1st Edition
Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage
Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage explores how the everyday experiences of children, and their imaginative and creative worlds, are collected, interpreted and displayed in museums and on monuments, and represented through objects and cultural lore. Young people constitute up to half the population of any given society, but their lives are inescapably influenced by the expectations and decisions of adults. As a result, children’s distinct experiences are frequently subsumed within the broader histories and heritage of their families and communities. And while adults inevitably play a prominent role in children’s lives, children are also active creators of their own cultures. As this volume so vividly demonstrate, the cultural heritage of children is rich and varied, and highly revealing of past and present attitudes to children and their work, play, creativity, and human rights.
The essays in this book span the experiences of children from classical Rome to the present moment, and examine the diverse social and historical contexts underlying the public representations of childhood in Britain, Europe, North America, Australia, North Africa and Japan. Case studies examine the heritage of schools and domestic spaces; the objects and games of play; the commemoration of child Holocaust survivors; memorials to Indigenous child-removal under colonial regimes; children as collectors of objects and as authors of juvenilia; curatorial practices at museums of childhood; and the role of children as visitors to historical sites.
Until now, the cultural heritage of children and the representations of childhood have been largely absent from scholarly discussions of museology, heritage places and material culture. This volume rectifies that gap, bringing together international experts in children’s histories and heritage. Aimed at a wide readership of students, academics, and museum and heritage professionals, Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage authoritatively defines the key issues in this exciting new field.
1. Children, childhood and cultural heritage: mapping the field PART I: Stories, games and memories: the intangible cultural heritage of children 2. Patrimonito leads the way: UNESCO, cultural heritage, children and youth 3. Playlore as cultural heritage: traditions and change in Australian children’s play 4. The case of the Wildcat Sailors: the hybrid lore and multimodal languages of the playground 5. The hidden heritage of mothers and teachers in the making of Japan’s superior students 6. Playing the author: Children’s creative writing, paracosms and the construction of family magazines PART II: Sites and places: the spatial heritage and commemoration of children 7. Taking the children: children, childhood and heritage making 8. ‘Let children be children’: the place of child workers in museum exhibitions and the landscapes of the past 9. Roman children and childhood and the perception of heritage 10. Children, colonialism and commemoration 11. The last remnant of the Holocaust: representation and reality of child survivors’ lives 12. School buildings and the architectural heritage of childhood: designing mid-twentieth century schools in England PART III: Objects and collections: the material culture of children 13. Putting away the things of childhood: museum representations of children’s cultural heritage 14. Representations of childhood at the Foundling Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood, UK 15. Children as collectors of cultural heritage: Leland Stanford Jr. and his museum 16. Home and hearth: representing childhood in fin de siècle Russia 17. Material culture in North African children’s play and toy heritage
Biography
Kate Darian-Smith is Professor of Australian Studies and History at University of Melbourne, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has published widely on Australian and imperial history; on memory studies, material culture and heritage; and the historical and contemporary dimensions of children’s play. She has held advisory positions with many cultural institutions, and led major research projects in partnership with government, museums and heritage organizations.
Carla Pascoe is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, an Honorary Associate at Museum Victoria and a professional historian. She has published a monograph Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia (2011) and in leading Australian and international journals. She is currently completing a social history of Melbourne’s tram workers, contributing to a biography of eminent Australian H.V. Evatt and teaching undergraduate history courses.
"(...) this book is undeniably an important contribution to Heritage Studies, as it offers a thorough analysis of the emerging issues of the relationship between children and cultural heritage. It is a valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and students of Heritage Studies, Childhood Studies and Children’s Histories." - Bronia Cross, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Hull
