The Visual Arts, Technology, and Bodily Movements as Part of Cultural Trace-Making in the Preschool Atelier

This article explores children’s encounters with the visual arts, digital technology, and materialities in the preschool atelier. It is based on data from course assignments in a higher education programme for atelieristas in a Swedish Reggio Emilia inspired context. Analytically, the article examines how digital technologies, visual arts, and materialities participate in visual art encounters, and how bodily, material, and cultural trace-making emerge through the intra-actions (Barad, 2007) between children, artworks, and matter. The concept of cultural trace-making, as introduced by the author, is to be understood as the entangled process by which adults share culture with children, as well as the ways in which children, in turn, contribute to and reshape this culture. The findings demonstrate multiple ways of integrating the visual arts and digital technology into the preschool atelier, while highlighting how children contribute as cultural trace-makers within these practices.