Children’s Lives at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery uses an ambitious range of material to explore the recurring themes of childhood from the 18th century to the present day.
It’s an academically minded exhibition, with the vast subject matter organised along thematic rather than chronological lines. Broad sections such as At Home, On the Move and In Care are divided into sub-themes such as School, Travellers and Relationships.
It feels all-encompassing: class, poverty and disability feature throughout. Social differences are examined, with photographs of poverty being juxtaposed with stiff formal pictures of the wealthier classes, for example.
The exhibition feels peopled and children are treated as individuals. The story of Hans Schwartz, a boy who fled Vienna on a kindertransport in 1938, is particularly compelling. One of the most memorable exhibits is a calendar he illustrated with images that may be an internment camp or a concentration camp.
Elsewhere, a case displaying the imaginative work of a child acknowledges that she came from an artistic family. The use of such background information means that the objects are not meant to represent children’s experience as a whole; rather, they focus on the lives of individuals.
Pictures of childhood
The displays make good use of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s impressive collection to underscore material culture and written sources, and bring out social and economic themes.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Thomas Gainsborough, Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Rego, and photographers such as Bill Brandt and Nick Hedges share wall space in a sometimes jarring manner.
Nevertheless, they provide a good platform to discuss some of the exhibition’s ideas. Sometimes there is a sense of randomness as to why a particular work has been placed in a section and it is not until you read the label that it becomes clear. This is an exhibition that requires its visitors to work hard.
The inclusion of art works on several levels. It is through the visual representations of childhood, most notably the photographic evidence, that visitors begin to get a sense of children’s place in the past. Children are seen really inhabiting the spaces that the exhibition is describing; on the street, at play and in the home.
The text that accompanies the artworks provides a different story. It is not overly concerned with artistic styles or merits, but looks at how representations of children reflect beliefs and attitudes about the nature of childhood.
One of the most engrossing exhibits is a 1949 documentary by Frank Wakeman called Town Sparrows. Visitors are reminded that children’s spaces are now controlled by adults, in contrast to the “freedom and adventure of play” previously available to children.
Visual representations of childhood are interspersed with documentary archive. Personal accounts, letters and memoirs are presented alongside treatises on the nature of childhood and institutional documents such as school ledgers.
This provides a sense of the omnipresence of adult control in children’s lives as well as an opportunity to further explore individual experiences and conditions.
The child’s imagination
There are very few 3D objects in the first few sections, with examples including feeding bottles and a pram. It is not until the penultimate Imagined section – which includes toys, dolls, games, literature and some child-made art – that material culture proliferates.
Interestingly, in the toys and dolls section there is no attempt to interpret the many different items on display. How children use these items is a place where the adult voice can’t follow – and it doesn’t attempt to.
The exhibition is in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s cavernous Gas Hall, and its design is problematic. Given the space to play with, navigation within the show could have been easier and the displays would have benefited from a more tightly controlled pace. The exhibition is most successful in the areas where themes were more contained, such as the In Care? section.
Scene-setting graphics, such as the use of a vintage-style flock wallpaper print for At Home, are a good visual reference for what you are about to look at.
The use of child-like copperplate writing within exercise book guidelines showing the child’s actions being controlled is particularly successful, as it clearly delineates each theme and sub-theme. This use of design to reinforce the exhibition’s messages could have been further developed.
The last section celebrates the “importance of the child’s voice” and has been curated by Birmingham schoolchildren. On entering the space, visitors feel as if they have entered a teenager’s bedroom. This change of pace from the formalised exhibition setting in the previous section almost feels like an intrusion.
It features a mixture of interviews, collages and what appear to be donated objects. Children are allowed to present themselves as they want to be seen.
Interviews that the children have been trained to record and perform themselves are projected onto a wall. The feeling of intrusion is heightened when you pull out one of the boxes under the bed, labelled “keep out”, and find collections of objects similar to those any child might hoard away.
Engagement
What is important here is the process. Unlike the other sections, in which visitors are invited to reflect on past lives, here it is about collecting stories and experiences. We are told that the aim of the project, is “to give young people our own voice within the Archive”.
The process of curating this space is highly visible through photographs, spider diagrams and drawings, which allow a glimpse at the children’s thought processes. There is not that much for visitors to look at, but there is a real sense of children having engaged with the idea of collecting stories and putting themselves into the exhibition.
Children’s Lives is a reflective study of childhood as controlled and perceived by adults. It also introduces a sense of children as social actors and attempts to “hear children’s voices”. The history of childhood as presented in museums tends to focus on the play aspect; Children’s Lives takes a different approach and is all the richer for it.
It is an absorbing exhibition. It seems to be pitched at an adult audience and a lack of interactivity may limit the accessibility for younger children.
But Children’s Lives does an excellent job of balancing the history of childhood, sometimes at national and even international levels, against the specific history of children’s lives in Birmingham. The result is an exhibition with a real sense of place at its heart and a compelling narrative.
Ruth Slaney is the assistant to the director at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London
It’s an academically minded exhibition, with the vast subject matter organised along thematic rather than chronological lines. Broad sections such as At Home, On the Move and In Care are divided into sub-themes such as School, Travellers and Relationships.
It feels all-encompassing: class, poverty and disability feature throughout. Social differences are examined, with photographs of poverty being juxtaposed with stiff formal pictures of the wealthier classes, for example.
The exhibition feels peopled and children are treated as individuals. The story of Hans Schwartz, a boy who fled Vienna on a kindertransport in 1938, is particularly compelling. One of the most memorable exhibits is a calendar he illustrated with images that may be an internment camp or a concentration camp.
Elsewhere, a case displaying the imaginative work of a child acknowledges that she came from an artistic family. The use of such background information means that the objects are not meant to represent children’s experience as a whole; rather, they focus on the lives of individuals.
Pictures of childhood
The displays make good use of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s impressive collection to underscore material culture and written sources, and bring out social and economic themes.
Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Thomas Gainsborough, Käthe Kollwitz, Paula Rego, and photographers such as Bill Brandt and Nick Hedges share wall space in a sometimes jarring manner.
Nevertheless, they provide a good platform to discuss some of the exhibition’s ideas. Sometimes there is a sense of randomness as to why a particular work has been placed in a section and it is not until you read the label that it becomes clear. This is an exhibition that requires its visitors to work hard.
The inclusion of art works on several levels. It is through the visual representations of childhood, most notably the photographic evidence, that visitors begin to get a sense of children’s place in the past. Children are seen really inhabiting the spaces that the exhibition is describing; on the street, at play and in the home.
The text that accompanies the artworks provides a different story. It is not overly concerned with artistic styles or merits, but looks at how representations of children reflect beliefs and attitudes about the nature of childhood.
One of the most engrossing exhibits is a 1949 documentary by Frank Wakeman called Town Sparrows. Visitors are reminded that children’s spaces are now controlled by adults, in contrast to the “freedom and adventure of play” previously available to children.
Visual representations of childhood are interspersed with documentary archive. Personal accounts, letters and memoirs are presented alongside treatises on the nature of childhood and institutional documents such as school ledgers.
This provides a sense of the omnipresence of adult control in children’s lives as well as an opportunity to further explore individual experiences and conditions.
The child’s imagination
There are very few 3D objects in the first few sections, with examples including feeding bottles and a pram. It is not until the penultimate Imagined section – which includes toys, dolls, games, literature and some child-made art – that material culture proliferates.
Interestingly, in the toys and dolls section there is no attempt to interpret the many different items on display. How children use these items is a place where the adult voice can’t follow – and it doesn’t attempt to.
The exhibition is in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s cavernous Gas Hall, and its design is problematic. Given the space to play with, navigation within the show could have been easier and the displays would have benefited from a more tightly controlled pace. The exhibition is most successful in the areas where themes were more contained, such as the In Care? section.
Scene-setting graphics, such as the use of a vintage-style flock wallpaper print for At Home, are a good visual reference for what you are about to look at.
The use of child-like copperplate writing within exercise book guidelines showing the child’s actions being controlled is particularly successful, as it clearly delineates each theme and sub-theme. This use of design to reinforce the exhibition’s messages could have been further developed.
The last section celebrates the “importance of the child’s voice” and has been curated by Birmingham schoolchildren. On entering the space, visitors feel as if they have entered a teenager’s bedroom. This change of pace from the formalised exhibition setting in the previous section almost feels like an intrusion.
It features a mixture of interviews, collages and what appear to be donated objects. Children are allowed to present themselves as they want to be seen.
Interviews that the children have been trained to record and perform themselves are projected onto a wall. The feeling of intrusion is heightened when you pull out one of the boxes under the bed, labelled “keep out”, and find collections of objects similar to those any child might hoard away.
Engagement
What is important here is the process. Unlike the other sections, in which visitors are invited to reflect on past lives, here it is about collecting stories and experiences. We are told that the aim of the project, is “to give young people our own voice within the Archive”.
The process of curating this space is highly visible through photographs, spider diagrams and drawings, which allow a glimpse at the children’s thought processes. There is not that much for visitors to look at, but there is a real sense of children having engaged with the idea of collecting stories and putting themselves into the exhibition.
Children’s Lives is a reflective study of childhood as controlled and perceived by adults. It also introduces a sense of children as social actors and attempts to “hear children’s voices”. The history of childhood as presented in museums tends to focus on the play aspect; Children’s Lives takes a different approach and is all the richer for it.
It is an absorbing exhibition. It seems to be pitched at an adult audience and a lack of interactivity may limit the accessibility for younger children.
But Children’s Lives does an excellent job of balancing the history of childhood, sometimes at national and even international levels, against the specific history of children’s lives in Birmingham. The result is an exhibition with a real sense of place at its heart and a compelling narrative.
Ruth Slaney is the assistant to the director at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London
Project data
- Cost £135,890
- Main funder Heritage Lottery Fund £49,800
- Partners Birmingham University; Birmingham Archives and Heritage; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
- Curators Ian Grosvenor; Siân Roberts
- Exhibition design 24Design
- Exhibition ends 10 June
