Contemporary art is often thought as a phenomenon too difficult to be taught. Play and Art Research Project is trying to find answers to these and many other relevant questions. Material collected from nature and discarded things gain a new function when introduced in a game. Children learn to wonder, discover and experiment on existing reality by playing. It all starts from the sandbox.
Line drawn in a sand with a finger is the beginning of a creative imaginary game.
Many works of contemporary art originate from the same world of dream, game and imagination. I started from this assumption when I set up an art exhibition directed especially for the children in Otso Galleria, Espoo, January-February 1999. About four thousand children from day-care centres and comprehensive schools attended the exhibition. The children explored the exhibition with the help of guides, and after that tried out the workshop in connection with the exhibition. All the groups received a questionnaire and were asked to write down possible topics of conversation after the exhibition and also to draw on the paper the works of art that caught their attention.