WORLD CITIZENS AND GLEAMING COBBLESTONES

14 June—7 December

In all weathers, three days a week for three years, the preschool “Kosmos” has been exploring the main square in Ystad. They have treated the square, with all that unfolds there, as part of their teaching and pedagogical practice. One of their goals is to make the children’s thoughts and experiences visible in the community. Another is that each child should become aware of their rightful place as a democratic world citizen!

You can now share in both the children’s and the educators’ reflections in an exhibition at Ystad konstmuseum. The exhibition includes a film of interviews, drawings, clay figures and a 160- centimetre ant colony, complete with a lift and an advanced communication system. Here you will find Topsy the pig with its twelve eyes, whom “everyone can care about,” according to the children. You can also browse the literature that has inspired Kosmos’s pedagogical approach, and throughout the summer you can try out games devised collaboratively by the children and educators, such as “Dad’s Shoes.” What does it really feel like to walk in someone else’s shoes?

The children and educators have engaged with important questions relating to the square and the urban environment: issues of democracy, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, climate issues and norm creativity. Throughout the process, the educators have listened attentively to the children’s ideas. They have employed methods from the “hundred languages” philosophy, an integral part of the Reggio Emilia educational approach, to capture each child’s unique way of expressing themselves.

How can Ystad konstmuseum reflect and disseminate the pedagogical and aesthetic projects taking place in the municipality, and what can the museum contribute to their further development? This exhibition offers one answer.