Kidsize

This is an extraordinary exhibition because most of the objects in it are usually relegated to a fairly inferior position in our lives, our homes and our high streets.

It’s extremely unusual to find childhood and childish things as the core of an exhibition—with the exception of the ‘Toys R Us’ and the Museum of Childhood I can’t think of an exhibition that tackles this subject as completely as Vitra have.

The exhibition comes at a good time as new technologies make it almost too easy for us to turn on the Tellytubbies or the Cartoon Channel or buy any one of the hundreds of thousand of other mass produced toys especially designed to quieten our new generations of would-be shopaholics.

In her speech, Barbara Feldbaum remarked that a socio-cultural comparison of different societies indicates how object dominated our lives today are. While this in itself is no bad thing, as humans we have communicated using objects since the very beginning of civilisation, but it does place a burden of responsibility on us. Because we have to be sure that the objects we surround our children with, those we help and encourage them make and play with, equip them with the skills they’ll need to sustain their natural creativity and help them to lead fulfilling lives.

Childhood, like so much else in the west is being redefined, commercialised and privatised. Children constitute a big part of the population that’s ripe for commercial exploitation. Kids are big business. They deserve much more attention from designers who, I believe, can help them grow up to understand and control their world rather than becoming victims of corporate greed; we don’t want our future generations to become indiscriminate consumers spending their pocket money on whatever advertisers feel compelled to sell to them.

Maybe now is a good time to look at how we used to educate and entertain our children, and examine how others have managed to raise theirs without the help of television and new technologies, after all we do live in a global village increasingly serviced by global companies.

Human creativity is the thing that separates us from the animals and it also separates the men from the boys. It’s great to see the kind of worlds kids create for themselves when left to their own devices. Wouldn’t it be good if they could be helped to retain the creativity they were born with in later life?

I hope you enjoy the exhibition and find it as amazing and though provoking as I did.