Early Years Arts Residencies & Training Programme

A collaborative partnership between Preparing for Life, an early childhood initiative of the Northside Partnership and Dublin City Council ( through the Children’s Art in Libraries Programme) .

Introduction

In 2016 the CAL Programme in partnership with Preparing for Life (an initiative of the Northside Partnership)  took place in Coolock Library and in two Early Years settings in Coolockk/Darndale Dublin 17 and was consciously devised by both partners to include three distinct phases.

Experiential: Very young children and Early Years Educators were given the opportunity to experience high quality arts programming across a broad range of arts Programmes in their local library. (A later additional public programme was support by Creative Ireland)

Training: Early Childhood Educators participated in a series of Music and Visual arts workshops which sought to help them effectively deliver Early Years Arts methodologies themselves within their respective settings.
Residencies:  Two six – month residencies were delivered by Artists Órla Kelly and Fiona Kelleher in two local Early Years Settings. The Artists delivered a programme of work, which enabled the very young children who attended their local community settings in Dublin 5/ 17, to access age appropriate quality arts experiences. They also delivered CPD training to other settings in the wider North Central Area of Dublin. This phase was supported through an Arts grant from Dublin City Council and further support from DCC North Central Area office

The Residency Programmes were designed and devised to deliver the following objectives:

Meet the needs of the specific target age group.
Provide Early Childhood Educators (ECE’s) with opportunities to experience high quality arts work to support their professional development  in delivering Early Years Arts work
Be innovative in approaches, utilising available resources to deliver quality artistic experiences (in visual arts and music) to very young children.

Provide parents and carers with opportunities to actively engage in high quality arts experiences with children.

Video link to process and outcomes of the Residencies Phase