Forward

by Martin Large

The Future of Childhood is a collection of articles and papers generously offered by a cross section of Brussels 2000 conference contributors. The purpose of the book is to deepen and stimulate dialogues during the conference, and to share the articles with others afterwards as a resource.

Tight deadlines made it hard for some conference contributors to write an article. We were also unable to get permission, or the text on disc or e-mail on time, for other articles which therefore sadly had to be left out. There may be some errors in references or consistency, and articles were only lightly edited because of time constraints. In the end, we had 5 weeks to edit, design, typeset, print and get the book to Brussels. Hence, the order of articles in the book was determined by when we received them, rather than by a logical progression.

However, if enough people offer appropriate follow up articles to the Conference by the end of December 2000 and if there are enough firm advance orders (see the last page of this book for an order form), a Proceedings book can be considered if viable.

I also apologise to non-English speakers and readers for this English language book for the Conference: time and resources were limiting factors here. However, individuals, magazines, publishers and professional groups are welcome to contact the authors of the respective articles direct if they want to get permission to have any articles translated and reproduced.

Our thanks and acknowledgements to: Sally Jenkinson and Joan Almon for their help in choosing and suggesting articles; Christopher Clouder, Oona Murphy, Christiane Dawson and Juergen Flinspach of the Alliance for their support; respective contributors, organisations and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce their articles in this book.

The Future of Childhood is published by Hawthorn Press for the Alliance for Childhood. We have included this book in our Early Years Series, which has the purpose of "Respecting the right to childhood". Or to echo Cathy Nutbrown, "How are we giving due respect to children in the 21st century?"