Agony Artist: How do I deliver creative experiences in a small space?

Welcome to our new Agony Artist series – where we’ll be answering your questions about using the expressive arts with young children! This blog, we’re tackling a common question – how do I deliver creative experiences when I don’t have the space to swing a cat?

Tiny Spaces, Tiny Worlds
Drama artist Hazel Darwin-Clements made a video for us called “Mini Worlds”, which is all about creating your own miniature worlds through imaginative play by noticing tiny worlds around us when out and about. She recommends trying the same in your setting on space, whether indoors or outdoors, after all a tiny hole in the wall can become a mouse house, or you can find an entire world in a leaf. If you have a hole in the wall that you pretend is a mouse house, you could leave little provocations from the mouse – a note, or signs of mouse roaming. This too, could lead down a whole avenue of play, can we pretend to be mice too? Can we write a note back to the mice? With one tiny detail, you’ve opened up a whole world of imagination!

New Dimensions
Charlotte Allan points out that the smaller the space, the easier it is to transform. Use fabrics, or paper to cover walls and floors. Can you tie this into other areas of the curriculum? For example, exploring sea creatures by turning your small space into a blue under-the-sea experience. If a whole room feels too ambitious, you can even start with a door. That way, when wee one’s come into the setting you can show them the portal into another world!

From an emotional literacy standpoint, this is a great introduction to drama. By changing a space, we don’t have to change ourselves. That way we can play with how we would react to being underwater, or wherever the journey takes us. This is a great way to explore playing with different emotions and developing vocabulary for our feelings.

Getting Moving!
Movement in a tiny space can sound like a disaster, but as Skye Reynolds points out, it can make communication easier – you don’t have to shout over an echoey, noisy hall and can explore movement in a quieter and slower way. During her residency at Scot’s Corner Early Learning and Childcare Centre, Skye has explore turning the cozy room into a small space for rough and tumble with mats, and used scarves for movement. The room contains the movement and mats and scarves naturally encourage smaller movements – when you’re doing low level play, you tend to stay on a mat anyway, and when you’re using a soft fabric scarf, it tends to encourage more gentler movement.

For quieter activities, Skye also recommends sitting in a circle and using stories to explore gentle touch. For example, tracing the story Incy Wincy Spider on each other’s backs is a gentle way to bond together and explore story and song together.

Jazz Up the Outdoors
Some settings don’t have outdoors spaces, or are in the middle of city streets, which can be uninspiring. Rebecca Fraser ran a project during the COVID-19 lockdown with families in her community called Move + Make, where each week families were given a small creative provocation that got them outdoors and creating together.

Though COVID-19 restrictions have eased, and this project was for families, there’s lots about it we can try in our settings too. There are lots of simple props that encourage us to get outside and making together, whether it’s chalk, biodegradable confetti, painted stones, clay pottery or scattering wildflower seeds. To get started, read a bit more about Move + Make, or see 5 Ways with… Breadcrumb Trails for inspiration!