Exploring the pedagogic culture of creative play in early childhood education

We present a conceptual analysis, grounded in empirical data, of how young children's creative play is framed by the 'pedagogic culture' within which the child is playing. Drawing on data from a research study with the broad aim of documenting children's creative play in Western play-based early childhood education, we gathered exploratory qualitative observations, self-initiated iPad video diaries and researcher-led activities to describe children's creative play. We adapted the Analysing Children's Creative Thinking Framework as a starting point for coding and the analyses focused on three contextual cues within the pedagogic culture – space, interpersonal collaborations and materials. We ground our discussion in a contextualist theoretical frame to demonstrate that in isolation, each contextual cue presents a degree of framing to children's creative play. When analysed as a synergy of contextual cues, however, we begin to see that the dynamic make-up of each of the contexts, and the interplay among them, create a 'pedagogic culture' that transforms children's creative play. We present 'stories' of each pedagogic culture that we observed, to describe how children's creative play manifested within each culture

Making live music count:The UK live music census

In 2017 we conducted the first-ever nationwide live music census, allowing for unprecedented levels of detailed, comparable data on the live music cultures of different localities. Live music censuses have been increasingly used in recent years (e.g. Melbourne, Edinburgh, Bristol) to illustrate the value of music to policymakers. This has coincided with challenging times for urban live music venues, particularly small venues and clubs. We present key census findings here, reflecting on how local contexts both shape the census process and may be informed by it, and on the growth of the idea of “Music Cities” to inform policy

Creative Cardiff: utilising cultural mapping for community engagement

In 2014 Cardiff University set up a Creative Economy team tasked with exploring how the university could improve its relationship with creative practitioners around the city. To explore this relationship the team embarked upon a research project to map creative industries in the city using a mixed methodology of online data collection and semi-ethnographic interviews. As the project progressed the creative economy team designed and launched a city-wide creative network Creative Cardiff connecting the city's creative populous through events, resources and a website with membership subscription. This article explores how mapping can be used to develop the university/creative economy relationship within metropolitan spaces as a contributor to the development of the modern civic university. It also explores the opportunities and challenges posed by a mapping project of this scale, taking into account debates in cultural mapping literature as to what a map actually is