The Politics of Play, a roundtable with Emanuel Almborg, Graziela Kunsch and Penny Wilson (Assemble Play) on alternative pedagogies

Please join us for a roundtable discussion on how artists, architects, and cultural organisations are experimenting with alternative child pedagogies. Emanuel Almborg will present his artistic research on various educational methods, including the anti-authoritarian approach of Summerhill School (Suffolk, 1921-present), the Marxist perspective on deaf-blind education at the Zagorsk school (Moscow, 1968-1979) and the exhibition A Child has 100 Languages on the Reggio Emilia Approach (Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1981). Graziela Kunsch will present the "Public Daycare" she made for documenta 15 (Kassel, 2022) and discuss the principles of Emmi Pikler’s pedagogical approach that shaped the project. Penny Wilson will discuss the role of playworkers in the United Kingdom and the projects of Assemble Play, drawing from six years’ experience creating playgrounds, playworks and playspaces. How can cultural organisations, artists, and architects – and adults in general – learn from children? How can we engage with childhood in the arts beyond the myth of innocence, utopia, subversion, or solitude? And how can creativity help us recognize the political agency of children? The roundtable is moderated by Grégory Castéra and Silvia Franceschini.

Emanuel Almborg is an artist based in Stockholm and London. His practice is primarily based on moving images and engages with pedagogy, psychology and theatre. In 2015 he was a Whitney ISP fellow in New York and in 2021 he finished a PhD at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (KKH) with the dissertation Towards a Pedagogy of the Utopian Image. Almborg is the driving force behind Switchers, a film and theatre collective with young people from London and rural Wales. He also studied psychoanalysis and child development at the Tavistock Institute in London and is currently doing a Postdoc combining art and psychology at KKH Stockholm and the BabyDevLab of the University of East London. His work has recently been shown at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, CAC Brétigny and the Whitechapel Gallery and Raven Row in London. 

Graziela Kunsch is an artist and educator from São Paulo. In her projects, she involves people outside the context of art as co-creators, allowing the initial propositions to be transformed. Since becoming a mother, she has focused on childhood, free play and parenting. Inspired by Emmi Pikler’s pedagogical approach, she creates spaces for play and care and mediates groups in which babies play and adults observe. She also used these principles to document her daughter’s free motor development. Kunsch is the editor of Urbânia magazine, whose sixth issue addresses the concept of "public as mutual", the collective construction among people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Penny Wilson studied illustration in the 1980s and became a playworker after leaving art school. It was here, seeing children at play, that she rediscovered the spontaneous creativity that had initially drawn her to the arts. After spending years in parks, streets and housing estates for the inclusive play association Adventure Playgrounds, she met Assemble while they were developing their film The Voice of Children for the Venice Biennale. Refreshed by their novel and authentic approach, she joined the collective and helped realise a long-term playwork project in London's Kings Cross, inspired by the "loose parts" philosophy. The project continued after the Covid lockdowns and AssemblePlay has since become a household name, working with many different organisations across London.