Making Evaluation Visible – Rethinking Adult Influence in Children’s Creativity

Some children’s drawings are praised, displayed, photographed, and preserved. Others quietly disappear into folders or remain unnoticed. Through storytelling, participation, and reflective design, this project explores how adult attention, interpretation, evaluation, and visibility shape what becomes recognised as creativity in everyday life.

This project began through small everyday moments surrounding children’s drawings. Through my experiences as both an art teacher in China and a parent, I gradually became aware that adults often respond differently to children’s creative work. Some drawings are praised, displayed, preserved, or documented, while others quietly disappear into folders or remain unnoticed.

Rather than understanding creativity as an isolated individual ability, the project approaches creativity as something shaped through relationships, environments, interactions, and systems of interpretation.

Background

This project originates from my experience as both an art teacher in China and a parent. During my time working in an art institution, I became aware of differing expectations surrounding children’s drawings. Some parents preferred outcomes that appeared complete, polished, and visually refined, while others encouraged open-ended experimentation and creative freedom.

At home, I also began noticing small but recurring moments surrounding my child’s drawings. Some works were selected, displayed, and praised, while others remained unseen.

Selected drawings displayed on the wall at home.

Drawings that were collected but not displayed.

These moments gradually led me to reflect on how value is assigned within children’s creative environments, and how certain works become visible while others remain unnoticed.

“Adults often identify a drawing as ‘finished’ earlier than children do.”

Research Question

How do adult perceptions of children’s creativity shape everyday practices of interpreting, selecting, and displaying children’s creative work?

The project does not begin from the assumption that adult influence can or should be removed from children’s creativity. Instead, it starts from the recognition that adult responses are already deeply embedded within children’s creative processes.

Adults select materials, provide feedback, interpret outcomes, document work, and decide what becomes visible.

“Some drawings become visible, while others quietly remain unseen.”

Workshop Process

Based on these reflections, I invited my child to participate in a workshop together. Inspired by traditional Chinese shadow puppetry, we used previously collected, non-displayed drawings as materials to create an unfinished lampshade.

Workshop process using collected drawings as materials.

During the workshop, I observed several important moments. My child freely cut and transformed the drawings, while I instinctively wanted to preserve them. This moment revealed how my own assumptions surrounding preservation, completion, and value were already influencing the situation.

Unfinished lampshade made from previously unseen drawings.

While assembling materials together, I also noticed how my own behaviour immediately influenced my child’s actions. Even subtle gestures such as arranging materials carefully or aligning edges affected how she continued.

“Even when I did not directly give instructions, my presence still shaped the situation.”

“Even silence could influence how she continued.”

Raku

As the project developed, a quiet observing figure named Raku gradually emerged throughout the process.

Rather than functioning as a teacher or authority, Raku became a way of noticing small moments that often pass unnoticed during creative activities.

Raku quietly observes situations surrounding children’s creativity and repeatedly asks questions that often remain unnoticed within everyday life:

• Why do some drawings become visible while others remain hidden?
• Who decides when a drawing is “finished”?
• How does adult attention shape creative behaviour?

Within the booklet, Raku takes the role of a storyteller and reflective presence.

From Workshop to Booklet

The project therefore gradually shifted towards the development of a booklet as the primary design outcome.

Rather than functioning as a temporary intervention, the booklet became a reflective space that could exist within ordinary domestic situations.

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Booklet design development and layout exploration.

Storytelling and Cultural Exchange

Booklet spreads introducing storytelling, participation, and open-ended creative interpretation.

The booklet introduces the stories of Nezha and Pippi Longstocking through Raku’s narration.

Although these characters come from very different cultural contexts, both exist slightly outside ordinary expectations. They are independent, unconventional, and often resist the ways adults attempt to define or control them.

Rather than functioning only as creative themes, the stories become entry points for discussion, drawing, imagination, and shared creative activities between children and parents.

Message Box

Message box pages inviting both children and adults to reflect on reactions, feelings, and interpretations during the creative process.

The “message box” became the central design component of the project.

In this section, both children and parents are invited to write down thoughts, reactions, interpretations, and evaluations during the creative process.

If children cannot write independently, parents may assist by writing down dictated responses.

The purpose of this element is not to produce correct answers, but to make small moments of evaluation, hesitation, interpretation, and response more visible within everyday creative interactions between children and adults.

Exhibition

The final exhibition presents collected booklets, participant reflections, children’s works, parents’ works, animation material, and postcards together.

The exhibition is designed not as a space for presenting fixed conclusions, but as a reflective environment where visitors can reconsider how creativity becomes recognised, interpreted, preserved, and valued.

Visitors are invited to take postcards home, allowing the project to continue existing beyond the exhibition space itself.

“Visibility does not simply document creativity; it also shapes how creativity is understood.”

Reflection

This project gradually shifted away from trying to remove adult influence entirely, and towards examining how influence operates within everyday relationships.

Rather than proposing fixed solutions, the project focuses on making ordinary evaluative practices more visible and discussable.

Through storytelling, participation, visualisation, workshops, animation, and booklet design, the project explores how creativity is shaped not only through making itself, but also through the ways it is interpreted, displayed, preserved, documented, and remembered over time.

Ultimately, the project invites a shift in awareness: from treating evaluation as neutral or automatic towards recognising how deeply it shapes creative experiences, relationships, and understandings of creativity over time.