Blog

And so the end is near, this will be my final Blog as Director of the Museum. I shall depart on 1^st August after eight and a half years with a great deal of pride in the achievements of the entire organisation.  We have moved from an audience base of 125,000 to 350,000 a year and invested over £6.9 million in creating a high quality family friendly Museum of Childhood with a high profile and wide recognition of its work with schools and communities. I can’t think of a better high note to leave upon.
There is still plenty of work to do though and Rhian Harris (currently Director of the Foundling Museum) will have a challenging time with the team as they continue to deliver our exciting and demanding programme of events, activities and great temporary exhibitions. I would particularly recommend a visit to see Top to Toe in the autumn.  Also still to come:

• Redesign and expansion of the Shop – with some great new product lines for those looking for the unusual for Children and Children who have never grown up
  
• Roald Dahl exhibition and a fantastic new Kids furniture show called ‘Sit Down’
  
• A refreshing of the Childhood Galleries on the top floor of the museum
  
• Feasibility study for Phase 3 of our capital development plan which could include new temporary exhibition space and may be even a library!
  
• And lots more.
  

I cannot leave though without attempting to get you to understand how great the team is here.  At every level their experience and expertise shine out and our front of house operation continues, even under the pressure of big visitor numbers, to provide excellent customer service to our users. Its why over half our audience visit us again and again. This team is backed up by skilled and dedicated people who care for the collections; create exhibitions; raise money and impart all kinds of knowledge through the web; over the phone; through the press etc. 
I personally have to thank them all; they have worked with me to shape the museum into what it is today. They have been open to new ideas; trusted me, even in my madder moments; supported me in times of stress and worked their cotton socks off to deliver to my exacting timescales. I am sure they will be equally supportive to Rhian.
For me, well I am off to become the Director General of the Imperial War Museum (starting 1^st October 2008) and with it a new set of challenges. No doubt the experiences I have had in working with a huge range of audiences here at the Museum of Childhood will be critical in working with the Trustees and Staff of IWM and moving towards the centenary of the museum in 2020. You never know, I might even start a new Blog…
Thank you for reading!

As the Museum is part of the V&A, the National Museum of Art and Design, you can imagine we spend a good deal of our time talking about what this means. This has led me to thinking about how we might influence different designs for kids. This, of course, is based on a complex economic model and so forgive me if this is a rather simplistic view, or does history tell us differently? 

A number of things have happened recently that have influenced my thought: firstly, a major chain selling a children’s bedroom furniture range called “Lolita” without realising the connotations, secondly the production of a new “playboy bunny” range which includes a thong designed for a 6-8 year old girl. My first response might be to say, “Outrageous, what is the industry thinking of?”, but it may quickly move on to “Who buys this stuff?”, after all it’s a market economy isn’t it? I can see before my eyes the headlines on the “sexualisation of girls” or the “loss of childhood”, which periodically rear their head and disappear again. But so far I feel there has been no sustained response from us as consumers, as there has been with the green agenda or organic food etc, and yet the designer and supplier are dependent on our willingness to buy. Why can we not speed up change in the products we see for our kids? Especially as there are some really positive signs from the toy industry. They have been rattled in the last year by the problem of production in China with both magnetic toys and lead content in paint. This has meant a focus on increasing quality control, which can only be good for the consumer but there are other signs; more environmentally friendly packaging for example (which in some instances will mean less time to get the toy out of the box if nothing else!) but also ranges of games and toys which go back to learning basics whilst still encompassing the best of new technology, for example those that don’t need batteries or teach sharing skills. In my view good design doesn’t mean boring design, and I think the industry is ready for a new kind of dialogue with its customers. However, this will only work if we make consistent and specific demands, and work with the industry to increase the pace of change. Who is with me?

Increasingly the anti-social behaviour of young people is in the media and the blame game between parents and the ‘nanny’ state continues to be played out on the front page of every newspaper. Part of me thinks that things must be getting worse – an 11 year old boy being shot playing football; teenagers knifed for gang affiliations or to steal the latest in branded goods can’t be acceptable – it fills me with moral outrage and I turn into one of those people who says “and where were their parents?” But if you do blame them how many generations do you go back before you find the route of the bad behaviour. Take the omnipresent media out of the equation and think about it… If the parents are not controlling their kids and teaching them right from wrong – who taught them? If their own parents or carers didn’t instil the basics how can they be expected to be perfect parents? (Don’t get me started on the ‘perfect’ definition!) And so on back through the generations. Even the Romans had problems with youth identity and street gangs and theirs was supposed to be one of the great ‘civilisations’ in human history. In my view there may be no solution to anti-social behaviour at all, despite brave and well meaning attempts to do so.

This is a weighty and complex issue (too weighty to tease out in one sitting) and my mind wanders back to the microcosm – The Museum of Childhood – and has behaviour deteriorated in the museum. Well, ‘yes’ and ‘no’. We have increased interactivity and therefore the fun factor – sometimes play gets a little robust! On the other side the majority of our visitors treat us a special place – a part of their community and the highlight of the week.

We have lots of discussions about improving the behaviour of children in the museum and I have to say that most are wonderful, polite, happy, sharing, talented and fun to have around – but like society there are exceptions – the snatcher; the pusher; the pincher etc we have seen them all but to continue my parental theme, I thought I would share some of their behaviour with you. You may think their actions insignificant or you may share my incredulity, but here goes? 

We have 2 beautiful rocking horses (one small, one large), both for children to ride. They have been a successful part of the museum for the last 15years or so. Last weekend a Dad jumped on the smallest horse and rocked it violently until it broke. This was spotted by our security team but by the time they got to the horses the man and his family had left the museum. I can forgive a bit of youthful enthusiasm but in my view not to take responsibility for his actions in front of his kids meant he set the worst example for his children to follow in future life. 

To the Mums who don’t use our baby change facilities and change their babies on the sofas in the Galleries, please show us some respect by not leaving the dirty nappy and wipes for us to clean up! 

To the Dad who thought it was a good idea to encourage a child to stand on a radiator and a windowsill to climb on a play set with a sign saying ‘please do not climb’ on and then tried to make it our fault when he fell – what were you thinking? 

To the mother who held the hand of her daughter whilst she walked around the outside of the safety railings, 5ft above a solid marble floor – does you daughter walk across your mantelpiece at home?
And for me… on certain days I DO blame the parents! 

Thank you to those who commented so positively to my blog, What is Innovation?  Encouraged by the fact that I am not speaking to myself, I thought I would share another set of musings, this time on our collections.

Having spent over 7 years here I am still constantly reminded that childhood is not regarded as a ‘serious’ area of collecting by many museum professionals and academics.  This led me to wondering “why?”  As a subject, surely it is a thing we all have in common – everyone had a childhood!  Many of us even viewed it as a positive experience, so is it because the evidence of childhood is not always pristine, not always fine gold or created by a famous artist?  Maybe.  Maybe, its about putting our childhood in the loft and growing up, only to remember when a child comes to visit.  Whatever the reason – and there are many - it leaves us with a dilemma.  What should we be collecting both from the past and in the future?  What, considering storage and care costs, is it important to keep to tell the story of childhood?

Firstly, the picture is complicated by so many different angles – geography (childhoods from where?); time (when in history?); wealth (balancing rich and poor); Globalisation (mass production); merchandising (known here as “not becoming the National Museum of Lunchboxes”); design (popular versus good and bad design) etc., so unfortunately picking what we like best is not really an option.

Secondly, Globalisation in particular has reduced the cultural characteristics of our childhoods to a minimum, for example, you may equally find a Barbie doll in Kenya or India, as in Bethnal Green.

Thirdly, collecting evidence of childhood is one thing, but what about society’s changing attitudes to childhood?  What about peer to peer marketing, legislation, the cult of yummy mummies?  Should they be in the collection?  If not, who keeps that knowledge?

We are beginning to shape some ideas around certain discrete areas of the collections and have definitely pinned down the history stuff, but would really like some outside ideas on now, so to use a tried and tested question,

“If you sent a capsule into space for other worlds to find, what would you put in it to give them a good idea of Earth Child 2007?”

Following our extremely successful relaunch in December, you might think I would be sitting back and enjoying the glory, but although I am delighted by the majority of the public response, the whole process has led me to muse over what Museums like ours are for.

Are we a museum of childhood, or a children’s museum? Our answer has always been the former, but the very nature of our collections and our educational reputation naturally lead to high numbers of children and therefore confusion.

We were recently described as lacking in innovation and this may be because of this ambiguity. It did however, lead me to wonder about how people judge innovation in museums. Are we being judged as non-innovative because we opted for glass cases with lots of objects? There may be those who think this is ‘traditional’ simply because we haven’t opted for showcases with room settings or dioramas. I don’t know.

What I think, and it’s only a personal view, is that some view innovation in museums as the latest interactive gadgets, light show or video. Have we lost the ability to understand innovation in ideas?

I obviously think we are innovative - we have mainstreamed creativity into the galleries, we have text and graphics that are designed to work at every reading age, we have ‘parent’ labels to start intergenerational conversations and to integrate our local communities, is this not innovative?

I do wonder if we would have had the same criticism if we had appointed an exhibition designer to create false play worlds with ideas dictated by adults and in primary colours. We don’t do primary colours or environments for kids like pub play ‘factories’ for a very good reason - design for kids is mostly appalling (in museums too!). This reminds me of a conversation I had with my god-daughter Rosie, who was 6 at the time. She was wearing a pretty pink dress. I asked her if she liked pink and she replied ‘I don’t know really, it’s just everyone keeps buying it for me!’.

I think we have a responsibility to act independently, not to follow the trends blindly and not bowing to others definitions of what a family friendly museum should look like. We should help everyone from children to parents, designer and the toy industry to raise their aspirations and you can’t do that if you simply follow the pack - is that not innovative?

Diane Lees, Director