The research aims to describe the particular childhood shared by scholars of the Quezon City Performing Arts Development Foundation Incorporated (QCF ADFI). The QCP ADFI is a non-government organization supported by the Local government, that provides free training to marginalized children who exhibit interests and talents in the performing arts. At the QCP ADFI dreams find avenues for expression and realization.
The study makes use of both written and visual ethnography and in the process
incorporates an indigenous Filipino method of research. The aim is to provide a multi-layered account of the spaces and the particular childhood, in such a setting as the QCPADFI.
Following the path set forth by the Sociology of Childhood (also known as the
New Social Studies of Childhood), the concept of "childhood" is treated as a social space where in this study it integrates with urban poverty and the performing arts. Without the latter, the Filipino child follows a normal routine that centers on the spaces of the home, school and recreation. Where the children in this study must traverse an additional space, one wonders as to the kind of childhood they are able to live. The scholars' entrance to the QCP ADFI might arguably be seen as a push towards the margins of childhood where
childhood as traditionally perceived is sacrificed in the service of the performing arts. However, such a view has long been challenged and this particular study is a further articulation of this fact.
A closer look at the children in this study will show that the QCP ADFI is just
another space of childhood --of the performing children. The data shows that as the QCP ADFI unlocks the world of the performing arts to urban poor children it also opens other spaces and experiences for them that are normally beyond their reach. The QCP ADFI provides them with spaces to show their competence, develop their confidence, experience more independence, and discover worlds they can traverse other than those available to children of disadvantaged backgrounds. Where the curtain calls, a different childhood is revealed. The curtain does not leave the children behind, nor close doors to them. What it does is bid the children to come onstage and take their bow. After all it is they who wishes and are called to perform.