The Big Wide Talk, a Cambridge-based charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with speech and language difficulties, held Exhibition-Expedition, the first event of its kind, at Truman Breweries in Brick Lane, London. Groups of children, parents and practitioners took part in a series of sensory activities.
The exploration began in the map room, where the children were each given a colourful map detailing the day's activities and how to get to them. Then they entered the cloth room, where they were given 60 minutes to interact with life-sized cloth people, shop for herbs at the village green or discover the bones of an Egyptian mummy in the museum.
Next the children moved on to the colour room, where they explored the concept of light from giant black and white shoeboxes. They could also climb up a six-metre Perplex climbing construction while supervised by professional climbers.
Ann Jamieson, director of the Big Wide Talk, said the activities, which she called 'provocations', were designed to trigger children's desire to communicate their ideas, questions and feelings. 'Our aim is for parents, whatever their income or relative status, to have the chance to influence the services their children need and receive, and to spend quality time with their children,' she added.
Each group had the chance to be filmed and photographed. Ms Jamieson said such a visual record not only helped practitioners and parents to reflect on and understand their children's behaviour, but was also a 'powerful tool' for feeding back information to mainstream services. She stressed that the charity's philosophy put parents at the centre of decision-making about services for their children.
At Tanghall Primary School in York, Big Wide Talk works alongside Sure Start, forming a multi-agency approach with social services, health, speech and language therapists, inclusion development officers and pre-school practitioners. Joan Fernandez, a health visitor for Sure Start in York, said working with Big Wide Talk 'enables us to capture the child's spirit'.
She added, 'The relationship with the child is more intimate than it is in the mainstream health sector and this helps parents and practitioners tackle the child's problems in a different way.'
Big Wide Talk, originally called Playing with Words, was set up in 2000 with funding from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. For information, see the website www.bigwidetalk.org or call 01223 370028.
