{"id":248,"date":"2017-10-26T06:20:04","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T05:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/?p=248"},"modified":"2017-10-27T08:51:34","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T07:51:34","slug":"revolution-in-the-library-a-conference-on-the-childrens-68","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/revolution-in-the-library-a-conference-on-the-childrens-68\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolution in the Library! A Conference on the \u2018Children\u2019s \u201868\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Lucy Pearson<\/em><\/p>\n

The anniversary of 1968 approaches, and with it memories of radical change: workers and students united on the streets of Paris; draft resisters and anti-Vietnam protesters; flower power and violent revolution. The 60s revolution is usually regarded as a youth phenomenon, yet little attention is paid to the literal \u2018children of the revolution\u2019. This is the gap that Sophie Heywood<\/a> proposed to address with her research network on The Children\u2019s 68<\/a>. On October 12th, CLU colleagues Kim Reynolds<\/a> and Lucy Pearson<\/a> headed off to Tours, France, for an interdisciplinary conference<\/a> organised by Sophie Heywood and C\u00e9cile Boulaire exploring the many dimensions of childhood and \u2018the spirit of \u201868\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The conference brought together scholars from many different countries and many disciplines. For some of us, 1968 was clearly a landmark moment, while others questioned whether there was a \u201968 moment at all in our countries of interest. Topics included children\u2019s books, radical magazines, television, art culture, feminism and workers\u2019 rights. What emerged from this comparative approach was that there were many correspondences across the experiences of different nations, but also that even within a single cultural context the \u2018meaning\u2019 of \u201968 encompasses a variety of different and often conflicting ideas.<\/p>\n

There were many examples of culture which tried to give children a voice or encourage them to resist the power of adults. Olle Widhe<\/a>\u2019s paper on the children\u2019s rights movement in Sweden, for example, showed us books which encouraged adults to resist the \u2018indoctrination\u2019 of their children, and encouraged children themselves to rise up against the power of adults. Bettina K\u00fcmmerling-Meibauer<\/a>, on the other hand, showed that West German texts sought to ally children with other marginalised groups: a collaborative revolution in which children helped to overcome the systems of power.<\/p>\n

Kim Reynolds vividly evoked the feelings of power and possibility experienced by children and young adults in 1968 USA, and showed that while children\u2019s culture failed to produce texts directly addressing the Vietnam War, these young people co-opted the adult culture of popular music to articulate their feelings and beliefs. Other papers, though, raised the possibility that the child was co-opted by adults as a symbol for their own ideologies and desires. Andrea Francke<\/a> showed a range of exciting picturebooks which questioned the existing social order, but ruefully acknowledged that while these were exciting and important for the women in the feminist collectives who produced them, many children found them uninteresting. In David Buckingham<\/a>\u2019s paper on the controversial schoolkids\u2019 issue of Oz<\/em> magazine<\/a>, he suggested that the magazine included both the authentic concerns of schoolchildren and a discourse around childhood which served the interests of the adult men who edited the magazine.<\/p>\n

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\u2018You can get anything you want, at Alice\u2019s restaurant\u2019: Kim Reynolds showed how song lyrics became a key part of \u201968 youth culture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One striking theme was the degree to which this \u2018counter-cultural\u2019 moment was institutionally supported and disseminated. Helle Strandgaard Jensen<\/a> showed that the state broadcasting of Denmark incorporated radical voices into its children\u2019s television. My own paper, on Leila Berg\u2019s Nippers<\/a> series, considered the intersection between progressive education and mainstream educational publishing and policy. C\u00e9cile Boulaire<\/a> showed that even traditional Catholic publishers in France produced radical material in the form of children\u2019s magazine Okapi.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Left: Leila Berg\u2019s \u2018Nippers\u2019 books for children grew out of her activism on children\u2019s rights. Right: Anti-authoritarianism for supper? Critics of Leila Berg\u2019s \u2018Fish and Chips for Supper\u2019 complained that it gave children \u2018the wrong sense of values\u2019 and that \u2018father should not be the object of criticism\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another theme which preoccupied me throughout the conference was the question of intersectionality. One of the most striking aspects of the May \u201968 revolution in Paris was the way it brought together different constituencies: students and workers manned the barricades together.<\/p>\n

Yet I felt that very few of the examples considered fully expressed such unity between children\u2019s rights and the interests of other groups. Children are not only children, of course: they are also defined by their gender, class, ability, race etc. Many texts sought to explore the power dynamics of such categories, and many promoted the rights and agency of the child, but neither the cultural productions of the sixties nor our scholarship achieved a fully intersectional understanding of childhood. I wondered if this gap was a partial explanation for our sense that many of these radical ideas had not had as great a legacy as some of us wished.<\/p>\n

The conference closed with the accounts of practitioners: children\u2019s librarians, curators, and educators. Alex Thorp, Education Curator at London\u2019s Serpentine Gallery<\/a>, showed some fascinating examples of projects which demonstrated the radical potential of play and the degree to which the young people of today continue to experience their relationship with the adult world as one of oppression. All the discussion in this closing session drew attention to a crucial gap in the conference discussion: almost none of our papers included the accounts of actual children. For scholars of childhood, the question of how to include the child\u2019s voice is a perennial problem, but our subject really brought this to the fore. The network hopes to partially address this in an exhibition on \u2018Le \u201968 des enfants\u2019 taking place May-June 2018, to be held at the French children\u2019s archive Heure Joyeuse, preserved at the Mediath\u00e8que Fran\u00e7oise Sagan<\/a>. Working with graphic designer Loic Boyer<\/a>, the archive will develop an interactive exhibition which invites children to participate; accompanying workshops with illustrators will also help to bring children\u2019s voices to the fore.<\/p>\n

It was a stimulating few days which generated many productive conversations and (I hope) some lasting collaborations. For me, it was a great reminder of how interlinked different aspects of children\u2019s culture are: I can\u2019t wait to do more work with colleagues from other disciplines. Perhaps together we can revive something of the spirit of \u201968!<\/p>\n

Perhaps some of you were \u2018children of \u201868\u2019 \u2013 or the children of those children! What was the spirit in your country? And how has it shaped children\u2019s culture today?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Lucy Pearson The anniversary of 1968 approaches, and with it memories of radical change: workers and students united on the streets of Paris; draft resisters and anti-Vietnam protesters; flower power and violent revolution. The 60s revolution is usually regarded as a youth phenomenon, yet little attention is paid to the literal \u2018children of the … Continue reading Revolution in the Library! A Conference on the \u2018Children\u2019s \u201868\u2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6724,"featured_media":250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,124,48,24,125,85,132,131,128,122,126,130,121],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-20th-century-childrens-literature","tag-andrea-francke","tag-archival-research","tag-childrens-literature-unit","tag-david-buckingham","tag-leila-berg","tag-loic-boyer","tag-mediatheque-francoise-sagan","tag-nippers","tag-olle-widhe","tag-oz","tag-serpentine-gallery","tag-the-childrens-68"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}