Young V&A review: It’s like a playdate at the grandest house in the UK

I’m standing looking at a kaleidoscope-inspired spiral staircase that reflects everything around it. It’s dazzling. “Wow!” says my seven-year-old daughter, Lola, standing next to me. Her eye has been caught by a different delight: an electric car suspended from the ceiling that looks like it’s shooting off the upper gallery.

This is the breathtaking entrance to the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, which has been rebranded from the V&A Museum of Childhood and given a £13m transformation. Less than two weeks after the National Portrait Gallery reopened its doors to the public after a three-year closure and £44m revamp, London has another shiny new culture spot to take the kids – and it’s a winner.

As part of the Young V&A’s new look and feel, it’s no longer being marketed as a museum about childhood, but a dynamic new national museum for children aged 0 to 14. The shell of the 1872 building remains the same – but otherwise, that’s where the similarities end. With natural light flooding in through the newly uncovered skylights, it has a contemporary open-plan feel. The curated spaces, aimed at youngsters from babies to teenagers and featuring 2,000 objects from the V&A’s collection of art and design, have transformed the place into a cross between the Design Museum and a swanky Montessori nursery school.

The trip begins with a visit to the Play Gallery, with its bright green carpet like a perfect lawn. This is a sensory landscape, with objects displayed at child’s eye level and a “mini museum” area for under-threes, where exhibits are at ground level for the crawlers.

A green Prada “fuzzy top” (2007) – a sleeveless jumper made of mohair that looks like it’s made of grass – is displayed in a glass case in the “furry and fuzzy area”. Lola is climbing through a furry-covered tunnel to get a sense of the exhibit’s feel – literally. Likewise, in the “smooth area”, a John Gibson marble sculpture (1863) is encased in glass, with the soft-to-touch floor and walls surrounding the artwork representing its texture. Other objects are grouped according to colour, as though Marie Kondo turned up to give storage tips.

In the “Orange cabinet”, items include suede party shoes “worn to raves in the 1990s” according to the label. Lola doesn’t know what a rave is yet – but she instantly recognises Kermit the Frog in the “Green cabinet” and Blossom from My Little Pony in the “Purple cabinet”.

There is an A to Z of objects in low-positioned cabinets in the same gallery – some of the items have inspired original poems written specifically for Young V&A by Joseph Coelho, the current children’s laureate, and others, including Michael Rosen, who for the letter “X” has written an ode to an X-ray of a puppet from the TV show The Clangers.

While I’m looking at Beatrix Potter’s beetle sketches, Mary Poppins’s umbrella from the West End stage show, and an ancient Egyptian fish-shaped cosmetics tray, Lola is finding things to explore. She’s finger-drawing on a “sand spinner”, playing on the giant design-your-own marble run, and constructing a den with Imagination Playground’s big blue foam blocks.

Her favourite spot, though, seems to be the self-portrait station, where she is tracing over a photograph of herself. On display are self-portraits by artists such as Quentin Blake, Paul Cezanne and Kenneth Branagh – but Lola is far more interested in her own.

open image in gallery

I’m not sure what it would be like if the museum got busy – would there be a queue to do anything fun? It would be a mistake to see it just like an adventure playground, though. Through the three permanent galleries – play, imagine and design – some of mine and Lola’s highlights include Rachel Whiteread’s large-scale installation of dolls’ houses under a starry sky and a breathtaking sleigh (1740-60) that looks like it’s straight out of Narnia, with a phoenix positioned at its front.

Lola dashes into a pink optical illusion room, becoming as big as the room itself when I peek inside through a hole. We are in a surrealist area with a Bridget Riley print, “Coloured Greys III”, and Ettore Sottsass’s “Casablanca sideboard” (1981) – a cupboard with a strange bug-like shape that is covered with fun, shiny material.

In another area, there is a life-size Joey puppet from the National Theatre’s War Horse, the first ever Barbie doll (1959) and Boris Karloff’s costume he wore for the 1931 Frankenstein film. Lola is waltzing around the red velvet stage area, where kids can borrow garments and put on a show.

open image in gallery

Upstairs, in the design area for older children, it’s heaven for aspiring designers who want to understand the processes of transforming a design into reality – from micro-scooters to ethically made chairs. A lot of thought has gone into making this a great destination for kids.

It’s a vast improvement on the dark galleries of its predecessor – and far more interactive. The environment is calming. You can sit and read a selection of children’s books slumped on huge red-coloured furniture shaped in giant letters of the alphabet, or listen to bird song and frogs croaking in the sensory area with the “Sound Tree”. Children won’t tire of it too quickly, and, while it’s entertaining for them, it’s also thought-provoking for adults, unlike many other kids’ attractions. Goodbye, Peppa Pig World. The Young V&A is like a playdate at the grandest house in the UK – we’ll definitely be back.

Opens 1 July (vam.ac.uk)