Children's Art Observatory History
The Children’s Art Observatory, as a discussion group accompanying the Children’s Art Biennale, was initiated in 2011 by Hanna Gawrońska, who worked at the Children’s Art Centre from 1986 to 2018 and coordinated the Children’s Art Biennale programme from 2009 to 2015. The first Observatory was held as part of the 18th Children’s Art Biennale, Tradition in Contemporaneity. The first edition brought together nine invited participants specialising in different issues related to creative work for children. The outcome of the Observatory was a publication featuring essays and interviews prepared by the project participants, edited by Grzegorz Leszczyński and Hanna Gawrońska.
Since the 19th Children’s Art Biennale, whose theme was The Word in the Territory of Art for Children, there has been an open call for project participants, and the texts created as part of the project have been published in the catalogue summarising the project.
The coordinators of previous editions of the project were Hanna Gawrońska (2011–2017) and Izabella Nowacka (2013 and 2015). Since 2017, the Observatory has been coordinated by Joanna Żygowska, with Anna Czernow as its substantive collaborator.
The following people have moderated the Observatory during the Children’s Art Biennale:
- 2013 – Anna Czernow and Grzegorz Leszczyński
- 2015 – Anna Czernow
- 2017 – Anna Czernow and Beata Jewiarz
- 2019 – Anna Czernow and Magda Majewska
- 2021 – Anna Czernow and Justyna Czarnota
- 2023 – Anna Maria Czernow and Aleksandra Zalewska-Królak
Since the 20th Children’s Art Biennale, Ocean of Music, the Observatory has also included an autumn conference and workshop meeting preceding the Children’s Art Biennale. Its aim is to discuss the guiding theme of successive editions of the project. This part of the Observatory continues and develops the academic conferences that have accompanied both the successive publications in the Art and Child series and the Children’s Art Biennale since its inception.
