- Project Type: Professional Project with ANOBO INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
- Project Location: Today Art Museum, Beijing, China
- My Role in the Team: Educational Content Lead Designer
This project was consisted of two major parts: one was exhibition making from an educational perspective, the other was a family program designed for the exhibition.
Exhibition Making: For Kids, By Kids.
For Kids:
Unlike most of the art exhibitions in museums, this exhibition was designed mainly from an educational perspective focusing on the unleashing power and self-driven learning experiences of children as well as their interaction with their caretakers. Me as the educational content lead designer, worked with the curatorial team from an early stage of the exhibition making, providing opinions on the logic of the entire exhibition, the interactive design of the exhibition items, as well as the spatial design of some of the galleries. I wrote most of the labels, wall texts, activity guides and also designed the family activity guidebook for the exhibition.
▷Art-making activity stations scattering through the exhibition.
▷Gallery assistants as educators: make every gallery a pop-up classroom
▷Exhibition items arousing five senses.
▷Labels for children: open ended questions, large letters, simple language.
▷Spatial design catering to children’s body scale.
▷Family activity guidebook: the guidebook contains activity and dialogue suggestions encouraging children’s engagement with the exhibition items from diversified perspectives based on their own personal contexts. Open-ended questions was used to help children make their own meanings with the exhibition. The guidebook also works as a toolkit for the caretakers to use whenever they expect to have a meaningful conversation with the children either in museum settings or just daily life.
By Kids:
This exhibition invited children artists and curators from all over the world to make it happen. We expect to empower children by acknowledging their contribution and roles in this exhibition making process.
▷Labels stressing children’s voices.
▷Ipad displaying children’s contribution: their names and art-making process.
▷Children’s multiple roles in the exhibition: as artists, curators, environment protector, and young global citizens
Family programs: Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) for children and their caretakers.
Task Hug
Five hug tasks to win stickers through the exhibition, and get a special pin with all four stickers. This activity encourages young audiences to develop empathy for the natural worlds surrounding them as well as gratitude towards their families and friends.
Make an Impact to the World!
Three questions through the exhibition for children to think about and make their own choices: Would you like to make an impact to the world? Are you able to make an impact to the world? How can you make an impact to the world? These three questions start from children’s willingness at the very first gallery, to their ability in the middle of the exhibition, and finally to their actions of impact-making at the last gallery. Hopefully, children who visited this exhibition could bring their thoughts and efforts into their lives to take solid actions to make the world a better place.
Brave Heart Exploration
This gallery exploration started with a story of ANOBear who lost its brave heart in the exhibition. Young global citizens were expected to explore the exhibition, learn about the different perspectives of braveness, do several tasks to win the clues, and complete 19 cross-words to help ANOBear re-obtain its brave heart. Through the exploration, learners would learn about art (collage, installation, ready-made), nature (ocean, plants, animals, geography), science (genetics, space, technology), as well as obtain some social-emotional skills and ideas, including braveness, empathy, environmental protection, cultural differences, teamwork, etc.
SIYAO LYU 