Museum Trip - "nobody puts baby in the corner!"

My littlest sidekick has just turned 1 and he really doesn't get a look in when it comes to family activities, days out, or anything much in fact :(.  But this week, I took camp counsellor Johnny Castle's message to heart, released baby from his corner and set off to Tate Modern.

I had no plan, the mission was simple: get out of the house and do something #artyfarty.

Bubs was whingy, moany and windy. Things did not bode well. But on arrival he was mesmerised by the turbine hall, staring at the roof from his buggy, taking in the vastness of the space. It's such an amazing building, the entrance experience alone is worth the trip. Check out the stairs: in the week that's in it, when the world bade farewell to it's "Starman" David Bowie, I wondered if his stairway to heaven looked anything like this...

We came across the Bloomberg interactive art wall in the Clore Learning Centre in the basement (after the first trip to the nappy change...). It's this beautiful, tactile, glowing, radiant rectangle of screens, with a timeline of art and artists from 1900 to the present. You touch a name, it expands to give pictures and info on the artists. We were spellbound. Take a look (and if the quality is crap, take a look over on Instagram):

 

"I've. Had. The time of my liiiiiife.... ;)"

 

There was another little guy there, must've been 4, the giggles were infectious and he ended up actually wetting himself he was having so much fun :). He was asking his dad questions, "why is Jackson Pollock an artist? Its only scribbles." It just goes to show, you are NEVER to young to appreciate art ⚡️.

So, top marks to Tate for this amazing, utterly mesmerising and brilliexcellent resource. We will be back with the bigger kids as soon as we can.

After an hour at the wall, bubs went for a snooze and we got to check out The World Goes Pop exhibition on the third floor. Thankfully I now have a student card, so I got concession tickets - it ain't cheap £16 a pop! (forgive ;))

Colourful and thought provoking, it gives a really comprehensive snapshot of what was happening in the world in the 60s and early 70s as the pop movement was born and then exploded.

The exhibition (on till Jan 24) made me feel that art really does connect us all in ways we don't often have the chance to contemplate. It's so important that we nurture our kids' creativity, because it will give them the skills they need to make sense of their world and to express themselves within it.

This has been a good week for the arts crusade, I now have over 140 followers on twitter and over 100 on Facebook. Instagram is coming along nicely too, so I hope that in another few weeks we'll have people actually posting their #artyfarty pics. Baby steps 'n' all, and every single one of your likes, shares, follows and real life telling people is really important and MUCH APPRECIATED.

Tomorrow it's back to the theatre and this time we're going dead posh - the brilliexcellent Aunty Niecey's taking us to Wendy and Peter Pan at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Dahling!  I'll keep you posted.

Swoosh! 
The Arts Crusader ⚡️