Creative encounters beyond the door: supporting children and families through Half Moon Theatre's Early Years Creative Play programme

This article presents the work of Beccy Allen, Head of Creative Learning at Half Moon Theatre, and her creative practitioners, Madeleine Graham and Daniel Mariño, on their extensive Early Years Creative Play (EYCP) programme for families and their children. The programme has been running since 2018, in children’s centres and nursery schools across the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where families are invited to join, and in community spaces where local families are able to drop in. Breaking the tradition of relying on academic researchers to measure the impact of their programme, Beccy and her team engage with their own evaluation processes to measure the creative encounters that parent and child receive through the EYCP programme. As an outsider looking in, I present in this short article their work so that one can advocate for the continuation of such vital resources for children’s creative cultural and artistic lives.