Art|Play

Art|Play is a collaborative action research project looking at the integration of modern and contemporary art practices into Boston Public Schools’ early childhood curriculum.

Led by Dr. Louisa Penfold and Dr. Steve Seidel, the project focuses on the design of open-source curriculum activities and professional development experiences for teachers and administrators that connect them with contemporary and modern artworks, artists, and artistic processes.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art|Play is also being run in partnership with the Harvard Art Museums, the Smithsonian Learning Lab, and MoMA to utilize artworks and archival materials from their collections to design curriculum experiences and pedagogical support materials for educators.

To date, the Art|Play experiences, which have been developed as part of Boston Public Schools’ Focus on 3s and Focus on 4s curriculums, have been implemented across 900 classrooms, reaching over 4,400 students and 500 public school teachers.

Outcomes of this project, including the final iteration of the open-source curriculum, instructional support videos for educators, and printable resources for families, will be shared on this website in August 2024.