Bristol Old Vic

Location: Bristol, South West
Project: Create Space
Website: bristololdvic.org.uk
Social Media: Bristol Old Vic Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Time
• Openness
• Attention

Create Space is a three-year co-creation project, produced in partnership by Bristol Old Vic and Redcliffe Nursery School. The project aims to engage new families with the theatre by targeting children at an early age, building a lifelong sense of belonging and ownership at Bristol Old Vic. Redcliffe is only a short walk away from the theatre and other cultural venues, but it is culturally isolated and is located in one of the 10% most deprived areas nationally. 

The project aims to open up the neighbourhood so that early years children decide how they wish to use local spaces. 

Lead artist Edwina Bridgeman and a host of freelance artists and theatre makers are working with a core group of children aged 2-4 years. Weekly child-centred sessions are held at their nursery then at Bristol Old Vic. Children are invited to explore the theatre through creative provocations. They explore the possibilities of corrugated card, the joy of music and the magic of looking down from a balcony, to name a few things the children have chosen! Activity is open ended and artists, facilitators and nursery staff respond to the children’s engagement with the materials and the space. Each session builds on the last. 

In these sessions, they aim to build reciprocal, trusting relationships with early years children and encourage their natural curiosity and creativity.

Cocoon

Location: North Sheilds, North East 
Project: Be Together: Your Space 
Website: cocoonmusic.co.uk
Social Media: Cocoon Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• The Loving Torch of Attention™ – A practice of radical, sensory presence.
• OWL (Observe, Wait, Listen) – The foundational stance for attuned connection.
• Valuing the Parent – Honouring the most important adult in the room.
• Terrific Two-Year-Olds – Celebrating the joy and wonder of this unique age.
• Responsive Artistry – An organic process where a child’s natural impulse may get translated into live improvised choreography.
• Real-time Soundscapes – Musical conversation using the flute and pentatonic instruments.
• One Family at a Time – Providing a private, dedicated sanctuary.
• Heating! – An essential ingredient for a North East sanctuary.

Cocoon is using their Energiser Fund to slowly come out of the chrysalis—moving from an idea in Founder Kate’s head into a now fully formed music and movement playspace. Operating out of North Shields, Cocoon provides a unique, private "space within a space" where individual families reconnect through soulful, research-informed creative play. At the core of Cocoon is Kate’s trademarked practice, The Loving Torch of Attention™. They work with just one family unit at a time to ensure the space is entirely theirs.

This practice goes far beyond noticing; it is a way of watching with all senses, fuelled by a gaze of pure love fixed first and foremost on the child. They practice OWL (Observe, Wait, Listen) to ensure they are truly following their lead. Cocoon lovingly shine our gaze on the family at all times, supported by Developmental Movement Play and improvised live music.

This is brought to life in many different ways, led entirely by the child. It could be:

• A musical conversation: Led by the child through mirroring and responsive play. Using the flute and pentatonic instruments, Kate may "accompany" the child’s movement or engage in a direct musical dialogue—playing alongside or opposite the child to validate and celebrate their choices.
• Improvised choreography: Movement artists respond to the child's natural impulses—a jump, a crawl, or a discovery—which may then get translated into live dance.
• Quiet, held presence: Sometimes the most powerful response is simply being there, ready and waiting for the moment they choose to engage.

By holding the child in this light, they also support the parent—the most important adult in the child's world—giving them the "held" space they need to simply be.

Cocoon provides a vital creative sanctuary celebrating all that is terrific about two-year-olds and their grown-ups. By prioritising families in North Shields, they ensure that high-quality, deeply attuned play is accessible right on the doorstep of their community.

Made With Music

Location: Leeds, Yorkshire & The Humber 
Project: My Voice Counts Too 
Website: madewithmusic.co.uk
Social Media: Made with Music Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Facilitators experienced in adapting their practice
• Non-judgemental and welcoming spaces
• Time to explore and repeat

Made with Music and Stories with Liv are co-creating a project with Little Hiccups and Sunshine and Smiles. The project will use a mixture of activities and evaluation tools to ensure disabled children’s choices are heard, validated, acted upon and celebrated. They want to find out how disabled 2-4 year olds experience the world, how they like to play and what makes them happy. Little Hiccups and Sunshine and Smiles support parents of disabled children to connect and share experiences. This project celebrates each individual child and the choices they can make. 

In each session, they explore low-cost resources with different textures, sounds and colours. There’s no right or wrong way to play with the resources and they can be used in lots of different ways, either on their own or together. Each session is unique and they have captured joyful moments through fashion shows, writing songs about broccoli, taking time out in tents and telling stories without words. As the project develops, they’d like to create playful resources that give educators the confidence to include children with a range of needs in nurseries. They also want to empower parents to communicate their child’s play preferences.

Magic Acorns

Location: Greater Yarmouth, East of England
Project: Building Our Belonging PlayTech
Website: magicacorns.co.uk
Social Media: Magic Acorns Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Play
• Time
• Space
• Failure
• Mess
• Honesty
• Uncertainty

Magic Acorn's PlayTech is a three-year research and development project that invites young children aged 2-4 to co-create, experiment and play-test audio-visual technologies. Based in Great Yarmouth, this project brings together families, community partners, and a team of creative technologists to explore the possibilities of interactive digital instruments and tools. Together, they’re discovering how very young children might reshape our understanding of technology, and how we can co-create meaningful, ethical AV products that foster connection and expression in early childhood.

Children experience time in a different, non-liner and expansive way, which enables them to focus on the present moment and what it offers. Young children are not afraid to be emotional and messy, to respond to the world with a deep connection to the core of their being.

PlayTech creative practitioners and the AV tech produced have been influenced by collaboration with 2-4-year-olds. They have shown us how to play with the tech in a space, taught us about connection and resonance and that creativity is an ongoing cyclical process of trying things out and adaptation.

TACO!

Location: Thamesmead, London
Project: BANG! SPLAT! WHOOSH!
Website: taco.org.uk
Social Media: TACO! Instagram 

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Building the space for co-creation
• Centring curiosity
• Visibility/celebration/reflection

BANG! SPLAT! WHOOSH! is an experimental sound studio, publishing-broadcasting house, and sculpture workshop, led by 2-4 year olds. Underpinned by a partnership between artist-led organisation TACO!, and Better Children’s Centres Abbey Wood and Thamesmead, the programme supports early-years children and artists to collaborate. Centring children as artists, and learning from their way of working, they believe they should have access to making high-quality, compelling artworks, showcased to a wider public. 

So far the project has seen artist Jenny Pengilly deliver sessions centred on sound and everyday play, providing open-ended opportunities for the children to experiment with audio and recording equipment. Alongside artist Amy Leung, children have explored scale and movement, construction, collaboration and physical play - creating their own games through material exploration. 

The programme is informed by Little Voice sessions, designed to gather children’s opinions and inform public outcomes as moments of celebration. Sessions involve playful consultation with children at Waterways Nursery, testing formal approaches of a board meeting in new, sensorily engaging ways, and exploring preferences through non-verbal tools.

BANG! SPLAT! WHOOSH! is providing valuable learning for the partnership’s organisational and creative practices, and for the artists, children and families with whom they work.

Take Art

Location: Somerset & Dorset, South West 
Project: Little People Big Ideas
Website: takeart.org
Social Media: Take Art Instagram Take Art Facebook
Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Trusting partnerships with aligned values and commitment.
• Knowledge of what good co-creation looks like, feels like and how to facilitate it.
• Being respectful, active listeners who are open, adaptive and reflective.

Take Art’s project, Little People Big Ideas is taking a deep dive into early years creativity and co-creation. Two early years creative practitioners are working together collaboratively with children, early years staff and children’s families to explore the question ‘How can we foster young children’s creativity in the current early years education sector’?

To do this Take Art develop strong partner relationships with early years settings in Somerset and Dorset. Four settings are hosting artist residencies for sustained periods of up to one year. Their learning comes from creative sessions designed to promote child led activity which engages all the adults present as play partners and researchers. Through group and individual reflections, via meetings, reflective logs and review of captured images and films they explore and reflect on what has been observed, heard and noticed. 

Through offering Trainee Early Years Creative Practitioner roles Take Art are increasing the skilled creative workforce and enhancing individual career development. 

Take Art aim to: 

• Deliver engaging and joyful experiences for children and adults alike. 
• Empower and give agency to the children. 
• Inspire and build the creative confidence and skills of early years staff, setting management and trainees. 
• Understand the context and realities that partner settings operate within. 
• Promote the potential of creativity in nurturing the youngest members of our society. 
• Expand and deepen their own learning to enable delivering the best possible outcomes for all with whom they work with. 
• Add their voice to support positive change for children aged 2–4 year olds and their significant adults.

The Herd Theatre

Location: Hull, Yorkshire & The Humber 
Project: Play Herd
Website: theherdtheatre.co.uk
Social Media: The Herd Theatre Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• PLAY
• ATTUNE
• CURIOSITY
• Recognising that all forms of child’s play is the expression of creativity.

The Herd know that children are experts in play and are creating a space where young children can harness this. From the youngest age, play is the way they engage in the world, the way they find joy, and the way they figure out big, complicated issues. 

Play Herd is a weekly creative play group for 2-4 year olds run by The Herd Theatre in Family Hubs and Thornton Estate in Hull. Children and their adults collaborate with artists to explore different materials and art forms through open ended play. Artists of different disciplines are invited regularly into sessions to share their practice through play - so far they have worked with musicians, dancers, actors, composers, a clay artist and a designer. Sessions are focused on celebrating child creativity and deepening the bonds between child and the adults in their lives. 

The Herd are also testing how Play Herd can serve as a lab for The Herd’s other artistic outputs; how ideas found with children and families in Play Herd can directly inspire and influence the shows, installations and experiences they make.

The Spark Arts For Children

Location: Leicester, East Midlands
Project: Small Wonders Research Collaboration 2024-2027
Website: thesparkarts.co.uk
Social Media: The Spark Arts Instagram 

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Playfulness and enjoyment
• Time and space to develop trust and relationships
• Open-ended approach that provides choice

The Spark Arts’ core principles are child led, parent powered and artist facilitated. For this project artists are working closely with children and families through creative play and storytelling in children’s centres and libraries across two Leicester communities. They are exploring the potential of child voice in early years and what happens when young children are supported to take the lead, and importantly what changes as a result. 

Artists Sian Watson-Taylor and Corey Mwamba have been working in partnership with Braunstone Children, Young People and Family Centre and The Brite Centre library respectively. Across the first year, 24 creative play workshops engaged 646 children and adults, with an additional 153 families attending Les-tah to the Front, an early years punk-theatre gig performance co-created with Leicester young children and families. 

At each session, books provide inspiring starting points for open-ended exploration and creative play using everyday material.

“All the sessions are really reactive….it starts with an empty room and a story and then I follow the lead of the children ….the energy and the creative decisions that are happening come from the children” - Artist, Sian-Watson Taylor. 

Key outcomes so far have been:

• Creative storytelling empowered children to express themselves in both real and imagined worlds. 
• Parents developed their awareness of the importance of creative play and developed confidence to play alongside their children. 
• Sessions supported parents and carers wellbeing, as well as children’s development. 
• Practitioner creative confidence and skills strengthened.

The Whitworth

Location: Manchester, North West 
Project: Early Years Everyday Art School 
Website: whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
Social Media: Whitworth Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Trust
• Flexibility
• Safe and inclusive spaces

The Whitworth believe art, creativity and play are vital to early years development; nurturing cognitive, emotional and social growth in young children. Welcoming families local to the gallery (who have never visited before) to make space for art, play and creativity in everyday life providing everyone with moments of joy, connection and cultural expression which are crucial for healing and building confidence. 

For sanctuary-seeking children and families, who often face trauma, displacement and social isolation their trauma-informed sessions have offered a safe, expressive outlet that supports mental wellbeing, fosters a sense of belonging, strengthens parent-child bonds, and helps adults see their children as imaginative, capable thinkers. Through creative exploration with materials inspired by the Whitworth's collections the children develop problem solving skills, language skills and emotional resilience. 

For the Whitworth through embracing these values, and working with partner organisation Afrocats, they look to inspire systemic change towards inclusivity. Embedding creative, play-based approaches into programming and co-creating spaces with families from sanctuary-seeking backgrounds, they are looking to further break down barriers of access and participation at the gallery. Alongside Afrocats they want the project to not only enrich the early years within their locality but to challenge traditional institutional models; fostering a more welcoming, family friendly atmosphere where everyone feels seen and valued. This also takes inspiration from their gallery of sanctuary status. 

Turned On Its Head

Location: Northamptonshire, East Midlands
Project: The Dances We Dance
Website: turnedonitshead.org
Social Media: Turned On Its Head Facebook page 

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Reciprocal relationships/Attunement
• Open ended loose parts
• Immersion 
• And joy!

Turned On Its Head is a dance company that makes participatory performances and projects, harnessing the power of inter-relational co-creation. ‘The Dances We Dance’ is their three year project researching how very young children choreograph and what we co-create with them when we value their expression and voice. They are working with children from Pen Green Children Centre and Kingswood Nursery as well as the wider Corby community. It is their belief that stories, attunement and following children’s “possible lines of direction” in their creativity hold the key to understanding and disseminating “great” or “above average” co-creation.

“I love looking round and seeing their confidence flying. Every week I look round and see something different, some new spark” – Pen Green Centre Family Worker. 

“Today the families felt like they were really special. Lots of these families have complexities at home and a lot of our families say they don’t go to groups because their child is the one that won’t sit still. A lot of these children will never visit the theatre, you’re bringing it to their doorstep, it’s been so beautiful the way you have tucked yourself in amongst the trees. You’d never think we were on a field on the Kingswood Estate.” – Assistant Head of Centre.

Whitnash Nursery School

Location: Leamington Spa, West Midlands 
Project: The Language of Creativity: “Exploring Beautiful” 
Website: whitnashnurseryschool.org.uk
Social Media: Whitnash Nursery Instagram

Key ingredients for co-creation: 

• Time
• Space
• Response

'Exploring beautiful' at Whitnash Nursery School is a unique creativity project which uses an artist in residence, who creates a central atelier space* and resources it across the year, working co-collaboratively with the children and their educators. Partners include artist Matt Shaw, child psychotherapist Gill McLoughlin and Compton Verney Art Gallery and works with a range of creative disciplines including dance, digital technologies and more. This leads to a co-designed programme in the most real sense where young children's contribution to society is properly valued and evidenced. 

This project involves the children accessing Whitnash Nursery school, and their families, and has also spread to an offer to children from other Nursery Schools via Compton Verney artist residencies. This dynamic space is also visited by other artists and experts who can both work with the children and reflect with the adults. 

Atelier becomes a space that does not prescribe, but in which there is a growing offer of materials, a space where children decide what line of enquiry they might follow, where they can work beside each other expressively and where an adult with a thinking creative mind will watch, notice and respond to their interest. Valuing the work and recognising where they find beauty and fascination. 

Alongside, the atelier allows adults to watch and notice children's learning behaviours and levels of skill, and to begin to consider skill progression, and also where there may be aspects that need explicit teaching in the wider nursery context. Partnerships with Compton Verney and the team there also allow this work to spread beyond the confines of the school and into the community, into creative spaces, wide landscapes and galleries in which children's worlds and ideas are expanded.

*an atelier space is a dedicated studio or workshop space, designed to foster creativity, exploration, and discovery.