Children's Art Observatory

The Children’s Art Observatory is a space for meetings, conversation and shared reflection on art created with children and young people in mind. The project develops around the themes explored in successive editions of the Children’s Art Biennale and offers an opportunity to look at creative work for young audiences from a range of perspectives: artistic, educational, research-based, curatorial and social.

The Observatory takes place cyclically as part of the Children’s Art Biennale project calendar. Its first instalment is an autumn conference and workshop meeting organised in the year preceding the festival. It is a time for conversations, the exchange of experiences and the shared identification of themes that are important to contemporary art for children.

The second instalment of the project is a discussion group held during the Children’s Art Biennale, which takes place every two years at the turn of May and June. The group brings together observers and moderators. It looks closely at the artistic events presented during the festival, discusses them and searches for a language that can describe the experiences of young audiences, artists and people working in the fields of culture and education.

The outcomes of these festival meetings are essays, conversations and interviews that explore and problematise the themes of successive editions of the Biennale. The texts are published in catalogues summarising the project, creating a record of reflections, questions and conclusions that may inspire further work in the field of art for children and young people.

The main aim of the Children’s Art Observatory is to create conditions for meetings between people connected with creative work for young audiences.

The project brings together practitioners, theorists, artists, educators, curators and researchers. Thanks to the diversity of experiences and points of view, the Observatory helps broaden ways of thinking about art for children, its languages, meanings and social role.

It is a project for people who want to look closely at how art for young audiences is created, how it works and how it changes – and how it can respond to the needs of children, artists, educators and the contemporary world.

During the upcoming Children’s Art Observatory, we will focus on children and young people – as participants in events and as co-participants in culture. We will look at their needs related to participation, consider how to design events for families with children of different ages and for school groups, and explore how to build their involvement and engagement consciously, based on knowledge about participation.

Children’s Art Observatory during the 26th Children’s Art Biennale will have two parts:

• conference and workshop meeting to be held on 9-10 October 2026,
• discussion group during the Children’s Art Biennale, which will take place from 30th May to 6th June 2027.