Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Community

A project involving British and international nurseries is focusing
on getting young children to engage with their local communities.
Marianne Sargent finds out how it is taking shape.

Six English early years settings are currently participating in a three-year European Union-funded project, which aims to explore democratic involvement of young children in public and civic spaces.

The Young People, Public Spaces and Democracy Project (BRIC Project), led by Professor Tim Waller of Anglia Ruskin University, aims to raise the profile of young children as stakeholders within local communities by bringing early years professionals, parents, local residents, politicians and business leaders together to enable children's voices to be heard outside the nursery.

Early years practitioners from Under Fives Roundabout pre-school and Beach Babies day nursery from Cambridge, Chase Lane Primary School and Nursery Unit in Waltham Forest and Whitehills Nursery School, Parklands Nursery School and Croyland Nursery School from Northampton are working with colleagues from another 12 settings in Italy and Sweden to find ways of making local communities more aware of their youngest citizens, as well as presenting their views to policymakers and politicians.

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