ABSTRACT
Using the metaphor play pocket, this chapter examines perspectives on framing art-making and aesthetic encounters with children in pedagogical settings. While play pockets are initiated by adults and eventually adult-guided, the focus is on art making with children, specifically children’s play and aesthetics. Here, aesthetics is more than a superficial sensing or creating of objects, it becomes a way of playing- and being-in-the-world—that is, an attunement to aesthetic encounters of various kinds and a multifaceted way of exploring through presentiments, imagination, and corporal-sensitive participation. This chapter presents excerpts from research in Danish kindergartens, where artists, pedagogues, and children (4½-6-years-old) participated in social and aesthetic explorations of themselves and each other through various pieces and artefacts made from metal. The aim of the article is to develop a view that blurs the practices of art, pedagogy, and play, forming as a state of being and becoming that is a multilayered sphere for aesthetic experiences and aesthetic Bildung. Not simply as a vehicle for formal learning and schooling.
