The V&A Museum of Childhood was East London’s first public museum and has been a beloved community venue for all since it opened its doors in 1872. Now, it is being reimagined through fresh eyes in its 150th year. When it reopens on 1 July 2023 as Young V&A, it will invite visitors to learn, create, and debate together as they design for tomorrow by drawing on its internationally famous collections of art, design, and performance.
As the countdown begins to the grand opening of the UK’s leading national museum created by, and for, young people, blooloop speaks to Dr Helen Charman, director of Young V&A. She talks about the unique co-design approach that her team took to this project, and what visitors can expect once the door open this summer.
Why reinvent the Museum of Childhood?
In talking about the motivation behind the move to transform the V&A Museum of Childhood into Young V&A, Charman points out that creativity has a vital place in the lives of young people, now more than ever:
“We felt that the moment had come to do something significant, to invest in children from birth to 14 years old by giving them a dedicated museum that would help foster what we call their creative competence. This is a core skill. We now know organisations like the OECD and the World Economic Forum are talking about creativity as one of the top skills that young people need to flourish.”
“It’s a complicated world. But if you can generate ideas and you can bring them into the world, you can affect change. These skills are now critically at the heart of what young people need today. That’s why there was a very strong drive to put creativity front and centre in young people’s experiences of the V&A.”
In addition, the team was aware of the need to nurture the next generation of museum-goers, and to invest in the audience of the future:
“We talk about generation alpha, those born in the early to mid-2010s; they are our future visitors. We need the museum to be meaningful, relevant and inspiring for them.
Co-designing Young V&A
Young V&A has been co-designed with children and young people, for children and young people.
“That’s a significant shift in the way that we make museums,” says Charman. “To ensure that this museum is relevant and inspiring and that it speaks to the needs, interests, aspirations, and dreams of children, we worked with them to create it.
“We had children working with base build architects, De Matos Ryan, and fit-out architects AOC in numerous co-design workshops from the outset. There were various architectural interventions in the building that had been co-designed with the children. And through that, they were learning the process of museum-making. So, there’s this drive towards creative skills that sits underneath the process.”
“Co-design is still within constraints. That’s the design process, creativity within constraints. But when we’re looking at things like the architecture and dimensions, it was that iterative process of the children working with the architects, generating ideas, and taking inspiration from the collection. It’s a back-and-forth process to get to the solution that you think is going to work best in this context. That certainly isn’t always the first thing that the children would come up with. It was a much more refined process.”
Being a part of the project has opened up the world of design to the young participants, giving them new experiences and new skills.
See also: Building V&A East: community and creation in East London
Galleries that speak to children and young people
As well as involving young people on the architectural side, the team also worked closely with them when it came to designing the galleries themselves:
“We generated the themes across the galleries by working with the children. Essentially, what they were saying to us is we want a joyful place. We want the most joyful museum in the world. But we also want somewhere that’s optimistic, that speaks to the way that we experience the world.”
Charman gives an example:
“In the Imagine Gallery, we will be displaying the dolls’ houses collection in one of the spaces. Children, when they think about architecture and the built environment, they think about how they experience it. So, for them, they’re not thinking about buildings as architectural sites. It’s all about their relationships and habits. It’s about their community; where they live and where their best friend lives, where the park is, where the fire station is.
“From their point of view, the built environment is about community, it’s about placemaking and friendships. Because we’ve heard that from the children, we will display the dolls’ houses in the context of a community.”
“Each of the galleries has a co-produced element for some of the content. In this case, that involves working with an architect called Émilie Queney. She will be producing an exhibit co-produced with the children that is rooted in their experience of the environment.”
Doing things differently at Young V&A
For many of its young visitors, Young V&A will be the first museum that they visit.
“They will then be expecting more museums to do things differently. We’ll see, I think, across the sector, that there will increasingly be a move towards designing spaces for children to engage with. People are seeing that the family programmes and the early years’ programmes are not just an add-on. They are intrinsic in the very fabric of the way that we display the collections.
“We have this threefold rubric. Are we displaying the collections in ways that engage social interaction, are they relevant, and are they inspiring? The collection must work hard to create a fantastic learning, social and fun experience for visitors.
“For me, if it is a joyful museum, then it will be a success because that will achieve what the children want. But it is also underpinned by rigorous attention to childhood development, how we learn, and creative pedagogy, all of that woven across all the displays.”
Imagine
Young V&A will be home to three permanent galleries: Imagine, Design and Play. These centre around the three core dimensions of the V&A’s collections: art, design and performance.
“The Imagine Gallery is all about imaginary worlds and features the V&A’s performance collection. At the centre of the Imagine gallery is a space that we call The Stage, with amazing props and costumes from the collection. It can be a place for children to devise their own performances. We might have things like children’s comedy clubs performing there and young band performances. There is potential for some exciting things to fill that space.”
Much of the storytelling in this gallery is all about the way objects tell stories, and objects inspire stories:
“We’ve got a fantastic room that centres around the theme of adventure. Here, we invite visitors to plan their own adventures. Where do they go and what do they wear? What do they say and who do they travel with it? This is all surrounded by a cornucopia, an amazing variety of objects from the V&A collection.”
“Then there’s another fantastic room in the Imagine Gallery called This is Me. Here, the children worked with a local photographer Rehan Jamil on a portraiture project. We invited children to come along with expressions of their creativity.”
Play
Moving on to the Play Gallery, this has at one end what Charman describes as a ‘mini museum’, designed for pre-walkers.
“The themes there are things like colour, sound, and texture. It’s very witty and colourful and is underpinned by how we learn in a sensory environment in those early years. And then we have spaces which will look at the development of fine and gross motor skills. There is lots of learning through guided play.”
At the other end of that gallery is The Arcade:
“This is a space for older children, around 10- to 14-year-olds. They told us through the co-design process that they wanted a space that could be a bit more their own. This looks at the mechanics of game design and there are some immersive environments in that space. It’s much more about how games are made and the different roles in game design.”
Design
On the first floor is the Design Gallery. Here, the Young V&A will invite children to step into the shoes of a designer and think like a designer.
“This looks at problem-solving skills and things like the ability to work collaboratively, putting them in real-world contexts. The selection of case studies in that space are designs which have been made either with or for children. Then there is The Factory which unpacks an amazing array of different design processes, with examples from the collection.
“There’s The Shed. Here, we’ll have a designer running briefs for an open studio, where you can get stuck in and respond to design briefs. The Design Gallery very much connects with the professional practice of designers. It opens up a whole new world of design, with examples from across the collection; graphics, textiles, you name it.”
“That’s another key shift for Young V&A, in that we are drawing now from the whole V&A collection. In the former Museum of Childhood, the displays were from the National Childhood collection. But this time we have a full range across every single area of the wider V&A collection. That’s been amazing because we’ve got much more scope to select objects which resonate with those conversations that we’ve been having with children about what they want to see in the museum.
“And then we put it into this learning-led context. It’s all about fostering intergenerational, fun and social learning experiences with the material culture of the collection.”
See also: A unique museum experience: inside the V&A East project
Interactive but screen-free experiences at Young V&A
These galleries will largely be screen-free, says Charman:
“It’s a very interactive museum, it is a ‘doing museum’. Because this is how we learn; we learn through doing. So, it is interactive in its entirety. Some of that interactivity has to do with technology, but not all of it.
“There are lots of calls to action throughout, whether those will be things around devising an adventure or telling your story into a whispering tube that pops up somewhere else in the museum, or whether it’s engaging with the big blue blocks in the Imagination Playground, creating structures, whether it’s designing a game in the arcade space, whether it’s responding to a design brief here. Every single element in the museum is designed for some sort of interactivity.”
Largely, those elements are also designed around providing a social experience, adds Charman:
“That’s because we know that museums are social environments. Children will be visiting with their families, their carers, their siblings, and their friends. The calls to action and the prompts to do activities around the collection will be about doing things with others. And that’s important, that intergenerational piece is key.”
Breathing new life into the building
As well as co-designing the gallery spaces with children and young people, the team have also seized the chance to rethink some of the building’s infrastructure, explains Charman.
“It’s important to understand the facilities as well. So, we made sure that we bought that building back to life and fixed any issues, whether it’s new toilets, a new catering offer, or moving the learning studios to the other side of the building so they get more daylight. In the former Museum of Childhood, the majority of the daylight panels were painted over in the main hall. But now that has been completely fixed so that we’ve got natural daylight which will flood that central space. We’ve also acoustically treated the building.”
All those decisions were made to ensure the whole space was as welcoming as possible for guests, and that it meets the needs of the visitors of today.
The centre of a community
In addition, the team has spent time reaching out to the local community:
“The V&A has been in Bethnal Green for 150 years. That is amazing, and we take that responsibility seriously, to be the centre of that community.”
Before opening in the summer, the team has been running an extensive outreach programme.
“We’ve been working with every school in Tower Hamlets, in all the children’s centres, and the libraries. We are a meaningful resource for the community, and we’ve got strong relationships with a whole host of committee organisations. Those will continue post-opening.
“We also know that teachers are looking to Young V&A to be a fantastic professional resource for them, when we think about creativity in the curriculum, learning through play and early years learning. That transition from primary to secondary school is one of these milestones in children’s lives. Young V&A will play a significant role in supporting it.”
Learning at Young V&A
To help achieve this key goal of supporting educators, the project has included the addition of new learning facilities for Young V&A.
“We talk about the museum becoming a critical national resource for creative education, for creative curriculum design. We have a dedicated beautiful suite of workshops and then we have a larger space as well. But also, all the galleries have spaces for learning integrated into them. We know that we learn through play. So, the guided structured approaches to playful learning across all those areas are intrinsic to the design and the experience.”
“Plus, we have a busy programme for schools and community groups. This will be making good use of the new facilities for students upstairs as well.”
A wide-ranging programme
When it comes to the wider community, there will also be special events and programming in place such as Museum Lates.
“We’ve set up a youth collective, working with children aged 11 to 14. They’ve been fantastic as a resource, giving their input into different elements of programming. So, we will be led to a not insignificant extent by what they’re collectively interested in doing and how they want to animate the space.”
“There will be programmes, workshops, shorter sessions, all-day sessions and festivals. We are planning lots of resource development for teachers. There will be symposia around certain themes to do with creativity in education. There will be drop-in activities and a mix of ticketed and some free activities, so there’s a whole range of ways to engage the museum.
“What will be different will be the extent to which in this new incarnation we will be able to work with young people to co-programme and co-design what some of these activities will be.”
Young V&A is on track for summer 2023
Finally, Charman gives an update on the progress of the Young V&A project. She also shares what she is most looking forward to when it opens this summer.
“We had a site visit with the whole team recently. We were there as elements of the mini museum and the Play Gallery were being carried on site. The building itself looks incredible as well, with everything freshly painted and the daylight now coming into that central space. You can see the structure of all the rooms. It’s an exciting time as we get towards practical completion and then with fit-out beginning, so that’s all on track.”
“The thing I’m most looking forward to is seeing children come through the door. But I would also love to think that children will be converted, that they will think ‘Let’s to Young V&A, that’s my space and that’s where I want to be. I’ll go with my friends, and I know there’s always going to be something inspiring and fun to do in that space, and I feel a sense of belonging and ownership.’
“When I see children doing that, taking ownership, then I will feel that we’ve succeeded.”
Inspiring the museum of the future
This unique co-design project will also, hopes Charman, influence the wider museum sector as it thinks about what museums of the future could look like.
“We have several objectives with Young V&A. One is that we can help influence the sector towards more inclusive, child-centred design of museums more broadly. We are beginning to see this shift happening and we hope Young V&A can be a powerful catalyst for that.”
“There is the start of a transformation in the way that museums think about what they do, who they work with, how they display collections, etc. And it’s great to be part of that movement.”
Top image: View across the Town Square. Image by Picture Plane ©Victoria and Albert Museum London
