2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Game Guide "Endless" Editorial Department
Together with co-curator Bai Xue, we created partners Gu Yuyue, Li Qiyang, Xu Jihong, and 49 small artists to find funny human beings in "walking around", to tap the potential of funny human beings in "chattering" and to pry the whole earth with the pen of the editorial department.
2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Family Art Gallery
Family Art Museum Program-Community Space, this family art museum unit invited 300 families from 31 aesthetic education institutions across the country to participate in this children's art festival. The exhibition area is divided into two parts, inside and outside. Inside the space, most of the works revolve around family issues; outside the space, there are public art works, including paintings and installations, created by teachers leading children in their communities. Through the practice of family aesthetic education from the inside out, teachers, children and parents rediscover their families and the "sense of beauty and meaning" around them in artistic creation, and influence and change our family space and the surrounding community environment with public works of art.
2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Family Art Gallery -2
Family Art Museum Program-Community Space, this family art museum unit invited 300 families from 31 aesthetic education institutions across the country to participate in this children's art festival. The exhibition area is divided into two parts, inside and outside. Inside the space, most of the works revolve around family issues; outside the space, there are public art works, including paintings and installations, created by teachers leading children in their communities. Through the practice of family aesthetic education from the inside out, teachers, children and parents rediscover their families and the "sense of beauty and meaning" around them in artistic creation, and influence and change our family space and the surrounding community environment with public works of art.
2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Infinite Game Family
ISTART Children's Art Festival and Chengdu SKP jointly launched a special city co-creation project "Infinite Creator", with the participation of artist Zhou Yumei, designer group Firmfirm and architect Wu Kaixun. Hundreds of children and families co-created a large-scale public art creation project with the theme of games, art and family relations.
2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Teenagers Save themselves
We have an annoyance museum that collects all kinds of annoyances; we have emotional drinks that heal the trauma; we have "sand table" that involves society/family/self; and parents and children shops that convey mutual expectations. Through this space, more people can face up to themselves, understand themselves, find ways to get along peacefully with themselves, bravely, breathe and grow together with themselves, with the surroundings, with the world, and with many small ups and downs.
2023 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival-Start Design
The 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival in 2023 is the beginning of the design of a child-friendly exhibition space created by C and A4 Art Museum (A4 Children's Art Museum) for the second time. We have opened a children's model workshop in the design, allowing children to make models like architects, perceive space, and explore the interest of space with children.
2023 9th iSTART Opening Ceremony
The 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival in 2023 is the beginning of the design of a child-friendly exhibition space created by C and A4 Art Museum (A4 Children's Art Museum) for the second time.
The 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival in 2023 is the second child-friendly exhibition space design jointly created by C and A4 Art Museum (A4 Children's Art Museum). It won the 2023 Shenzhen Women's and Children's Development Foundation Child-Friendly Design Award!
Following the successful holding of the "No Game Museum" in 2022, this exhibition, with the theme of "Infinite Game Family", continues to explore and study the relationship and integration between "art, game and creation" from the perspective of children. Possibility-"Infinite" aims to break the public's limited perception of children, and "game" seeks to make the game go on through unlimited creation, "Family" hopes to break through the barriers between people and families.
This is the first time that iSTART has been together offline since the end of the three-year epidemic. With the expansion of iSTART project participants, this year, children, families, schools, public institutions and communities from 34 cities and villages have built their own "big family" through the links of art museums ". This iSTART Children's Art Festival has the highest number of participants over the years. It is jointly created by 2513 small artists and 551 adult curators, scholars, educators and artists. The works on display cover the positive value of games, family parent-child relationship, rural aesthetic education, adolescent mental health, and the co-creation of children and artificial intelligence.
ISTART Children's Art Festival is an important annual project of A4 Art Museum (A4 Children's Art Museum). It was initiated by A4 Art Museum in 2014 and has been successfully held for 10 sessions so far. Its core is to create and build a creative and diverse beautiful world with children from the perspective of children. Every year, iSTART cooperates with a wide range of schools, families, communities, and public welfare action partners to build a sustainable art education ecological network. So far, it has covered 34 cities in 23 provinces in 7 countries around the world, and has cooperated with more than 24000 small artists. In cooperation with more than 1000 educational practitioners, artists, experts, scholars and cross-disciplinary workers around the world, we have developed hundreds of participatory art education projects, transforming the public from participants in art museums to creators. iSTART insists on multi-dimensional art projects and inquiry mode, so that art can really have a positive impact on children's future, connect children with the real world with art, and provide children with a broad soil for social learning and growth.
At the beginning of the design, C participated in a number of child-friendly space design projects. The 9th iSTART Children's Art Festival is the second child-friendly exhibition space design jointly created with A4 Art Museum (A4 Children's Art Museum). We think that the exhibition is small, but in every space design, we try to bring forth the new, explore new exhibition experience, and integrate into a richer way of participation and interaction. Let the exhibition space is not only an exhibition for the viewer to "see", but also a diversified way of experience.
Coming to the 9th iSTART(2023), we and curator Li Jie hope to explore the relationship between children, exhibitions and communities more, so as to blur the boundaries of the established scope of the three and find the largest spatial intersection. I am not willing to create a small country or a mini-community for children. Instead, we want to find the scale balance between children and adults-a flexible scale space.In such a flexible scale space, children can find their own small house: reading, observation, exploration; at the same time, as parents, adults can also find their own suitable place to walk, rest and watch exhibitions with children. A "private scale" that not only belongs to children, but also a "public scale" that returns to normal. This is the "flexibility" we hope to look for, and it is also the "family gallery" space presented to everyone this year.
The "hole" is a very common element in architecture, both as a door and a window, both connecting space and absorbing light. In Alice's Dream Travels, Alice follows Mr. Rabbit and jumps into the rabbit hole, enters another world, and opens her dream journey. In fact, in the eyes of children, there is another layer of meaning: unknown. The hole in the space can stimulate children's desire to explore and drive him/her to observe, climb and explore. Therefore, the hole has become an interesting element in children's space. Through the collocation and combination of different forms of holes, we gradually connected different game units in series, and also made the space "breathable.
Regarding children's participatory design, we need to involve children in the entire design process, through workshops, joint discussions, and listening to each other's ideas. Most of the time, we all like to impose some concepts into space design, but it is likely to practice our own ideas by doing children's design: not only throwing out the concept of architect, but taking this concept as a result of thinking with children and space users.
Child-friendly design is still a relatively less concerned field in China. We hope that through the co-creation design method of "child-participatory design", "child-friendly design" will not simply look "child-friendly" and "friendly", but will explore the "flexible" spatial scale to find the "internal and external" child-friendly design in the selection of more environmentally friendly and sustainable materials, let children participate in the space, from the perspective of Ta to understand, touch, like the space.
Start Design C is a twin-city design studio located in Chengdu and Frankfurt, which was jointly established by Chinese architect Wu Kaixun and German architect Patrick Euler. We believe that extensive cross-border cooperation and diversified cross-cultural communication are the vitality of design. Let design as a medium to create more public participation with less natural energy consumption is more.
Wu Kaixun, architect, starting design partner, master of architectural design from Stä delschule School of Art, Germany, and chairman of e.V. Art Design Curatorial Team of Frankfurt Option17.
