Placing voice meetings through vocal strolls – Toddlers in resonance with public space

Abstract

In early childhood education voice metaphors are often used to describe children’s participation, development or efforts to make themselves heard. This article aims to study the ways in which vocal metaphors take place in material and physical events in the Brunkeberg Tunnel (a pedestrian tunnel) in Stockholm, Sweden. Together with preschool toddlers we have developed ‘vocal strolls’ as a research method for early childhood research, where voice as an event takes place in, with and through resonance, rhythms, routines and refrains. To be able to discuss what vocal strolls consist of and what they may offer the toddlers as well as early childhood education we have developed new concepts. These concepts, voice meetings, voice orientations, voice rooms and vocal memory, take into account a relational and spatial way to compose voice, which may be utilised as a didactic method for amplifying voice as a phenomena among preschool toddlers.