Space for Kids
A Dream City
2018 Kunsthalle wien Exhibition
© Jorit Aust
Jul 2 to Sept 2, 2018
Space for Kids: A Dream City is the prototype for a new exhibition format that seeks to meet the needs and perspectives of children. Aiming at introducing kids to contemporary art as well as to making it, the ever-changing exhibition combines action and contemplation, production and reception, as well as visual and other forms of art experience.
What do kids want a city of the future to look like?
At the Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier, kids aged 6 – 13 spent the entire month of July planning and building their version of a city of the future. Transformed into an innovative space of learning and encounter, the exhibition hall was as much playground as art studio and exhibition. The project explored the issue of how to create an exhibition that is an open space of reflection and a place for kids to think about society and to play a role in shaping it.
Together with Kunsthalle Wien’s art education team and the artists Cäcilia Brown and Johann Schoiswohl, the kids could experiment with forms, materials, structures and ideas. In a workshop program designed for kids, the goal was to develop a joint project on “utopian-fantastic urbanism”, where kids could make use of their planning, creative and handicraft skills.
What does a Dream City designed and built by children look like? How do you get there? How do you move around a city like this and how do you dwell, play, learn and live? Does it lead to the creation of new ways of living together or unprecedented collective approaches that result in jointly made decisions? Space for Kids looks to the future and wants to encourage kids to play a role in actively shaping society.
The participants were interested in better public transportation (“a cozy, battery-driven, driverless bus”), robots that could do their homework for them, “that all sweet things are healthy,” “that nothing burns down,” and that their city is a place where everyone feels at home.
Starting on August 4, 2018, which marks the end of the five-week workshop period, kids and adults had the opportunity to visit the newly erected city and to contribute something to it. This involved following brief instructions that can be found throughout the exhibition and were created to stimulate creativity and generate engagement with the world we live in. Because even if you stop building, the city lives on and is lastingly changed by the traces and signs that are left in the exhibition space.
Thoughts and ideas about Space for Kids can also be shared on Instagram using the following hashtags: #KidsSpace #WeltTraumStadt #KunsthalleWien. Kunsthalle Wien is an institution that actively promotes integration and education informed by artistic thinking and strategies.
The institution has been calling attention to this issue by way of a series of projects focusing on the collaboration between children or young adults and artists. The goal of these projects is to demonstrate the potential of contemporary art and to stimulate a creative and intellectual exchange.
Space for Kids
WeltTraumStadt
An eponymous publication accompanies the exhibition.
Space for Kids: A Dream City was developed by the art education department at Kunsthalle Wien together with the artists Cäcilia Brown and Johann Schoiswohl. It features artistic contributions by Ralo Mayer, Olaf Nicolai, Hans Schabus and Anna Witt.
The workshops took place in cooperation with KinderUniKunst and WienXtra Ferienspiel.
The foregoing texts and images are provided and copyrighted by: https://kunsthallewien.at
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