The CRC is said to be read as a whole, but each article might be scrutinized separately to see in what ways it generates important matters for fulfilling children’s rights. In this chapter I suggest that the interpretation of Article 31 – the child’s right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities, and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts – can go further than the CRC Committee (2013), which stresses the importance of the article by referring to the child’s development, socialization and learning for the future. Using the concepts of epistemic justice and encounters, the right to arts and cultural life is here discussed as rights that cannot fully be defined by only the duty-bearers. To accomplish the imperatives of Article 31, it is crucial to involve children’s own thoughts of what is meaningful and important: what is challenging, or enchanting, has to be understood from the perspective of the experiencing person. If the child is seen as an agent, co-constructing the social world, the right to cultural life and to arts opens up for accentuating the similarities between children and adults, both sharing curiosity and moments of “wonder-at-the-world” (Bennett, 2001).

Antologin bygger på föreläsningar, presentationer och samtal under Centrum för barnkulturforsknings barnkultursymposium våren 2023. 

How can human rights for children born outside their national jurisdiction with parents deemed as terrorists be safeguarded? In what ways do children risk being discriminated in their welfare rights in Sweden when treated as invisible part of a family? How can we do research on children’s rights in not just ethically sensitive ways but also with respect for children as rights subjects? And what could be a theory on social justice for children? These are questions discussed in studies from different disciplines concerning children’s international human rights, with a special focus on the realization of the CRC in Sweden.

I artikeln kommer ett enskilt, överraskande trassligt, fokusgruppssamtal med fyra elever att omtolkas med utgångspunkt i Charles Sanders Peirce’s begrepp ab-duktion. Materialet är hämtat ur ett treårigt forskningsprojekt kring elevers erfarenheter av konstnärlig undervisning som bedrevs av professionella konst-närer. Istället för att, vilket jag inledningsvis gjorde, konstatera att samtalet med några av skolans allra yngsta elever inte gav värdefull kunskap om barnens erfarenheter ifrån skolprojektet omprövas tolkningen. Då framträder inte barnen längre som busfrön. Med en abduktiv ansats synliggörs istället ett kreativt barnsamspel som utmanar och skapar förskjutningar i både relationen mellan den vuxna och barnen och av skolans normer, och därigenom även barns konven-tionella in- och underordning. Barns aktörskap kan ha olika uttryckssätt och för att erkänna dessa varianter krävs en öppenhet, och ett analytiskt arbete kring det oväntade. Via en abduktiv strategi (Paavola, 2014) används i analysen nya begrepp för tolkning, här estetisk negation (aesthetic sublation, Ylönen, 2021) genom vilket materialet rekontextualiseras. Detta synliggör i sin tur dimensioner av barns agens och deras omskapande motstånd till den vuxnas intention. I en avslutande diskussion relateras pragmatism till vad abduktion och sådan rekon-textualisering kan bibringa, i termer av nya möjliga tolkningar av menings-skapandets praktiska konsekvenser.

This article concerns how teaching artists, associated with the Swedish Royal Opera, provided aesthetic opportunities to students during a three-year school project. One intervention is scrutinized in which the storybook of Red Riding Hood was used as a starting point for further aesthetic learning, culminating in a shadow theatre performance. With an ethnographic approach, the study identifies how a folk story can act as a multi-literacy tool for learning. The children’s working processes and performance are interpreted under the inspiration of the Performance Cycle (Landay & Wootton, 2012) focusing on the reflective process.

Via a pragmatic discourse analysis, interview data from focus groups with children show that the interventions offer varied learning opportunities. Three themes emerge from the analysis of the children’s perspectives on the arts project, as learning opportunities linked to; (i) the material and the construction assignment; (ii) embodiment and emotionality; and (iii) social aspects and the importance of social interaction and friendship.