London’s Young V&A is a place for children to get creative. Image credit: David Parry-V&A

Young V&A, London: A Doing Museum

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The days of passively admiring objects from afar are gone. Today’s best museums are actively engaging with visitors, both young and old, to foster creativity with cutting-edge design museums leading the way. Imaginative learning is essential to education, and highly prized in a world where the creative industries are increasingly in the driving seat. Inspiration and innovation can unlock all sorts of opportunities, but how do you unleash that potential in yourself? This is where design museums are stepping in, helping adults and children alike to tap into their talents and expand their minds through dynamic exhibitions and education programs. Whether you’re excited by exploring color or materials, architectural forms or digital worlds, fabulous fashion or funky typography, these design museums have something for you. From talks and tours to workshops and interactive installations, they offer a stimulating environment that’s fun, too. What’s more, they’ll encourage you to get hands-on: drawing, model making, crafting, and coding.

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By Sophie Davies

Life & Arts

Formerly known as the V&A Museum of Childhood, and located in Bethnal Green, East London, the Young V&A reopened its doors in July 2023 following a major rebrand. The crowd of excited kids waiting outside gave it an instant vote of approval, running in to sample immersive exhibits targeting different age groups and devoted to play, learning, and discovery. Crucially, it’s now a “doing museum,” a lively, interactive place where kids can get active, celebrating inspirational learning through creativity. The free national museum was actually co-designed with children and young people, ensuring it met their standards. Their brief? To create “the most joyful museum in the world.” Young V&A’s mission is to “showcase the power of creativity in children’s lives as they build new skills and develop the creative confidence needed to thrive in our fast-changing world.” Three permanent galleries, titled Imagination, Play, and Design, showcase the museum’s design and art collections, alongside temporary pop-ups. Highlights include a sensory environment for pre-walkers, an interactive Minecraft installation in game design space The Arcade, and murals by local street artists.

SIX the Musical Dance Workshop. Image credit: V&A

V&A, London: Festival Incubator

The original V&A in London’s South Kensington not only curates exceptional exhibitions across all applied arts and design media — from glass and ceramics to textiles and furniture — it also plays a vital role in educating the public during September’s annual London Design Festival. Commissioning a series of site-specific installations, both in the museum and outside, the V&A has taken its message far beyond the walls of its heritage building. Recent exhibition Hallyu! The Korean Wave was typical of the museum’s diverse reach, covering Korean popular design and culture from music to beauty, food, fashion, and film. You could even join in with an interactive K-pop dance, where you could see yourself joining others on digital screens. Visitors to Scotland should check out offshoot museum V&A Dundee; meanwhile, London’s new V&A East is set to open in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford, in 2025.

The Powerhouse Museum is the major branch of the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in Sydney. Image credit: Shutterstock

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney: Expanding Reach

With exhibitions ranging from guitar design to 3D printing and major Australian fashion retrospectives, Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum is a one-stop shop for creativity. Visitors are encouraged to get involved with interactive installations, design festivals, talks, and late-night events. At the intersection of design, science, the arts, and technology, the museum engages both the local design scene and the community with contemporary ideas and issues. The original central site, set in a converted historic electric tram power station in Ultimo, is Australia’s only museum of applied arts and sciences. Excitingly, it’s due to be split in two, with more learning spaces to come. Powerhouse Museum Ultimo will be revitalized and expanded within a new creative industries precinct with a local design team recently selected to mastermind the revamp. Meanwhile, a second space, Powerhouse Parramatta, designed by Franco-Japanese architects Moreau Kusunoki with local practice Genton, will bring the museum’s impressive collections to the city’s fast-growing west, slated to open in 2025.

December 2023 (Volume 23)

TeamLab Borderless Tokyo art installation. Image credit: Shutterstock

TeamLab, Asia: Digital Playgrounds

International collective teamLab’s vibrant digital environments occupy the sweet spot between art and design. Founded in Japan, the group includes artists, programmers, animators, engineers, mathematicians, and architects. With locations from Tokyo to Beijing, Shanghai, and Singapore, its dazzling temporary and permanent exhibitions around the world are huge magnets for visitors. Playful yet educational, teamLab’s kaleidoscopic spaces are highly immersive, allowing children and the young at heart to play, explore, and express themselves. You can draw a picture, scan it, and then see it appear as a moving graphic as part of a visual cityscape on the walls around you, interacting with the works of others — encouraging collaborative creativity. In many of their boundary-blurring artworks, the impact of the group changes the digital world around you, making the presence of others a positive experience.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, USA. Image credit: Shutterstock

Cooper Hewitt, New York: All-Ages Events

Housed in the former mansion of industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie, flanked by a beautiful garden, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is New York’s premier design destination. It’s the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design, hosting a vast permanent collection spanning 30 centuries, as well as engaging temporary and digital exhibitions. From ancient textiles to new, interactive technology, there is much to amaze in this Upper East Side institution. A year-round program of lectures, conversations, and hands-on workshops engages design lovers of all ages in the creative process, providing access to inspiring designers. You can tour a local architect’s studio or get kids involved with Lego designs. The museum’s annual National Design Awards are another key education initiative, recognizing the growing scope of design, from interiors and landscape architecture to communication and climate action. Running until August 2024, Cooper Hewitt hosts the first major museum show by British Artist and Stage Designer Es Devlin, known for large-scale installations.

The Design Museum in London's Kensington. Image credit: Shutterstock

The Design Museum, London: Creative Campus

You may know London’s iconic Design Museum in Kensington for its stimulating shows — ranging from edgy fashion to explorations of email, Stanley Kubrick’s movies, and even skateboard culture — but it educates as well as entertains. Describing itself as “a campus for design education in the 21st century,” it aims to harness “the potential of design to tackle the challenges of today’s complex world from local to global.” Experiential learning programs range from one-hour workshops to three-day courses, teaching problem-solving and applied creativity, and inviting you to think and act like a designer. The expert team reaches out to children and families, shares pathways into design with teenagers, and puts its handling collection at the disposal of schools and colleges. Talks, workshops, and events appeal to the design industry and wider public. Kids can sign up for a Design Camp, take part in the Robot Olympics, or experiment with heat-transfer printing, architectural model-making, or 3D character design. There are even online activities that you can try at home, from designing trainers to crafting your own musical instruments

Entrance to the National Design Centre, Singapore. Image credit: Shutterstock

National Design Centre, Singapore: Ideas Hub

A nexus for design in Asia, Singapore’s National Design Centre encourages students, designers, businesses, and the public to meet, exchange ideas, and attend exhibitions and educative programs. A blend of Art Deco blocks and post-war modernity set in Bras Basah.Bugis, the city’s arts, heritage, and design precinct, it hosts permanent exhibition Fifty Years of Singapore Design and is a hive of activity during Singapore Design Week. Temporary exhibitions cover everything from housing, healthcare, and mental well-being to sustainable design, local talents, and smart technology. Look out for regular late-night events with pop-ups and food stalls, as well as design fairs, forums, talks, guided tours, and workshops.

TeamLab's interactive Infinite Crystal Universe. Image credit: Shutterstock

The expansive façade of Hong Kong’s M+ . Image credit: Shutterstock

M+, Hong Kong: Visual Culture

Hong Kong’s global museum of visual culture, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and launched in late 2021, dominates the Kowloon waterfront with its flat façade embedded with LEDs for screening moving image works. Part of the growing West Kowloon Cultural District, it has a strong focus on film and contemporary design and art within this iconic new building overlooking Victoria Harbour and visible from Hong Kong Island. A Learning Hub forms a key part of the offering, or you can catch talks, performances, screenings, and music sessions. M+ Hackathons invite local creatives and experienced practitioners in art and technology to run workshops where participants can form ideas and build digital prototypes. Open data from the M+ Collections is shared with students, designers, and the public to promote collaboration. For inspiration, don’t miss Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Dots Obsession — Aspiring to Heaven’s Love, an immersive space filled with her trademark polka dots and reflective mirrors.

The crowd of excited kids waiting outside gave it an instant vote of approval, running in to sample immersive exhibits targeting different age groups

A World of Cheese

Food & Drink

August 2023 (Volume 22)

Reblochon cheese from France. Image credit: Shutterstock

The world’s best design museums are on a mission to foster creativity and innovation

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