
“The Street” places doll’s houses in a little community, the carpet a map of the museum’s local area, and the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles in the sewers, naturally.
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While the technical services team had the dilemma of how to display a Buckaroo toy in mid-buck.Įverywhere are details that make you laugh with joy. Fun factlets about the process emerge: a Jabba the Hut figurine exuded such a toxic slime that he was a threat to his display case mates, so one member of the conservation team was tasked with concocting a more friendly type of slime. Objects are collected in new and unexpected ways, grouped by colour or alphabetically for example, rather than in more traditional categorisation. You get the sense of curators having a ball here. In this way, it is lightly revolutionary, with a banner wafting the words “Change is coming”. The contributing children’s biggest concern was climate change, so there is an emphasis on sustainability and innovative materials. There is a small theatre nestled ingeniously in the middle of the space covered in lush red velvet, with a dressing-up room and a Frankenstein that crackles with thunder and lightning when you step near it.ĭesign features design classics and many examples of what can be done with innovation, like the “Hero Arm” prosthetic that takes its design cues from Marvel, is operated by residual nerve impulses and, crucially, arrives in packaging that can be opened single-handedly. In Imagine, children are invited through prompts to make up their own stories. Display cases are at the right level for toddlers and mirror the texture of the objects inside so that the children can feel like they are touching the object in the case. The Play area is sensory, the focus on colour, touch and sound. The permanent displays are divided into three sections: Play for under-fives Imagine for five to 11-year-olds and Design for 11 to 14-year-olds. The museum has been designed to capture young minds to not see museums as boring, restrictive or intimidating. Everything has been refreshed and brightened while retaining the original Victorian features, like the mosaic floor of the atrium, which is now an airy café space.Īt the forefront of the renewal was the idea that children have as much right to enjoy the vast (2.8 million objects) collection the V&A owns as adults do.
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Previously covered windows and skylights have been allowed to flood the space with light once again, the original wrought ironwork has been painted white, a spiral staircase inspired by a kaleidoscope installed and colour is everywhere. They didn’t get to build the requested slide for myriad logistical reasons, but they implemented many of the suggestions, especially for more colour, pattern and light.

This £13 million revamp (funded by donations) was created with the input of some 22,000 children and their families – and it shows.

The Young V&A’s previous incarnation as the eerie Museum of Childhood was about childhood, not for it. He, Chief Curator Alex Newson and the whole Curatorial team of Will Newton, Sophie Sage, Trish Roberts, Tanaya Basu De Sarkar and Holly Tatham, along with architects De Matos Ryan, have transformed the museum. At the same moment, Curator of the Design Gallery Kristian Volsing presided over this creation with a joyful glint of eye indicative of the rarely encountered super-creative. It was like the best play: a seriously realised account of something just a little bit surreal.

It was at the “finger skate park”, a miniature recreation of the skate park in nearby Victoria Park where finger-sized skateboards can be scooted around dinky topography, that the realisation dawned there was a kind of genius at work here.
