Be a rainbow explorer

The Young V&A Museum

(formerly the Museum of Childhood)

Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London  E2 9PA

www.vam.ac.uk

email: young@vam.ac.uk

After consultation with over 20,000 children and the local community, this museum has recently had a £13 million revamp to transform it from what was a museum of nostalgic childhood to a museum for modern children. Its primary audience is 0-14 years of age, but there is still plenty on offer to entertain older members of the family too, as my husband and I found out when we visited recently.

Based in the old Victorian building, the museum is not what you would call traditional in its look.  With the original windows now uncovered, the whole space is lit with natural light and appears spacious and airy. It is very different to many of the museums we have visited in the past where vast amounts of exhibits are packed into dark and gloomy rooms. It was extremely busy when we visited but still seemed surprisingly spacious.  The 19th century marble mosaic floor has been fully renovated, there is a new entrance and plenty of storage space for bags, buggies and the usual paraphernalia a family might have with them.

Accessibility and inclusion appear to have been primary targets during the renovations and seem to have been successful. The entrance is step free and although laid out on different flours, all areas are accessible without having to use stairs, with a lift and ramps available. There are toilets, baby changing facilities in both the men’s and women’s, a changing places toilet and buggy parks. Breast feeding is welcomed and there is a reading room which can be used if you want a quiet space, somewhere calm to pray, read, have a sensory break or for breast feeding if you require more privacy.

The Museum is located very close to the Bethnal Green tube station which is great unless you have buggies – there are no lifts, just stairs so this needs to be taken into consideration when choosing to visit. Entry to the museum is free, though a charge may be made for special exhibits which change throughout the year. Inside the museum is divided into three galleries: Imagine, Play and Design.  There is also a shop selling good quality toys, crafts, books and pocket money toys and another upstairs with preloved clothing and accessories.

The Play gallery is designed for babies and toddlers, encouraging them to discover colours, textures and shapes. Everything is at eye level and includes a mini museum.  Exhibits are displayed in original ways rather than thematically or chronologically eg through colour, alphabet letters or use. This means that newer exhibits sit alongside older ones providing a different viewpoint.  There is a construction zone with den making and a large marble run and for older children an Arcade focussing on board games and video games. Here there are both vintage and modern games for children (and adults) to access and enjoy. We particularly liked the workbooks used by designers showing their initial thoughts on games we recognised and how they developed into the finished items sold in shops today.

The Imagine section encourages creative expression through performance, storytelling and imagination. Here you can find Joey the War Horse puppet and a dolls house collection set up like a street which had one young visitor totally enthralled when we were there. Listening to him talking to his mum as they both sat on the floor in front of the exhibit was a delight to see – I suspect he could have stayed there all day as he studied and discussed each individual dwelling. The theatre area allows children to perform their own shows with dressing up clothes available, but also puts on shows for them to watch too.

Although we enjoyed both of these sections and found (as adults) interesting exhibits to look at and remind us of our own childhood toys, we found the Design section of particular interest. Here, older children are introduced to design processes, ideas creation and problem solving. There was a fascinating section on how waste materials can be used to create new products, how designs need to change for growing children and how items from a hundred years ago have been adapted for the modern family. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of a red Raleigh chopper bike having owned one of these fabulous machines myself and I was fascinated by the family scooter – we could have found that very useful when our own family was younger.

The main central hall is now an open space with a café area, tables, chairs, benches, highchairs and kids everywhere! Everyone seemed calm and relaxed and now known as the Town Square, it is a great communal place for families and friends to meet together. The café provides a small selection of hot and cold meals, cakes, pastries and drinks but families are also permitted to bring their own food or picnics from home to eat there! (Most unusual!) Bottle warming and microwave facilities are available too.

All in all, we enjoyed our visit despite being child free. There were enough exhibits to remind us of past childhoods, items of interest to study and marvel at and new things to make us think, even though we were not the target audience. As a free resource, it seemed a wonderful opportunity for families providing you can cope with the tube and the steps to get there and it really does offer a diverse range of opportunities with something for everyone, whatever their age.

It was described as a ‘21st century museum to foster the next generation of artists, thinkers, makers and innovators,’ and with its unique approach, I think it could be very successful.

Whilst in the area, it is worth having a look at the Stairway to Heaven memorial on the opposite side of the tube exit/entrance.  This remembers the Bethnal Green tube shelter disaster, which turned out to be the worst civilian disaster of WW2. The tragedy was hushed up through the war so it ‘did not affect morale’ and took many more years to be made fully public and for a memorial to be erected. It sits in the nearby park, remembering the 173 victims, many of them children, who are named on the sides and on plaques. These people were sadly crushed as they ran into the unfinished tube station that was being used as an air raid shelter, to escape what they thought were falling bombs. In the ensuing rush to safety, a young mother and child tripped at the bottom of the unlit stairs causing others to fall and many to be crushed. It was a horrific night, made even more so when it was discovered that there was no air raid that night despite the siren being sounded. There is also a small plaque directly above the stairs to the entrance/exit.