Space for Kids: A Dream City

Space for Kids sees itself as the prototype for a new exhibition format that aims to meet the needs and perspectives of children. The educational work becomes the object of an ongoing, ever-changing exhibition that combines action and contemplation, production and reception, as well as visual and other forms of art experience. In summer 2018, the lower hall of the Kunsthalle Wien at its Museumsquartier location will serve as an innovative space of learning and encounter that is as much playground as art studio and exhibition. The focus will be on an expanded notion of sculpture – in other words, on experimenting with form, material, structure and ideas. Through a series of various workshop modules, the children will collaborate on a project of “utopian-fantastic urbanism” that will enable them make use of their skills to design, make something: to create.

What would a (dream) city designed and built by children look like? How would you get there? How would you move around a city like this and how would you dwell, play, learn, live? Would it lead to the creation of new ways of living together or maybe to unprecedented communal approaches to achieve teamwork decisions? The city: It’s a built environment – a construction of ideas!

The Kunsthalle Wien is an institution that actively promotes integration and education that is informed by artistic thinking and strategies. We have been calling attention to this issue for quite some time now by way of a series of projects that focus on the collaboration between children or young adults and artists. These projects involve our cooperation with various partners, such as Akademie geht in die Schule (Academy Goes to School), polytechnic schools; the Vienna Chamber of Labor, or AK-Wien, working with apprentices and vocational schools; or Vienna’s Lernwerkstatt (Workshop for Learning). The goal of these projects is to demonstrate the potential of contemporary art and to stimulate a creative, intellectual exchange among all parties involved.

Curators: Wolfgang Brunner, Michael Simku, Martin Walkner