A little thing that returns: Refrains and young children’s sense making in museum spaces

This paper describes a research collaboration with Humber Museums Partnership, which explored family museum visiting and early language. Drawing from ethnographic observations and continuous audio recordings, this article examines how very young children make sense in museum spaces. We activate Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the refrain (originally expressed in French as ritournelle, a little return) to analyse vignettes of children’s vocalisations and interactions across galleries, gardens, and play spaces. Counter to the dominant view of early language as relying on a linear “serve and return” between adult and child, we argue that refrains create fragile, rhythmic, and emplaced territories of sense making that exceed conventional meaning and representation. We propose that museums can foster an attention to these affective, embodied dimensions of expression as an important aspect of young children’s museum literacies.