LOCATION: Tampere's city center

KIND OF CENTER: Art center, municipal, open during the day. Only center of these characteristics in the city. Parents pay for part of the service.

AGE GROUPS: Children from 0 to 7 years old. There are 7 different groups organized in different age groups.
- From 0 to 6 months old (can attend once a week) 5 children for carer and their families.
- From 6 months to 2 years old (can attend twice a week) 10 children for 2 carers.
- From 2 to 3 years old (can attend twice a week) 15 children for 2 carers.
- From 4 to 6 years old (can attend twice a week) 15 children for 2 carers. In the groups for children under 2 years old, parents always remain with the children. STAFF: two people, trained as teachers, first childschool educators, art studies and trained as masseurs.

SCHEDULES: Open from 9 to 14:00.
It welcomes children in two different shifts: a group from 9 to 11 and another group from 12 to 14

SERVICES OFFERED: a leisure time service for children who seem not to attend school. They can attend irregularly. They are used to attending, normally, during all the course and throughout the different school courses. Between 6 and 7 years old, the children use to go, more frequently, to the preparatory course for school.
In the days in which children do not attend this center, they can develop other activities (gymnasium, etc.)
Art courses are organized for adults, families and carers.

MAIN FEATURES:
Purpose: to create a positive attitude towards art, so children feel art.
Main activities:
- Drawing, painting and modelling. During the course different artists work in the center. They carry out 7 exhibitions that can be visited. Adapting the currículum to the needs of each child.
- Massage for babies from 0 to 6 months old, related with colour therapy.
- Colour therapy: the children choose a colour each month. The center tries that all the objects and decoration in a particular room are of the colour chosen by the children, including the carers clothes.
- When each group arrives at the center, it carries out a first activity in this room: looking at stories, speaking or listening to music which is related to the colour.
In this space they also carry out the massages for babies -in matresses of the same colour...- The facilities: the center has 9 different spaces. It is located in the second floor of a block, with approximately 200 square meters. It does not seem to have any adapted spaces for children with special educational needs.
Main spaces:
- Entrance or hall, with hangers for coat, shelves for shoes, etc.
- Room 1 for jobs, where there was a sample of jobs of the children and a changer.
- Room 2 for materials and xerox machine.
- Room 3 office.
- Room of the colour, decorated with clothes hanging from the roof, banks of different heights (one inside the other one) and a slide projector.
- Main Room: sawhorses, round tables with painted chairs, a great deal of light, table games, sofa and carpets creating a corner with documentation and photos of different tasks, aprons for the children, a shelf with different types of painting, clay, colours, a seedbed, plants everywhere, some art works hung up, a collage made out of wool and pipes of recycled paper.
- Office: it is a space where children between 4 and 6 years old can have breakfast. A feeding bottle can also be warmt up...
- Play Room: a small space to carry out symbolic play. In the cabinets there were some table games. In this room children cannot paint, they can only play.
- Washrooms: one for children with two toilets and a sink, and a washroom for adults. The carers do not evaluate the children. They speak with them and with their families upon the children's productions.

APPRAISAL: Poor, very quiet environment, perhaps little estimulating. Apparently, small variety in the materials offered to work. We have been very pleased to see how the groups can work together and the children's creativity.