The formation of the Centre for Childhood Cultures in 2016 was the latest development in an ongoing partnership between QMUL and its East End neighbour, the Museum of Childhood. Wide-ranging in its scope, but always child-centred in its approach, CCC fosters research encompassing the many different facets of children’s everyday lives and experiences – past and present, in the UK and beyond – with a particular focus on creativity, forms of literacy, and the links between different aspects of childhood culture. The Centre is jointly led by Professor Kiera Vaclavik, at QMUL, and Rhian Harris, Director of the Museum of Childhood.
The Centre brings together more than 25 academic staff and doctoral students working on childhood culture at QMUL with the curatorial and education teams at the Museum of Childhood. Areas of strategic focus are currently Play, Children's spaces, Children's art and design, Digital cultures and Children's wellbeing.
One of the Centre’s first major projects began in October 2016, named ‘Adventures in the City: The Politics and Practice of Children’s Adventure Play in Urban Britain’ and draws upon the Museum of Childhood’s recently acquired Donne Buck Archive - an internationally important collection of materials documenting the people, practices and politics of the adventure playground movement since the 1950s.
The Centre serves as an umbrella to current and incoming postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers as well as existing initiatives and projects including The Child in the World project and the Children’s Literature, Children’s Lives research cluster based in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film.
