Abstract
<p>Art invites exploratory, multisensory, emotionally rich and context-shaped forms of engagement, yet these experiences are sometimes difficult to capture. This challenge becomes especially pronounced with children, whose meaning-making relies on movement, sensation and play, rather than verbal reflection or evaluative judgements. Because most cultural spaces are designed around adult norms and expectations, children’s distinctive ways of engaging with art often remain overlooked or under supported. This raises questions about how cultural settings can better accommodate what children themselves experience as meaningful aesthetic encounters. In this chapter, we first review research on children’s art engagement from perceptual, cognitive, emotional, bodily, spatial, and social perspectives. We then present a case-study of 215 children aged 3 to 12 years old engaging with an interactive digital artwork at a family arts festival. Through systematic observations, we identify three recurring interaction patterns, demonstrate how social dynamics and contextual factors shape children’s unfolding engagement, and show how children exert agency through their exploratory actions and the artwork’s responsive features. Building on these insights, the chapter concludes with future directions for art research and practice, calling for child-centered methodologies, stronger attention to embodiment and emotion, and closer art-science collaboration to better support meaningful art experiences for children.</p>