bring in the show which are very open-ended and you can see that different children are interpreting those materials in different ways but also having an immersive experience together. A couple of years ago I did a project in a nursery that was about curiosity and creativity outside so It was lovely because the nursery had like an outside building and a big outside space.
And we worked a lot about gathering natural and found materials from outdoors. And then looking at how those inspired us to move and to create when we actually brought those materials indoors. So there was a lot of...
bringing different materials together and children being able to explore moving outside, which I always think has a really interesting impact on children's movement. Yeah, and I can provide a link as well to the blog that I wrote off the back of that as well, just a brief one, the children's images from that and just... their their deep level of engagement that you can see on their faces was a really striking um element of that project yeah so from uh the work that you've done like as both as a as a practitioner and like your bits and pieces in research why why do you think that creative movement and dance is important in young children's learning and development I think it's really clear to differentiate that when I talk about moving, I'm talking about creative moving. And I'm talking about a movement that comes from within a child that expresses and helps them to explore both their inner world and the world around them. And I think that...
That way of moving that's so linked to who they are and how they see the world is so vital for all areas of a child's development. It's, I mean, if we talk about physical development, it's so important that babies have the time to... explore down on the floor.
I often talk to my parents when I'm working with them and their babies about Babies should be 50% in our loving arms and 50% independently down on the floor, rolling and stretching, feeling their bodies, developing strong muscles, overriding reflexes that babies are born with. So all of that physical development, moving and exploring our world is so important for it. The social aspect of moving with other people is really important. Babies being able to and children being able to be curious. Children tell us who they are and how they see the world through their bodies.
If we can tune into what they're showing us with their bodies, then it's another way of tuning into their fascinations. And... that's the way in which we help children to learn you know movement is is our it's our it's our primary means of communication and particularly in the early years when we have so many challenges with language um children might be non-verbal or pre-verbal or have difficulty with speech and I think so much of us you know we're doing it now but you can see how much I'm moving around and I would feel a lot more comfortable if I was in a studio and potentially you know moving and talking to you than I would be sitting on a chair um but we become so unattuned to our moving bodies and how they feel but our bodies hold memories they hold feelings um you You see, so often I go into a room full of children and actually what they really want to do is the first thing is they want to run around.
Yeah. And they want to, you know, explore with their bodies and feel what artists, what dancers bring into that is they bring that willingness to go with it. And that willingness to see where that can then take you and match that. match that energy.
The research that I'm involved in at the moment at De Montfort University, it's about how do we create, you know, lifelong... children who have a lifelong connection to the arts and I think the way we do that is by helping them to feel like they belong in those spaces that these spaces are for them that this is a space that values their creativity so is it would you like to talk a little bit about the talent 25 project just to talk about it in general so people can check it out if they if they want to know more yeah so um it's a 25 year study and the baby babies come onto the project when they're under one years old. So at the moment, I run the program that they do an eight-week program when they first join.
And I run that And so I've worked with, I'm just on my fourth cohort of families. We've did the first two cohorts face to face because it was pre-COVID. And then the second two cohorts, I've been online with the babies.
Currently, leading online has brought its challenges to me as an artist who very much. you know, likes to be in the room with people. We're missing such a lot of sensory information just working through screens and screens and very young children.
isn't isn't great you know we don't want our children looking at at more screens um okay and so that actually might be a nice segue to talk about whether or not you have like a couple of tips for you know parents um who are kind of stuck at home at the moment with their kids and how they can do creative movement and dance um with their little ones so the first thing i would say is to create some space for moving and that doesn't have to be you don't have to clear all your furniture to one side it just has to be a space where you can move either um with the option to be down on the floor um with the option to be able to move around a little a little bit um and and modeling that movement with your children. And children are really forgiving. So we know that their bodies are amazingly bendy and they can do all these wonderful things.
But actually all the children want is an available adult who is willing to be down on the floor with them or who is willing to, if they want to explore spinning, that we'll have a go at spinning, even though it makes us feel a bit dizzy and a little bit sick sometimes. And the next thing I would say is children are absolute geniuses at creating movement experiences. So the pressure shouldn't be on us as adults to think, oh, my goodness, you know, what am I going to be doing today? We can find something that we find curious, a provocation.
It might be, so I've been working with natural found materials. I've been working with objects from the cupboards that have an interesting way of moving. And then I think the third thing I would say is just to really honour children's moving. And one way in which... um i've become fascinated in it is the idea of actually mirroring this movement or doing what doing what we can to mirror it because sometimes if they're upside down and inside out it's difficult for us adults to mirror that but i think in in taking on or trying to take on those things that our children are showing us we're giving them a really powerful message we're sending them the message that um that they are understood, that we see them and that we value what's coming from within them.
But also I think as a tool for engaging children it's really powerful. that sense that I'm going with your idea. Yeah, you can have all kinds of movement adventures that way. So find space, find objects that encourage you to be curious, open-ended objects.
and tune into children's moving and mirror them those are those would be my three uh just before we finish up i wanted to ask if you have any other like resources or like online bits and pieces that if anyone is interested they could have a further look at Yep, so there's some resources on my website about having creative adventures at home. So these are really easy to follow ideas. There's also some of my colleagues have some really great resources as well out there at the moment.
There's a resource from Wales called the Play Cards, which is a series of cards. that give you some movement starters or there's a resource that I created for Made With Many which is an organization just south of where I live that's about moving with woolly jumpers so everybody's got a woolly jumper in their cupboards and you know the thing that I get most is from from adults is oh I can't dance oh you know i haven't got any rhythm or and and i think there are a lot of barriers for adults with moving but but stillness is a is a movement choice or you know just moving with hands or um yeah i think you know walking and it's it's just about seeing movement in its broader sense And it not being about the dancing that we might see on television or an idea of a set dance style that we might understand as an adult. And, you know, if we all tuned into how our bodies want to move, we would all increase our well-being, I'm sure. Wouldn't we?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's great.
Thank you so much for your time. That's okay. It's been great to talk to you.
That was early years dance artist Liz Clark and if you'd like to find out more about her work you can have a look at her website turnedonitshand.org. I'm Dr Louisa Penfold and I hope you enjoyed this ArtPlay Children Learning episode.