Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition Milena, Milena at Bonniers Konsthall has grown out of the artist’s portrait of 14-year-old Milena and Milena’s dream of writing a book about her life. The planned autobiography is the driving force behind an ongoing artistic collaboration centered on the child’s right to their own story.

Children are not people of the future; they are people today (…) whose souls contain the seeds of all the thoughts and feelings we possess.

– Janusz Korczak, educator, author, and pediatrician (1878–1942)

Sharon Lockhart borrows her working method from anthropology. She settles in one place for a long time, getting to know the surroundings and the people she portrays—often children—and involves them in her process. Lockhart’s works raise questions about cultural production that involves children. What does participation mean for the artist, and for the young co-creators? We also see a growing interest in children’s participation in culture more broadly. Contemporary research in children’s culture, for example, shows that children are more visible on TV. They act as reporters and are encouraged to send in their own creations to children’s programs. We encounter representations of the “competent child.” But perhaps these should rather be understood as constructions in which children become part of the adult world’s ideas about childhood.

Invited speakers are Suzanne Osten, playwright, director, and outgoing artistic director of Unga Klara after 40 years, and Catharina Hällström, PhD in education, active at the Centre for Child Culture Research at Stockholm University.