News
String games, 1950s.
Image: Museum Victoria
Watch this space for news about the project as it progresses, including information about conferences, symposia and public forums.
Child's Play in the News
November 13th, 2007
‘Making History Mere Child’s Play’, by Larry Schwartz, The Age, June 18, 2007.
Making History Mere Child’s Play
‘Poets in the Playground’, by David Astle, in Cassowary Crossing: A Guide to Offbeat Australia.
‘Let Kids Rule the Playground', by June Factor, The Age, October 29, 2007.
Let Kids Rule the Playground (pdf)
With Respect, Adult Contexts for Children’s Play’, by Gwenda Beed Davey and Judy McKinty, paper presented at the conference Children’s cultures: universality and diversity, 15-17 March 2007 University de Nantes, France
Play & Folklore magazine available online
April 11th, 2007
Play & Folklore is a forum for discussion about childhood and children's culture. It publishes articles, letters, memoirs and research studies that examine what children do when largely free of adult direction or control - their colloquial speech, songs, games, rhymes, riddles, jokes, insults and secret languages, their friendships and enmities, their beliefs and hopes.
Play & Folklore is published twice a year, by the Australian Society & Technology Department, Museum Victoria, and is edited by June Factor and Gwenda Beed Davey.
Past issues are available for download (in PDF format) from the Museum Victoria website.
Child's Play book available
April 11th, 2007
Child's Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children, edited by Kate Darian-Smith and June Factor, is published by Museum Victoria.
Child's Play re-publishes US scholar Dorothy Howard's essays on Australian children in the 1950s, alongside contextual essays by international scholars in the fields of history and folklore. It contains photographs from Museum Victoria's Australian Children's Folklore Collection.
It is available for purchase from Museum Victoria.