Project Type:
Touring archive exhibition
Dates:
Oct & Nov 2021
Participant Group:
Visual Thinking Team from all over Ireland
Artist:
Vanya Lambrecht Ward
Partners:
Baboró International Festival for Children, Galway Arts Centre, Linenhall Arts Centre
Funders:
Arts Council of Ireland
TADA! archive exhibition
Kids’ Own has developed an interactive exhibition showcasing children’s creative work. This exhibition is an exciting opportunity for us to present a space for children that highlights their creative ideas, artwork, and children’s voices from more than 24 years of collaborative art-based projects.
The exhibition comprises several themed spaces, focused around: play; people; place; and pondering. The main inspiration for the exhibition comes from our extensive library of books made by children, for children, which span a wide range of themes, experiences, and artistic techniques.
The exhibition is interactive and will inspire children to play, think, read, and share. It has been curated by a panel of children and young people from across Ireland, in collaboration with our Associate Artist Vanya Lambrecht Ward.
Over 2020 & 2021, Vanya worked this panel of young people aged 10–18, our Visual Thinking Team. Together with Vanya, they developed responses to our 23–year archive and helped Kids’ Own to map out ideas for this large-scale exhibition. You can read their exhibition tour proposal here.
Our 2020 Visual Thinking Team included Mia Creamer, Donncha Carew, Maebh Dimond, Evie Kenny, Robin Óg Murphy, Kevin Óg Murphy, Caila Nash, Neala O Morain and Louis Tempany. Our 2021 Visual Thinking Team included Khitam Aljali, Amna Aljali, Khadija Aljali, Nabeela Basith, Trecia Onyah and Sedra Al Fadiel. We are very grateful to everybody in our Visual Thinking Team for their insights and ideas!
The exhibition was shown in the Galway Arts Centre from 4 Oct – 17 Oct 2021 as part of the Baboró International Festival for Children. Some highlights included a visit from RTÉ and students from Scoil Iognáid who had some lovely feedback about our exhibition including saying that ‘It’s really great for children to be able to do their own art and write their own books. And to have the experience of showing it off with nobody judging them or saying “that’s wrong!”‘. Click here to watch full interview on RTÉ.
TADA! also exhibited in the Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co Mayo from 22 Oct – 20th Nov 2021. Highlights included a series of creative workshops hosted by the Linenhall Arts Centre using our exhibition as the starting point of inspiration! These workshops for children and families look at ‘inefficient mapping’, a way of tuning into what doesn’t usually get mapped in a mapping process.
We look forward to exhibiting in the near future in other venues around Ireland! This exhibition is kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.