Junior Curators at Ipswich Art Gallery

The Ipswich Art Gallery has long been a firm favourite of the team at Brisbane Kids due to its strong commitment and focus on providing impactful arts engagement for children and young people. The gallery has taken its dedication to children in the arts one step further with its latest exhibition Junior Curators: Mysterious Realms.

Curated entirely by children aged 14 and under, this experience is an exercise in how art, and the stories woven within it, can bring new life and meaning through the eyes of a youthful perspective. This is a free exhibition that we highly recommend you add to your summer bucket list.

The Junior Curators

International expert in the field of child-led exhibitions, Dr Monica Eileen Patterson, asked the question, “How would museology change if children were to be included not just as a topic of display or as target audience members but as active participants and co-creators of museum content and programming?”.

The answer to this challenge can be found in the Ipswich Art Gallery‘s Junior Curators: Mysterious Realms program. Conceived as a behind-the-scenes exhibition development program for children aged 8-14 years, the gallery selected a team of 14 children from hundreds of applications to take part in the innovative project. Each with different hopes, dreams, goals and personalities, the young curators were brought together and, led by staff and external museum professionals, were taught the process behind exhibition making and guided through the steps needed to create their own.

Mysterious Realms – The Process

At the program’s start, the young curators were led through the many steps taken when creating a gallery exhibition. They were taught about why collections exist, how to develop a theme, and ways that they can express this to the audience through the artworks they select. They were shown how the artworks on display may all be different, but combined they can help to tell a story.

In small teams of 2 or 3 (and one who chose to create their realm solo), the junior curators were then shown the gallery’s vast collection of artworks. From this, they chose pieces that they were drawn to, found a theme within them, and created their own realm around this. Each team then came up with an imaginative story born from their realm.

The result? Cottage Core, Crazy Rainbow Fish, Magical Mystical Forest, Mythical Creatures, A World Like Yours, and Glitch. Six very different, wonderfully refreshing realms that were created through the eyes of a child.

With pieces that may not have been selected for display by an adult otherwise, but that fit perfectly within the stories being told and the realms they were illustrating.

An exhibition for young people by young people.

Worlds Of Wonder – Junior Curator Interactive Space

To complement the exhibition and inspire young visitors to become curators of their own realm, the upstairs children’s space in the gallery has been transformed into an interactive space filled with artworks from living artists.

With plenty of arts and crafts materials and boxes perfect for mini-diorama realms waiting to be imagined, children are encouraged to design and build their own world to take home or display.

Alongside the mini-worlds they may want to create, children can also make their own mythical creatures from various body, head and limb templates that they can cut out, colour, and pin together.

If kids want a little break from crafting (said no child ever!), there are a few other delightful finds in the Worlds of Wonder creative space. These include a Sisyphus table with a magnetic robot weaving patterns within sand, a bright light wall where children can create their own designs and wording, and a perfectly positioned magic mirror.

Mysterious Realms – Our Review

When they were first informed that they would be going to look through a gallery exhibition designed by kids, I would be lying if I didn’t say my children were a little apprehensive. I’m sure they envisaged walking through halls and looking at childish art in frames and possibly getting a little bored. How very wrong they were!

From the moment we stepped into the Junior Curators: Mysterious Realms exhibition, my entire family were captivated. First, by the small playhouse structure that housed the short video explaining the idea behind the exhibition and information about the young curators, and then by the exhibition itself, which they caught glimpses of behind it.

It was wonderful to see how interested they all were in children their own age (my children are 9, 11 and 14) being the masterminds behind it all.

As we continued to each of the realms, it was clear that these being curated by children created a very special way of connecting to the younger audience they shared a demographic with. We started each realm by reading the imaginative story devised by their curator, and then moving between each piece and stating why we thought that had been chosen and what we felt it meant.

The gallery’s decision to have minimal labelling alongside each of the artworks was a brilliant way of letting the kids’ own imagination and interpretation lead their vision of the art. At one point, a giant circular woven art piece was said to be depicting the ocean in the story we had read by one of my children, and the portal to another world by another. I loved this.

As my kids continued to move from one realm to another, it was clear they were getting more and more immersed in the storytelling and collections before them. They delighted in so much of the art on display, and I, myself, found it all enchanting to wander through.

Most impressive to me was when my 9-year-old son came up to me and whispered that “Although I thought this may have been a little boring before I came mum, I am so wrong! This is awesome, and I only wish there were more areas to go through.”.

Luckily for him, there was. After wandering through the exhibition downstairs, my kids could not wait to get upstairs and create their own worlds. Eagerly exploring the spaces and options available to them first, they each grabbed a box, settled down at the craft table and were lost to the world around them for the next almost two hours as they carefully worked on their realms.

It was easy to see how, by giving children the opportunity to take their own lead and be guided by their own perspective on things, the end result can be something entirely unexpected, but inspiring, fascinating and truly wonderful.

At the end of the day, I needed to drag my children away from the gallery. We had other appointments to make and had already been there for close to 4 hours (where had the time flown)? All three of them thoroughly enjoyed the experience, both downstairs in the gallery exhibition and then upstairs in the Worlds of Wonder creative space too.

Once again, the Ipswich Art Gallery has created something unique and special for kids – more special in so many ways because kids created it. The gallery staff said they had simply confirmed that youth have so much to offer and that we adults are well-placed to learn from them. I couldn’t agree more.