A new set of principles aimed at helping teachers, parents and carers guide young children into engagement with the arts have been published.
Principles for Engaging with the Arts: a Guide for Early Learning and Care and School-age Childcare was launched by Norma Foley, Minister for Children, Disability and Equality and Patrick O’Donovan, Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, in The Ark, Cultural Centre for Children, Dublin in June 2025.
Available as a poster, the principles can be easily accessed and displayed for reference. The research underlying the principles means their application can be extended far beyond the early years, to all contexts where the arts are facilitated with children.
The publication of the principles marks the end of a consultative process across the arts and education sectors since 2019, which began with Dr Tríona Stokes of Maynooth University being commissioned to write a discussion paper identifying the principles for engaging with the arts under the guidance of a steering committee comprising representatives from vested government agencies, the DCDE, the Arts Council, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) and The Department of Education Inspectorate.
The Principles and Curriculum Connections
Presented as statements with features thereof listed beneath, each principle begins with the child and extends outwards to elements which support arts facilitation in early learning and care and school-age settings.
In examining the principle Children’s expression must be nurtured, the features of the statement hold essential messaging about the facilitating adult’s role with children of any age.
This encompasses offering risk-taking within the context of trusting relationships and an emotionally-safe and secure environment, and the inclusion and encouragement of all.
The importance of a supportive environment in enshrined in curriculum, with nurturing relationships centralised in the Aistear Curriculum Framework (NCCA, 2024) in developing children’s problem-solving capacities, for clarifying and developing their thinking and expressing their ideas and feelings.
Similarly, the Primary Curriculum Framework (NCCA, 2023) also identifies relationships and learning environments as two of its principles of teaching, learning and assessment. ‘Being creative’ is one of the seven key competencies, and the arts are identified as a vehicle for the extension of children’s creativity, imagination and understanding.
Applying the Principles
Frequency of time and opportunity to play are encompassed as part of the principle, Children develop as creative thinkers, to establish the conditions necessary for artistic endeavour.
Young children ought to have daily opportunities for creative expression (Copple and Bredekamp, 2009). Importantly, the principle Creativity is a Process establishes that artefacts or products may emerge, but not always.
For the principle Children develop as Creative thinkers, physical and sensorial engagement are emphasised, particularly access to the natural environment which is bountiful yet unpredictable. Creative thinking can be supported through affording space for children to pose and address questions as they engage in trial and error.
Posing and addressing questions is a central component in facilitating ‘possibility thinking’ in creative problem-solving, first introduced by Anna Craft(2002:11) as an attitude which uses ‘imagination as an intention to find a way around a problem’.
For example, venturing ‘What might help us to make this pillar stand?’, in an art construction. ‘I wonder’ questions are another non-leading way of prompting children’s thinking, which renowned drama teacher Dorothy Heathcote introduced as ‘wondering statements that propose action’. ‘I wonder why the inventor might seem so cross?’, where offered by an educator, might support children engaged in role-play to develop their narrative structure in terms of developing a tension, progressing the plot or simply establishing character motives thereby engaging in affective reasoning.
Dr Tríona Stokes (centre) of Maynooth University with Patrick O’Donovan, Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, and Norma Foley Minister for Children, Disability and Equality at the launch of the principles.
Principles for Engaging with the Arts: a Guide for Early Learning and Care and School-age Childcare represent clear guidance and a starting point for all engaged in arts facilitation. They can be accessed in full via this link:
