We had a very encouraging response to this call and received many interestingabstracts from colleagues—far too many, indeed, to include in a single issue. Thepapers that we eventually selected were those that, to us, seemed to meet the abovecriteria most closely. They were also papers that introduced new perspectives andways of thinking about young children’s creative and cultural development andeducation or papers that challenged traditional perspectives. All of the papers in thespecial issue demonstrate how research on everyday aspects of early childhood andyoung children’s experiences can inform our understanding of how creative thinkingskills and cultural awareness develop and/or are revealed through close observationand careful documentation. We chose not to include research that explores the rela-tionship between play, creativity and imagination as this has been documentedadequately elsewhere (e.g. Moran & John-Steiner, 2003; Duffy, 2006). We deliber-ately wanted to move away from the commonly held assumption that creative andcultural education is the preserve of the arts rather than the concern of the curricu-lum as a whole. Also, we wanted to challenge assumptions that ‘cultural’ educationis solely about introducing children to high culture through drama, music and thearts.
All our futures
offers a much broader definition of cultural education as ‘Formsof education that enable [children and young people] to engage positively with thegrowing complexity and diversity of social values and ways of life’ (NACCCE, 1999,p. 5). Some of the contributions selected, therefore, describe large-scale, nationalcurriculum initiatives that locate creative and/or cultural education outside of thearts. Other papers take the view that childhood cultures are distinctly different fromthose of adults. Listening carefully to what young children talk about when they areengaged in imaginative activities such as drawing, story telling and music makingcan provide unique insights into their creative intentions and cultural constructions.