Family. Every family looks a little different, and yet in children’s books we mainly see one type of family – a mum, a dad, one or more children. In the Czech environment, representation for other family schemes is close to non-existent. With whom can children whose families do not resemble those in fairy tales, whether in books or on television, identify? Where can they get reassurance that they are not the only ones living in such a family grouping and thus reduce possible feelings of loneliness or uncomfortable otherness? Families Among Us is a Czech-Norwegian partnership project responding to a gap in the Czech book market, specifically in the market for books for children aged 3-6.

The aim of the project, funded by the EEA and Norway Grants, is to create a collection of stories for children aged 3-6 and to accompany them both with methodological guidelines for kindergarten teachers to work with and with supporting materials that teachers can use for follow-up activities. A total of 8 stories will be produced, representing diverse family groups, both in terms of family membership and in terms of culture, identity, ethnicity, religion, gender, and health status.
In order to portray these families with respect to the people involved, each story will be based on an interview with an existing family. This way of working is called participatory writing, a methodology yet unfamiliar to us, that will be introduced at the project’s inception through a study visit to Norway.

Partner organization
Throughout the project we will be guided by two experts from the Norwegian organization KUN, which has a long-standing focus on combating discrimination and actively contributing to the creation of an equal society. KUN looks at social equality in terms of gender, sex, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity and (dis)ability. Norwegian experts will conduct a 6-hour workshop and subsequently collaborate closely with us through online consultation over the course of the project.

Project outputs:
Children stories with methodological guidance
poster
Coloring book

Project team: Barbora Matějková (matejkova@ireas.cz), Michaela Jeřábková (jerabkova@ireas.cz), Marte Taylor Be (mtb@kun.no), Marianne Gulli (marianne.gulli@kun.no) and other external workers – Tereza Škoulová and Kateřina Vlčková