Louisa Penfold
Louisa is an artist, researcher, and professor whose work focuses on contemporary art, childhood, and play across schools, museums, and public spaces.
PZ Work
Louisa is a project director at Project Zero where her work focuses on contemporary art, childhood, and play across schools, museums, and public spaces. Louisa led PZ’s Art|Play study, a National Endowment for the Arts-funded study exploring the integration of modern and contemporary art practices into public school curriculum.
Further Work
As a lecturer and the Co-Chair of Arts and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Louisa teaches courses on contemporary arts in education, arts research, and the practice of art education. She has also worked as a curator and consultant for art institutions including the Serpentine, the Museum of Modern Art, and Qatar Museums, as well as serving as an expert advisor on UNESCO’s committee for the Implementation of the Framework for Culture and Arts Education.
Her doctoral research, undertaken as a collaborative partnership with Tate (UK) examined how New Materialist learning theory could be brought together with the experimental practices of contemporary artists to open up expansive possibilities for children’s creative learning.
Where to Find Louisa
Louisa runs Art. Play. Children. Learning., a blog for parents on cultivating children’s creativity through art. Her first book, Every Child is an Artist: A Parent’s Guide to Cultivating Children’s Creativity Through Contemporary Art, will be released by Workman Publishing in 2026. She is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency.
Louisa's Projects and Publications
Louisa's PZ Pick
Action painting is a style of painting in which paint is splashed, brushed, or poured on the canvas to create movement. In this activity, children use a variety of tools to paint on large "3D canvas" made out of cardboard boxes. Check it out!