Making Room for Children and Art

Booking: Free, booking essential
When: Saturday 15 November, 1-3PM
Where: New Art Exchange, 39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, NG7 6BE

Join us for an afternoon of intergenerational creativity and conversation for artist parents/carers and children. Jo Harrison from Art Working Parents Alliance will share how AWP supports network building and visibility for parents/carers working in the arts, offering peer-support and campaigning for more inclusive practices in institutions. Mother daughter duo Assunta & Lou will host a relaxed art club where children of all ages and their parents/carers can make and play and share their collaborative journey.

The session will be supported by artist Chiara Dellerba, in the role of play facilitator.

A free, entirely plant-based Indian lunch will be provided for each adult in attendance. Light snacks and fruit will be available for children.

This event is supported by CVAN East Midlands and delivered in partnership with AWP and Assunta Ruocco. Making Room for Children and Art builds on last year’s Better Together session delivered by AWP founders Jo Harrison and Hettie Judah, focused on developing a dialogue with institutions in the region on improving working conditions for parents in the artworld.

Making Room for Children and Art is funded by Arts Council England, as part of Assunta Ruocco's Developing Your Creative Practice Grant.

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Access:
This event will take place on the Workshop, located on the 2nd floor in NAE. The Workshop is accessible via chairs or lift and there are toilets located on the basement, ground and 2nd floor of the building. For information on how to get to NAE please visit their website.

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Bios:

Jo Harrison is a curator and arts worker based in London whose practice focuses on gender, work and economies of care. She is Director at The Approach and runs ‘Repronomics’, a research project exploring social reproduction and cultural production as invisible and exploitable ‘labours of love’ under capitalism. She hosts an itinerant reading group with a focus on feminism, social reproduction, labour and economics, most recently hosted at May Day Rooms in Spring 2024. Jo was previously Curator at Almanac Projects; has been a visiting lecturer at Birth Rites Collection, Central Saint Martins and Slade School of Art (UCL). She provides mentoring for artists and art workers. In October 2022, she co-founded The Arts Working Parents Alliance with Hettie Judah.

The Art Working Parents Alliance (AWP) is a UK based peer network and advocacy group for curators, academics, gallerists, technicians, educators and others working in the arts. It is free to join and we host regular online and in person meetings, offer a peer mentoring programme and help parents in the arts connect with one another.

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Assunta Ruocco is an artist and researcher based in Nottingham, and teaches Fine Art at the University of Lincoln. Her work examines how artists create space for children within creative practice and institutions. She runs a regular art club with her nine-year-old daughter Lou. Together they share the playful, collaborative methods for drawing and painting that they developed working together since Lou was four.

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Image Credit: Assunta and Lou's Art Club, Primary, Nottingham (2025). Photo by Rebecca Beinart