Funding announced for experimental exhibition project for under 3s

Funding for a pilot project to develop experimental exhibition curation through the experiences of children aged under three and their families has been secured by researchers at Manchester Met.

Backed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Things of the Least will generate a series of innovative gallery and live public experiences taking a fresh look at the relationship between museum artefacts and public life.

Alongside Sheffield Hallam University, Manchester Art Gallery and Sure Start, the Government’s initiative to support disadvantaged children, the work will draw from previous early years and artistic research.

Things of the Least will seek to understand the ways that very young children engage with the material world, enabling them to challenge assumptions about what is deemed valuable and by whom, as well as how artefacts should be encountered.

It will aim to redress the lack of experiment in exhibition-making with and for the under 3s by engaging audiences who do not usually connect with galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Taking part will be local residents from South Asian, African Caribbean and white British communities alongside families displaced from their countries who are seeking sanctuary in Manchester, including families from Afghanistan and Eritrea, and Kurdish groups from Iraq and Iran.  

Based at Manchester Art Gallery’s Platt Hall in Rusholme, it will work with The Mary Greg Collection of over 4,000 objects of domestic life and childhood from the early 1800s-1900s. The collection focuses on the intimate, meaningful practices of everyday life that might seem insignificant and humble yet create a sense of belonging.

Nine artists will translate key sensory and narrative qualities of selected objects from the collection into prototypes - sound or movement-based pieces, physical objects or digital artefacts specifically designed to engage children under three and their families. A vocabulary of gestures, sounds and movements will be created as the children engage with the prototypes to incorporate their forms of encounters into reworked objects and installation forms.

Rachel Holmes, Manchester Met’s Professor of Cultural Studies of Childhood, said: “The AHRC’s belief in and support for this project opens up space and time for us to produce an experimental exhibition that overturns conventional assumptions about very young children, positioning them as active contributors to the public space of the museum.

“This work will draw on contemporary art to push beyond boundaries of language, rhetoric and discourse, and foreground the very capable ways that young children engage with their environments through sensation, affect and movement as part of their world-making practices.”

AHRC Executive Chair, Professor Christopher Smith, added: “As audiences and venues change, and as we seek to be more inclusive and bring our culture to everyone, the nature of how we stage and curate exhibitions needs to evolve.

“This project will unlock fresh ways for different and often overlooked audiences to experience our historical and cultural heritage, ensuring its value can be fully appreciated by many more people, and it will also inform all of our exhibition making. This represents another step in AHRC’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and to supporting our brilliant and innovative museums and galleries.”