In this episode Claire Bown is joined by Clare Murray to explore how early encounters with art and museums shape the way people learn to participate, belong, and engage over time.

Our conversation focuses on how what Clare describes as museum habits of mind begin forming early in life, shaped by access, culture, and experience, and what can be at risk when early encounters with art and museums are uneven, delayed, or absent.

Clare’s perspective is shaped by her work as co-founder and executive director of cARTie, Connecticut’s first nonprofit art museum bus for young children, alongside her doctoral research into how people come to understand what museums are and who they are for. She describes research and practice as running in parallel, rather than as separate phases.

The conversation looks at why early childhood matters as a time when confidence, hesitation, and ways of taking part in museum-like spaces begin to take shape. Clare shares what she notices when children encounter art and museum environments for the first time, and what they appear to be learning beyond information about the artworks themselves.

Across the episode, they reflect on:

1. how early encounters with art begin to shape museum habits of mind
2. how confidence and hesitation show up and evolve through repeated encounters
3. what children seem to pick up about how to take part in museum-like spaces
4. what can be missed when access to art and museum experiences is uneven or delayed
5. how research and practice can run in parallel, with each informing the other

This episode will be of interest to anyone working with children, art, or learning spaces, and to museum educators, guides, and facilitators interested in how early experiences shape longer-term relationships with museums.

The Art Engager is written and presented by Claire Bown. Editing is by Matt Jacobs and Claire Bown. Music by Richard Bown. Support on Patreon

Episode Links:

Clare Murray on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/murrayclare

Museum Design with, by and for Children: Innovative, International Approaches https://www.routledge.com/Museum-Design-with-by-and-for-Children-Innovative-International-Approaches/Murray/p/book/9781032774404

cARTie https://www.cartie.org/

cARTie on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ctcartie/

Show Links

✨ If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider supporting The Art Engager on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheArtEngager

Or pick up a copy of my book, The Art Engager, for step-by-step guidance on creating meaningful, interactive guided experiences https://www.theartengager.com/

Buy it here on Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/buytheartengager

Hello and welcome to The Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown.

I'm here to share techniques and tools to help you engage with your audience

and bring art objects and ideas to life.

So let's dive into this week's show.

Hello and welcome back to The Art Engager podcast.

I'm Claire Bown, and today I'm chatting with Clare Murray about early

encounters with art and museums and how what happens in early childhood

can shape the way people learn what museums are for and who they're for.

Clare is the co-founder and executive director of cARTie Connecticut's first

nonprofit art museum bus for children.

Through cARTie, Clare brings museum based learning directly to young

children who might not otherwise have access to art and museum experiences.

In today's episode, our conversation begins with the origin story of cARTie

and why early Childhood felt like the right place to focus this work.

Clare walks us through how a cARTie visit works in practice and shares what she

notices when children encounter art and museum-like spaces for the first time.

We talk about what children are learning in these encounters beyond

information about artworks, including how they learn to participate, to

speak, and to feel they belong.

From there, we talk about Clare's doctoral research and the idea of how

museum habits of mind develop over time, often quietly and cumulatively.

We also explore the tension Clare describes between writing critically about

museums and witnessing something very human and hopeful happening in practice,

as well as the longer term stakes when access to art and museum experiences

in early childhood is uneven or absent.

There's lots in this episode for anyone who focuses on early childhood, but

many of the ideas we discuss here will feel relevant to lots of museum

professionals, museum educators, guides, and facilitators, working with

a wide range of audiences and settings.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Hi Clare, and welcome to The Art Engager Podcast.

Thank you, Claire.

Lovely to have this chat.

So, uh, it's delightful to have another Clare here.

Perhaps you could introduce yourself and say who you are and what you do.

Yeah.

My name's Clare Murray and I wear a handful of hats.

First, I think most proudly, I am the co-founder, executive director of a

small nonprofit art museum inside of a bus for young children and youth,

in my home state of Connecticut.

I'm also an artist, an art thinker.

I'm a researcher, and I suppose most pressing, I'm a doctoral candidate,

finishing up my dissertation, looking at the development of a museum

project down in Assunçion, Paraguay.

So you've recently returned back to the US after spending much of

the last, uh, year in Paraguay, and you have these two strands to your work.

You have cARTie on the one hand, but you're also working on your research.

So how are these two strands shaping what you are thinking about at the moment?

I think a lot about what it takes to create a culture of museum

going on the one hand with cARTie, oh, seven years ago or so Now, that that seed

of an idea for putting a museum inside a bus and driving into elementary schools

and preschools and community spaces that don't have access to the arts came about.

Because there's a real need, right?

For young children to get comfortable, to get confident to practice agency

and museum spaces in the longer term, bigger picture project of

really democratizing museums.

On the other hand, this research, what you touch on that other strand of my work

is also about cultures of museum going.

I had heard about this project vis-a-vis friend in grad school.

Assunçion, Paraguay, Paraguay in general, doesn't have a huge history

or tradition of museum going.

But there's a team right now working on a really beautiful initiative.

And when I had heard about the project, it was presented to me that they were

gonna be starting really with children.

And, of course that pulls on my heartstrings, but also even more

than that, it, it pulls on my, why.

My, my getting up in the morning is to see museums come alive with and through

children, um, and audiences that maybe wouldn't necessarily always think to

step inside and leverage museums and art for their own thinking and learning

and development and long-term growth.

So let's start first by talking about cARTie.

'Cause I'm fascinated about the story about how it began.

I know you founded it with your mom.

So what were you seeing, what were you experiencing?

What was going on that made it clear to you that something

needed to exist like this?

So I'm from Connecticut, just beside New York for those

outside of the United States.

Small state, but a really, really interesting one.

Um, over the past 10 years, the student population's got more and more diverse.

Maybe, you know, that's a microcosm of a much larger situation.

In and with that, at the same time, access to the arts for those

children has fallen by almost 20%.

And so that means we're removing a really critical part of a child's growing up.

And a child's honestly their why to go to school, right?

For so many kids.

If you don't get that thing that catches you, what, what is it that's

gonna make you show up day after day?

And certainly, you know, research behind that, of.

How accessible the arts can be and are.

So with that backdrop I knew that my home state of Connecticut.

Needed some love, needed some heart, you know, and that with the capital ART.

And beyond that, in my undergraduate career, really by chance,

I had fallen into museums.

I wound up in , an internship at my university art museum, and

I had two incredible mentors at the time who said, you know what?

We have to start an early childhood initiative.

We don't have one.

Clare, help us out.

Let's do this together.

And, so much credit to those two ladies, that hands-on learning, that

learning by doing, put something inside of me that museums are my why,

but also museums with children and bringing museums to life with children.

So, coupling all of that backdrop of what's going on in Connecticut,

what children need, but also knowing that museums need something too.

You know, museums need a younger population that

will turn into an older one.

But even in the present moment, museums are critical spaces

to activate children's rights.

So coupling all that together, fast forward many years after that internship.

Really quite transformative at the time I had an undergraduate degree in economics,

so it took me a bit of time to, part with that and then move fully into museums.

But I did get there ultimately and in museums, something happens with all of us,

you know, those thoughts turn into ideas.

Ideas can turn into real life change.

And so this idea of cARTie, it happened.

Honestly, Claire, I could think back to the day, I had roped my mom into

doing some volunteer work with me.

She's an early childhood educator.

So always, you know, dinner table topics of.

Early learning and development standards and theory, all that.

And I'd roped her into, push her, her zone of proximal development

and come into the museum with me.

And one day, I don't know if it was raining or really sunny, I can't

remember that detail, but whatever it was, there were no children in,

in this children's museum where we were volunteering and the two of us,

something, just a light bulb went off.

We're playing in this space that's set up for that kind of critical learning.

And for me that was really pivotal to notice that even as an adult, that switch

could go on with the right environment and with the right facilitation.

And why couldn't that be packaged inside of a museum?

Break down these barriers, drive directly to the children that wouldn't otherwise

be getting to a museum that also are those same children, if I go back to

that picture was painting of Connecticut, that are losing access to the arts.

Let's talk a little bit about the choice of placing cARTie in a bus.

So not in a museum.

What was the gap with existing models?

Why did you feel that a children's museum in a bricks and mortar setting

wasn't sufficient for this group?

Yeah, by no means is cARTie necessarily even comparable

to a brick and mortar institution.

Let's also, let me just say, but what cARTie is, is a child's first

introduction to the world of museums, and it's a place to exercise and try

out those habits of mind to explore what is close looking, what is critical

thinking, what is collaborating with our peers, what is practicing listening?

And we do that inside of a bus because the bus can drive to any school.

I mean, today, we're in one library tomorrow and we're in another school

tomorrow afternoon, another, and the schools we're reaching are

schools that maybe a don't have financially the resources to get to

that brick and mortar institution.

Maybe B, most museums are really, really beautifully set up for third grade

and up, but prior to, early childhood, there's still something societally that

we are all working through, those kinks.

And C I'd also say when cARTie began, it was in the heart of COVID.

And so getting to a museum on top of that came with all of these complications.

So cARTie as museum in bus could strip away all of those

limitations go directly to schools.

Literally park right outside.

Limit the transition time when we're talking early childhood, right?

That transition is always something that when we're planning

tours we have to work with.

And so cARTie was some sort of a solution to all of that.

I think I would also pause and add in our context in Connecticut, in

the United States, especially when cARTie was, you know, that seed

of an idea, that business plan, standardization is getting the pressures

on teachers, on schools to achieve.

Well still only continuing to increase, right?

And so to advocate to go to a museum.

There's a lot of work to also put on a teacher to also put on a district.

And if this museum bus could come, could squeeze into an already

existing school schedule, could very clearly, very explicitly align

with state standards or learning development standards, social emotional

standards, social justice standards.

We were trying to really be partners to, to be an extension of, of the

school day within the school day.

Yeah.

And removing those barriers to entry, to visiting, by actually going to them.

And I'm curious as well, what you can do in a bus environment, a museum bus

based learning environment, but you can't do in a bricks and mortar museum.

Are there any silver linings

I would say absolutely.

We have a model in which all the art that's on display in our bus

is made by Connecticut, middle and high school student artists.

So students who are already predisposed to love art, they're making art all the time.

They wanna go on to art school, they wanna become artists, and they need

a space to show their art and build that, that confidence as well, and

to do so in a way in which they're, quasi role models for younger students.

In addition, part of our model though is once we go through a jurying process

with local teachers, children, leaders, artists, we invite families on our family

advisory board, so families with the young children, to study these works

of art that are selected annually.

And let's figure out how do we come up with an exhibition that brings these

alive for our demographic, right?

These children, families with young children.

So in the bus, it's one space, it's one gallery that those children,

those families with young children can take direct ownership over.

You know, there's a tangible, that's a bus I can touch that.

I can feel that.

What if a work of art went right here?

What if the floor we could lay out?

It's about, you know, two of us, wide and 10 of us long.

It's a space in which a child or our group of children, co-curators

can really embody and think about critically over a series of workshops.

How do we outfit this for the rest of our state to really take advantage of the

wonderful mastery of these works of art, but also the opportunity for thinking and

wondering and listening and collaborating.

And can you walk us through how a visit actually works in practice?

You know, what children experience and how you are designing these encounters

so they work for very young children.

First and foremost we set up the space, not, it's

not just art on the walls.

There's design on the floor, there's design on the ceiling, there's design

in and around the spaces, the nooks and crannies, the places to marvel in.

Every work of art has some sort of provocation around it.

In studying those works of art with co-curators, every year we notice,

you know, there's a piece of art that's got a face jumbled up in

different pieces and it reminded child co-curators of jumbled up mirror pieces.

And so what if there were mirror pieces scattered around it that we

could look inside of and piece our own face into different pieces?

There's another piece that this year for instance has a

Spider-Man in four different ways, and if you turned it this way.

How differently could it look?

And so the child co-curators said, this should move, this should spin.

And so in fact, this is a piece that children can move, can spin, can look

at critically in different orientations from different perspectives, lots of

pieces that also open up, what could we fill in this, what could come next?

And so the storytelling aspect of that naturally resonates a lot with children.

We do more of that the subtleness of the provocation there through facilitation,

I'd say, than through pure environmental and I would go back to the environment

as a whole taking inspiration from Reggio Emellia, especially that the environment

is third teacher, that the environment can reflect, a child's home environment,

can reflect a portion of their school environment, can reflect the natural

world around them, and can reflect.

Art media and art materials that they themselves might also work with.

So inside of our bus, we try and bring all of that together, natural log cushions

and art carts, stocked with materials that have a direct relation to some of the

art that's on display, different looking tools, different kinds of viewfinders,

and not necessarily a viewfinder you need to purchase at a store, but a viewfinder

made out of a, a recycled material.

The, just putting that other reminder gently through our space, that this

is all children's space, to take ownership, to think of how they can

manipulate a certain tool or material in the service of their thinking, in

their looking, in their wondering, in their creating and in their connecting.

We tailor all of our visits to meet what school partners need to meet, what

community partners need are interested in.

But I would say rule of thumb is we try and make sure that within any

chunk of time we get with, let's say a class or let's say a group of

children has three component parts.

So we starting with some sort of exploration with a tool in hand,

something to go forth confidently, whether it is a magnifying lens to prompt.

Close looking or whether it is a sticky note arrow to point out a detail they

want everyone else to GoBoard and find and, look at and talk about after

that exploration with some sort of a scaffold, some sort of a support.

Though there is always, we bake in free exploration time, some

time to play to own that space, to make their own discoveries with

facilitation and support and, educators modeling interest in all of that.

Discovering, exploring.

And then we move it organically into discussion.

And that's a key part of the cARTie model, bringing children together

to not just have their individual experiences, but recognizing, when

you or I go to a museum, there's always a social component too, right?

And so if that's, a habit of mind that will likely be baked into a child's later

in life, museum going experiences here and now let's form the foundations to have a

really beautiful unfolding conversation where with children we always.

Honor their a hundred languages.

And so our conversations aren't necessarily just verbal dialogue.

We have a big sheet of paper that fills the whole bus, where we're

taking notes and children are adding to those collaborative notes, and they're

also practicing working right next to each other, adding upon each other's.

Or honoring what one another have contributed, and then going deeper.

So our discussion piece is twofold in that it's a pure documentation format as

well that the group can take home with them to recall moments of mystery and

intrigue and interesting discoveries.

But the other piece of that is the practicing hearing each other

and having confidence sharing.

And it doesn't need to be verbal.

It can be right in front of them with whatever material they

wanna work with and explore.

And then somehow, organically, always following children, it does

continue into more creation time.

And so in every cARTie visit using art as a tool for making sense is key for us.

Whether it's a reflection piece, um, whether it's they were really

interested in these clay pieces.

Well, how does clay even work?

What can we do with clay?

Um, this year, for instance, the theme that our student advisory board came

up with for the guiding exhibition is all about the many ways of seeing and

thinking, having multiple perspectives.

And in that.

It's been really important for our conversations to leave children

wondering about each other's ideas.

And bearing all of this in mind, what do you think the children are

actually learning in these encounters?

It, it seems from your description, there's an awful lot going on, and

it's definitely beyond what they're learning about the artworks themselves.

It is definitely beyond the artworks themselves.

They're learning habits of mind really, Claire.

They're learning how to navigate a museum space that is of course,

designed for them, with them in mind, with other children.

But they can take those same habits, translate them to other civic spaces,

other cultural institutions, and those habits include close listening.

Those habits include close looking.

Those habits include thinking critically.

Those habits include going forth really, really creatively.

And those habits also include feeling confident taking agency and knowing that

there's some really important learning going on just by encountering a work

of art, just by being with an object, just by being with others around us.

So that would be big picture what's going on learning wise?

It's these foundations for really important habits of mind.

Be they translate directly to museum habits of mind later in life, or be they

habits of mind to occupy public space.

Beyond that every lesson plan we develop out of the cARTie curriculum,

which again, the tailoring piece, it's everything we do is really specific to

what our school partners need and want.

But every lesson does have, of course, learning objectives specific to the

idea of practicing understanding how another could perceive a work of art.

Practicing listening to one another, practicing exercising

their written, verbal visual language skills and so forth.

But I would say those overarching learning habits of mind are what most

excite me about what we've been able to develop through this cARTie model.

Yeah.

And you're talking about this phrase 'museum habits of mind'.

Um, perhaps we could say a little bit more about what you mean by that, and

also when you're talking about habits of mind, where do you think those

habits begin and what might happen if they're not formed at this early stage?

Mm-hmm.

Lots of theory out there, right?

Of how children.

Develop their behaviors, their, their thinking patterns.

Certainly Bandura's social learning theory reminds us and grounds us that

children learn from grownups, they learn from role models, and we as those

adults, in my case, as a museum educator, working with children, I have a big

responsibility to be modeling interest, a big responsibility to be listening,

a big responsibility to be having fun in this space, A big responsibility to

be honoring art as a critical language, as a critical tool for making meaning.

So I would say starting young is as simple as just taking that responsibility on

and knowing that children are picking up on our behaviors all along the way.

Anytime we step into a museum space, there are rules and norms communicated,

whether it's you have to enter by walking up that huge long staircase, whether

it's you get in and 'oh goodness, don't get too close over there, you're not

actually allowed to occupy that space'.

There are subtleties that we all pick up on.

Obviously those don't just magically start at 30 years old.

They start the first time we step into a space like that.

So I think when I talk about museum habits of mind I'm grouping a lot together.

It's behaviors, it's thinking skills.

It's capacities, it's understandings of what a museum even is.

And I'm loosely using that term to encapsulate the potential for

going to museums and leveraging them for learning and development.

And I think what's so interesting about this and we talked about

this a little briefly before we, started recording, is that we have, we've talked

about belonging on the podcast before.

We've talked about those first few moments when people enter a museum and there's all

sorts of cues that are happening, social, cultural, physical cues that are kind of.

Making you ask questions about whether you belong here or whether

you feel at home here, whether you can navigate easily here.

All of those questions are super important, but what's so interesting

here is this is developing it over time from a very young age.

So really thinking about that belonging piece way back in early childhood and

seeing then if you can kind of shape these habits of mind at this early age.

Yeah, I would say starting young is of course important.

I would also say in my recent research, living down in Paraguay

doesn't necessarily need to be correlated with age, right?

It's a whole culture beginning to understand what a museum can

offer, what it will be become.

You know, the research I was down there doing, it was really

interesting to see the unfolding of how this group is socializing.

In essence the idea of a museum.

And they're starting with all ages, right, here and now.

Anyone come, walk into their laboratory space, get to know what the offering is.

So there is a lot to the young, but there's also a lot culturally,

there's so many differences.

Yeah.

And if we move into your research, a little bit, I think it would

be really nice to talk about some of the questions you're trying to

explore through this research as you try and make sense of these ideas.

Yeah, I went down to Paraguay with, you know, my certain set

of assumptions and isn't that beautiful?

What research always promises us and my certain set of assumptions led

me to believe that what I was gonna find down in Paraguay was a group

really working to center children's rights and go forth from there.

What I found was a little bit different but even more interesting, I would argue.

This group has a insurmountable challenge in front of them to create a museum

going culture and a set of traditions where those cultures and traditions have

not existed, will not happen tomorrow.

That is also in and of itself a really long term commitment and

project and, and, and evolution.

So my research was really focused on understanding what is this project?

What does it have for the future?

How are children and community members thinking about what it means to develop

this interactive museum for the community?

And in so doing, Claire, it was.

Not part of my original plan, but isn't that also the

beautiful unfolding of research?

I wound up noticing across interviews, across data observations that folks

down in Paraguay were tending to lean upon metaphors to make sense of what

this initiative was meaning for them.

Metaphors, right?

Lakoff and Johnson talk a lot about that in their preeminent work on metaphors.

Metaphors help us make sense of something unfamiliar in familiar terms,

but with that, they carry underlying messages and underlying meanings

that kind of contour the associations around what this unknown may become.

So in, in the beautiful evolution of my research, I wound up talking a lot

with the team down there about metaphors that they use, but also then bringing

in my art background and how could we bring art-based communications in

even further art as also a tool when we can't fully maybe express what

may mean or our thinking verbally.

But could we do it visually?

And, obviously we could do that with our bodies, we could do that through sound.

But I was particularly interested in the visual.

And so.

The ultimate evolution of my research looks at what this museum project

means, not only in the descriptive sense, right in its many camps and

in the outreach work with children in the community and where and how my

ideas about doing more Reggio-inspired practice maybe didn't necessarily find

resonance because of the larger societal traditions around education practices.

But the big piece that gets me excited and is keeping me going right now is

the analysis, the interpretation of what all that means through metaphor.

And the same with children in my work back in cARTie, using art in the service of

making sense of our collective learning.

It's so powerful.

With this project done in Paraguay, there were ultimately five

metaphors that came about, and I'm interested, just to pause on them,

One being for folks down in Paraguay, the museum as trampoline, another

being museum work as service, another being the museum as growing repository.

Another being the museum as running parallel to education and the last being

the museum as navigating in Betweenness.

Certainly culturally contoured, certainly contoured to this moment in

time critical, I was there when I was, collecting research over the past year,

but also really laying the foundations for what museum will

mean for Paraguay moving forward.

And the phase you are in now , you are writing up your research.

And I remember talking to you about the writing process felt quite difficult

because and I hope I'm not misquoting you here, because you found the process

so beautiful and magical which is why that kind of critical writing

felt a little bit wrong to be doing.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah.

I think understated how much taking a bit of time really promotes reflection.

I see that with work with children just a little bit more time.

We don't need to rush a reflection, but in my case again, I, I went down with a

certain set of assumptions and when those assumptions were tried, the experience

of being researcher in a foreign land, really privileged to get to do the kind

of work that aligns on the dot with my philosophy of education, my practice,

because, cARTie has all of me behind it.

Coming away from that and stepping into a place where all of my, my vision of

education was really challenged, prompted a, a hesitancy in the writing process.

But I think what was invaluable, and I hope researchers everywhere continue

to really demonstrate how important doing research can be for cultural

competence, for cultural awareness, cultural understanding, immersing

oneself in discomfort is critical.

Is the only way in which the status quo gets challenged, right?

So i'm taking my time, but I will be defending in two months, so wish me luck.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I'm really interested in the intersection between

research and practice.

So you have cARTie that's embodying your methodology, your ideals,

and then you have your research.

So have they pushed back on each other in any way?

Have there been any kind of changes in how you see either side?

I'm really fascinated in that kind of interaction.

Getting to be researcher and practitioner has allowed for me to

have that interplay happening for pretty much all of my museum career, right?

So this experience heightens that, certainly this experience reminds me

about the importance of thinking how.

An offering fits into a larger system, a larger cultural context

that an offering really needs to not be about what do I wanna achieve,

but what do my community members need and want to achieve themselves?

And I so I would say coming back from this recent really

immersive research experience to a predominantly practice space.

Right?

I mean, cARTie, we do research all the time and thinking about what tools

children gravitate toward and letting those micro, practice research projects

unfold, but in the bigger sense this immersive experience translating back

to by and large a practice space, I'm thinking a lot about how are we directly

aligning with a constantly evolving need landscape and how do we improve

our mechanisms for checking in on those needs, on those wants, on those desires.

So I think research ahead of me needs to continue to have a practice.

Application or a practice relationship.

But I also think research like this research project

will find that inevitably.

I was thinking when you were talking how useful those reflections are

for anyone listening, anyone thinking about their work in and within museums.

Anyone thinking about their facilitation practice, how they might

go in with assumptions, how they might have to sit with discomfort,

how they might have to reevaluate.

All of those things I thought were so super wide ranging and

interesting for anyone listening that they're really good takeaways.

But what do you hope stays with listeners that are hearing about all the amazing

work that you've been been doing over the past few years, especially those

who work with children, who work with art or those who work in learning.

I hope one big takeaway is don't discount art space communications,

whether that's with really young children as a channel forward in

activating the museum environment, or whether that's with a group of folks

who have never been to a museum before.

Don't discount the arts space communication as a tool for making sense,

because anyone can pick up a mark making tool and go forth, and the unfolding

there is really, really beautiful.

I can only say so much, but Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross's book, Your

Brain on Art certainly gets into a lot more of that as a starting point.

I'd also say to go back to your piece on reflection, I hope that a listener

out there would find some resonance.

Would recall.

I'm not the only one, right, who's been just fresh off a, an immersive

experience in a context that put some challenge on certain frameworks.

I know just the other week talking to Debi Keyte-Hartland about her work in Africa.

I know just the other week talking with Ellen Winter about her work in China.

Anytime we change our home, our hub of thinking, there's important reflection

and so I would hope that anyone listening also holds that in mind and, and stays

open to the opportunity for a little bit of discomfort, challenge in the

process of improving our museum practice, improving our art education practice, of

improving just our cultural competency and improving our cultural responsiveness.

And I think great takeaways as well for me, thinking about how I

work as well across contexts, across countries, across cultures as well.

They're really good takeaways.

What's next for you?

What's in the pipeline?

What's next?

More research, more practice, more sitting on the ground with children

unfolding and discovering our thinking inside of museum spaces.

I'm also really excited about a few collaborations I have upcoming with Dr.

Amelia Ruscoe in Australia, thinking about learning environments and their

role in, in how children's conversations evolve and develop another project with

Dr. Zorana Pringle on the relationship between art museum experiences and the

development of emotional intelligence.

And we'll, in both of those, be leveraging cARTie as a site, a laboratory space.

And then the constant research with children aboard cARTie and making sure

that that practice continues to improve.

So exciting collaborations on the horizon.

Always, never ending learning, research, teaching and continuing to stay connected

in this beautiful community of individuals that care about museums as spaces for all.

Oh, very lovely words there.

So for anyone who wants to find out more about you, your research or

cARTie, where's the best place to start?

cARTie.org would be a great place to learn a bit more about our model.

You can find us on social media as well for more glimmers and hot takes.

Obviously, I care a lot about children and museums.

Obviously I care a lot about the curation behind spaces and how we

consider children's perspectives in setting up provocations environments.

So a set of case study that I had been really looking into, I compiled into

a book through Routledge, in Sharon Schaeffer's series, and the book's called

With, By and For Children.

I'd encourage it for anyone looking to take a field trip in a book, you'll go

in seven different ways and hopefully get some ideas that you might bring back

to your own practice, your own research.

Oh, wonderful.

We will put all the links in the show notes as always, and that

just leaves me time to say thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for having me, Claire.

So a huge thank you to Claire for being on the show today.

You can find out more about Claire's work with cARTie, her Research and her

book via the links in the show notes.

And if you've enjoyed this episode or if any of the previous episodes of The Art

Engager have helped you in your work, please consider supporting the podcast.

You can become a friend of the podcast on Patreon, or you can pick up a

copy of my book, The Art Engager.

Reimagining guided experiences in museums available now wherever you buy your books.

That's it for today.

Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to The Art Engager podcast with me, Claire Bown.

You can find more art engagement resources by visiting my

website, thinking museum.com.

And you can also find me on Instagram at Thinking Museum, where I regularly

share tips and tools on how to bring art to life and engage your audience.

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Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.