This article seeks to explore the development of the relationship between a group of early childhood academics from the same university and practitioners from a particular early years setting in the north of England into an innovative professional development and research project (2-Curious). The article uses Foucauldian notions of heterotopia to theorise an approach to professional development and research concerned with examining the discourses and practices associated with provision for two-year-old children. In place of a transmission model of professional development and scientific preoccupations with research purity, the authors explore what is offered by an alternative approach that involved a broader engagement with ideas, feelings and the body, and the layering of research complexity. The authors consider what emerges when the practitioners take the learning from the project back into their own settings, and conclude by considering the possibilities and complexities of academics and practitioners working together to research and represent what emerged from the project.