Space for Kids. A Dream City

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?

The summer exhibition project Space for Kids. A Dream City presents a perfect example of the innovative and experimental educational program developed at the Kunsthalle Wien. Providing an inventive and engaging exhibition format that aims to meet the ideas and perspectives of children and adults alike, the project involves an ongoing, ever-changing place of action and experimentation, production and reception.

Inspired by radical, utopian architecture of the 70s, the project encourages participation in the realization of—and reflection on—the use and composition of their own environment. It empowers children to determine how they want to interact, envisage, construct and exchange about the world around them, enhancing their independence, self-reliance, freedom and equality.

Visual and various other forms of art are experienced, discussed and pondered. The focus is on an expanded notion of sculpture—in other words, testing out forms, materials, structures and ideas. Through a series of various workshop modules, children work together on a “utopian-fantastic urbanism” enabling them to make use of their skills to design, to make something: to create.

During the summer of 2018, Kunsthalle Wien is partly transformed into an exciting space of investigation and encounter that is as much a playground as it is an art studio and all-encompassing exhibition. Whether it leads to the creation of new ways of living together, or to unprecedented communal approaches to achieve teamwork decisions, what’s for sure is that the city is a built environment—and thus a construction of ideas.

The Kunsthalle Wien is an institution that actively promotes integration and education 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. The goal of these projects is to demonstrate the potential of contemporary art and to stimulate a creative, intellectual exchange among all parties involved.

The exhibition project Space for Kids. A Dream City was developed by the art education department of Kunsthalle Wien in co-operation with artists Cäcilia Brown and Johann Schoiswohl. With contributions by Ralo Mayer, Olaf Nicolai, Hans Schabus, and Anna Witt.

Workshops
Planning and Building in the Future Lab!
Be a pionieer! And help us build the dream city.
Monday–Thursday, July 2–5, 10am–1pm. For kids ages 8–12.

Through the Time-Travel-Tunnel into the City of the Future!
Let’s beam into a new world where we can experiment and form our future space.
Saturday–Saturday, July 7–28, Monday–Thursday, Saturday, 10am–12:30pm. For Kids ages 6–10.

WeltTraumSound! Open mic, open ears!
Work with us in the noise lab and bring the dream city to life with your files!
Monday–Thursday July 30–August 2, 11am–1:30pm. For Kids ages 10–13.

Exhibition
A Dream City. The exhibition!
After 5 weeks of planning, experimenting and building the dream city is finished. Time for a big celebration and to explore the exhibition.
August 4–September 2, 2018
Opening: Saturday, August 4, 11am–2pm