Client: Young V&A Collaborators: Families and staff at Mowlem School
The Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood is becoming the Young V&A, transformed into a new world class museum of design and creativity for children and young people.
We are working with families from Mowlem School to develop new permanent exhibits which link historical play theorists to everyday modern life. We are doing this via a series of creative, interactive playful workshops leading to a physical commissioned work for the new museum when it reopens in 2023.
Over 6 sessions we worked with parents and pupils to explore the work and pedagogical ideas of Froebels, Montessori and Pestalozzi. We set up the space as an creative studio and each session had 3 main parts: A larger scale activity, a smaller scale activity, sharing and discussion.
In our evaluation of this project we identified 6 key learnings: • Families working together learn more than when they spilt and work along generational lines. • Everybody’s creative process is unique, offering a range of activities allows everyone to find an activity they love. • A welcoming and familiar environment allows for a deeper engagement. • Transferable activities, choosing and using materials in ways people can identify ways to repeat them at home. • Care and beauty, whether using pasta or gold, valuing the creative decisions made, the specialness and beauty of things • Creative arts based activities as learning tools, having agency through creating art and making design decisions, taking action/making changes in the world around you.