About the Project

"Thousand legs" is a municipal area of action for day care with a focus on body, nature and culture. Through a variety of offers and activities, emphasis is placed on developing the skills of staff for the benefit of children in everyday life. Kulturprinsen is behind the development and implementation of the art project "Thousand Legs", which over the next year and a half will involve all daycare centers and daycare institutions throughout Viborg municipality, a total of approximately 5350 children.

During a six-week programme, two artists are assigned to municipal day-care centres and kindergartens in a specific local area in Viborg Municipality, where they work actively and engagingly with the children and their adults around the theme of "colours". The aim of the project is to qualify the children to see and experience art and culture in their everyday life - to observe, reflect on and use colours actively, while the staff is inspired by the artists' work to include the artistic/aesthetic dimension and the encounter between art forms in their daily practice. The local programmes end with a gathering/showcase where the artists, daycare providers and parents come together to show each other what they have been working on in the colour programme - where the young children's daisies in many colours come into play with each other. At the end of the five-week programme, the artists and day-care providers meet again for evaluation and dialogue on how to make culture a natural part of everyday life, and are inspired to continue working with creative elements in their pedagogical practice.

The project is supported by Børnekultursamrådet, Huskunstnerordningen and Viborg Municipality, Children and Youth (http://kommune.viborg.dk/Borger/Boern,-unge-og-familie/Dagtilbud-0-6-aar/Tusindbenet/Kultur).

Read the Kulturprinsens article about the Thousand Legs project on page 10 of Curly Brains 2014 (digital magazine)

The Project in Practice

All children in Viborg municipality's daycare facilities were visited by an artist team of two people for five weeks: in the daycare/nursery once a week and in the kindergartens twice a week. The artists worked in an activating and involving way with the children and their adults on the theme of colours. By working in depth and around colours, the theme is broadened and can be put into a number of contexts, becoming part of a future everyday context. The aim of the art project as an inspiration and competence development project for day-care workers and educators has thus been:

"To be inspired to new ways of working with art in everyday life at a child's level.
"To experience and test what can be done right where you are, together with the children.
"Discovering new ways to integrate different arts and culture into your everyday life with children.
"To experience how working with artistic processes can be so much more than a nice product to take home.

Artists

Artists in the project were hired based on professional qualifications, as well as ability and experience in working with children aged 0-6 years. The selected artists were introduced to the purpose of the project and the encounter with pedagogical practice at two workshops before the start of the project in May/June 2013, as well as new artists at the development meetings held at Kulturprinsen after each session. Here, ideas and experiences were exchanged across artist teams, the project was developed and adjusted, and the shared understanding framework in which the project would be practiced was created.

Artist teams were preferably composed of a visual artist and an artist with another artistic background (music, dance, drama, etc.), so that complementary and broad pairs of partners could be formed. In this way, the artists were also challenged in their own specific professionalism in the encounter with other professions, with a view to enriching and inspiring the processes together with the children and their adults. It is important that the artists are confident and competent in their work, but it is equally important to be challenged in a good way in their practice, and therefore Kulturprinsen has chosen to promote this professional interdisciplinary collaboration - also (or better said: especially) in the 0-6 area!

During the project, the following artists have participated in different teams of the Millennium:

Anna Marie Holm (visual arts)
Anne-Mette Skovbjerg (music)
Hanne Stubberup Randel (dance)
Heidi Øberg (textile mediator, visual arts)
Elin Pausewang (drama, visual arts)
Ellen Abildgaard (animation teacher)
Flemming Bæk (animation teacher)
Lis Jørgensen (artist)
Sus Mynster (dance)
Susanne Ahrenkiel (artist, sculptor)
Søren Lyngbye (artist)
Søren Brynjolf (musician, multi-artist)
Thomas Kruse (artist, graphic designer)
Peter Aagaard Jensen (animation teacher)

Participants

Each artist works with about 60 children divided into 2 groups (daycare, kindergarten) daily. Each artist works with the same children two days a week in the kindergarten and in the daycare with four different play groups a week. With 5 teams of artists there are about 1300 children participating, about 600 children aged 0-3 and about 700 children aged 3-6.

Participants come from 12 kindergartens with nursery departments and all the playrooms in the 5 different local areas in Viborg Municipality:

1st period: spring 2013

2nd period: August - December 2013

3rd period: January - June 2014

4th period: August - December 2014