Abstract:
This paper reports on the documentation and reflection of two academics who found they were both involved in an autoethnographic approach to writing their own children’s arts vocabulary and their embodied creative development in the early years. Such an intersection of ideas, observations and discursive experiences were illuminating for each researcher, but the connection of their work was even more critical in the development of personal and affective realisations. The notion of expression within the arts at an early age has often been hidden behind the closed doors of the home and family boundaries. In this paper Rosemary shares the narrative of individual and singular feelings and emotions through the languages of music and movement where the creative process is mindful and connected to the environment, privileged within the close confines of the domestic situation. The voice of the child in each case study is strengthened by the relationship to the parent and such autoethnographic understandings of their own histories in the creative arts.