Everyday Play
- Ellie Barrett
- Nov 21
- 4 min read
I’m Ellie Barrett, a sculptor, researcher, writer, artist-mother and studio holder at Good Things. In 2025, I led a house commissioned project, running a playgroup for under 5s and their parents or carers called “Everyday Play”.
When I had my daughter Nora in 2021, I very quickly realised I wouldn’t be able to make art in the way I’d been used to my whole career as an artist. 8 hour uninterrupted days in the studio were suddenly impossible. I needed to find a new way of making work which involved - not excluded - my identity as a parent. At the same time, I watched Nora begin to discover the world around her using her body, experimenting with every object she came into contact with. It reminded me of what I was trying to do when I was in the studio: try to find new properties and capacities of materials that were already in my environment. Her perspective - the young child, positioning their new body in the world - became a source of inspiration.
Just over three years later, I had the opportunity to explore this with other children and parents at Good Things Collective as part of the House of Cooperation programme. “Everyday Play” was a series of six playgroups I ran between January to March this year. It was developed in 2024 during a residency at In Situ. At each session, I laid out six everyday materials on the floor: masking tape, pipe cleaners, tin foil, tissue paper, toilet roll and wool. None of these things need any specialist training or equipment. They can be transformed easily with a toddler’s clumsy grip. Nora helped me every week. We arranged them in a big, messy pile, waiting to be rifled through. When people arrived, we didn’t tell them what to do, or offer any instructions. We just encouraged them to “see what they can do” with the items available. This helped everyone to come up with their own ideas about how to play, which is very empowering for young children.
Over the six sessions, we discovered so many different things to do. One boy and his mum made a pipe cleaner car with tin foil wheels. It drove up and down toilet roll roads. Another child dragged tangles of wool, turning the room into a pink spider’s web. Nora stomped on the tin foil, making a trail of silver footprints. Dens, ball games and outfits were just some of the other ideas triggered by experimental play. Adults often followed their child’s lead, demonstrating that material engagement can help us to see ways of teaching each other, learning from people, objects and environments around us.
At the end of every session, a collaborative sculpture emerged from the mess. Instead of “tidying up”, we all gathered together all the remnants into a single object. Shreds of foil, knots of wool, scrunched toilet roll and tissue paper were bound together, secured by twisted pipe cleaners and sticky tape strips. Sometimes, an empty snack packet would be swept up and trapped, hinting at some of the other acts of care which occurred during the sessions. These “bundle sculptures” represent all of the moments of intergenerational play, exploration and learning. They connect with sculptural works made by prolific and important artists, including Nnena Kalu, who is currently nominated for the Turner Prize.
In May, the bundles were exhibited in the Storey, Lancaster, alongside 4 other artists who make sculptural works with other groups of people. The exhibition was entitled “All Kinds of Hands”, and presented different models for making sculpture collaboratively. Works by Nisha Duggal, Beata Podstawa, Assunta Ruocco and Sarah Ryder were also on display. By bringing works by children and other community groups into a gallery space, I was interested in exploring the emerging questions surrounding hierarchies and power dynamics. Is it OK to take work made by children into an intimidating gallery space, which some people might find inaccessible? Thinking about this, I thought about how I would display the bundles. I made plinths, which I usually avoid since they are shorthand for saying “this is an important work of art”. But I wanted to make that statement about these objects that children had made, so I thought about how I could consider children in designing the plinths. I made them from upholstery foam and covered them with blue cotton fabric, resembling soft play equipment. I sized them to a child’s height. I wanted to say “these art objects are not just for adults.”
I also brought the six materials from the sculpture kit into the gallery with me, making them available to children. During the family friendly opening, the space transformed into a site for playing and making, not a place for silent contemplation.
One of the children who had come to Everyday Play recognised a ball he had made in one of the bundle sculptures. He reached in and took it out, and started to play with it. He was right - it did belong to him, and not to me. When he’d finished playing, it was very easy to shove the ball back into the bundle. It didn’t destroy the sculpture. In fact, it made it much more interesting. This disrupts the “don’t touch” norm we’re usually met with in galleries, translating them into spaces for other kinds of experiences.
Running this project has sent me on a new trajectory. From the experience it brought me, Nora and I went on a residency together in Toronto run by MOTHRA, a project supporting artist-parents from across the world. Now, I want to offer more opportunities for other parents to explore creatively with their children at Good Things. A new monthly group supporting parent-child collaborative practice called Studio Kids is the legacy of Everyday Play. It launches on November 30th, and will continue into 2026. It’s open to anyone from artists with an existing practice to parents seeking more opportunities to be creative with their kids. Keep an eye out for how to get involved…
For more information on Everyday Play, All Kinds of Hands and my other projects, visit my website.