Evidence points to the importance of parents’ and caregivers’ interactions with young children and the value of warm, holistic, social and learning experiences in enhancing childhood development. Access to cultural and artistic spaces can expose families to playful and creative activities that enrich these experiences for children and support parents and caregivers to build skills and capabilities.

That’s why Nesta’s arts practice and a fairer start mission teams are continuing our partnership with Art Fund to unlock the social value of museums, galleries and heritage sites to support lower income families. This second phase is a research and development process that builds upon findings and key lessons from the first phase proof-of-concept in Summer 2023.

Combining Nesta’s evidence-informed approach and Art Fund’s cultural sector expertise, this partnership aims to apply research and development methods to create a playful, facilitated intervention rooted in evidence and co-designed with academic experts and museums that could be implemented across the sector. Interventions which support caregiver-child interactions and empower caregivers to build skills and confidence in areas that support key aspects of early childhood development and enrich the home learning environment.

Why we are doing this

Playful, facilitated interventions that can build parental and caregiving skills and capabilities and provide rich, creative experiences for young children can have a direct impact on our mission goal to close the disadvantage gap.

Research shows that child development benefits from high-quality, warm caregiver-child interactions and an enriched home learning environment. Access to arts, culture and creative and playful materials inside and outside of the home offers opportunities to support parents and caregivers to build skills and enrich this environment and help children to build skills and capabilities that get them ready to learn when they start school.

What we are doing

Museums offer families unique opportunities to spend time together. The buildings, spaces and collections, the expert learning teams and the access to artists and makers offered through museum early years programming help to fuel a young child’s imagination.

Nesta and Art Fund will work together with museums and galleries and their local community partners in an ambitious research and development programme bringing together insights from early years parenting interventions and the creative learning expertise of the UK's museum sector. We will work with the museums’ learning teams to develop and evaluate new and engaging facilitated interventions which support early years development goals.