Melbourne Museum opens $5.8 million Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery

A NEW multi-million dollar children’s gallery isn’t Melbourne Museum’s only gift to Victoria’s tots, with the museum to give new babies a special present next year.

Three-year-old Sophie with a dinosaur skeleton in the museum’s sandpit. Picture: Josie Hayden

A NEW multi-million dollar children’s gallery isn’t Melbourne Museum’s only gift to Victoria’s tots, with the museum to give new babies a special present next year.

The museum’s new children’s gallery opens for business today and its developers and testers were as young as just a few months old.

The new $5.8 million Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery is designed for children from birth to age five and more than 500 tiny tots helped developers fine tune the final inclusions.

And to celebrate, Minister for Families and Children Jenny Mikakos launched the beginning a special gift for every Victorian child born, fostered or adopted in 2017.

The Museum Generation will gift a free six-month household membership for two adults and up to four children) to Museums Victoria, ensuring everyone can access, enjoy, play and learn in the brand new space.

Guests check out the new Children’s Gallery after it opened today. Picture: Joel Checkley

“Access to quality early-learning experiences is critical for all children and this new gallery brings together learning, creativity and play in a powerful way,’’ Ms Mikakos said.

Melbourne Museum education and community programs manager Georgie Meyer said children from local childcare centres, kinders and other groups took part in workshops, design, development and testing of the new 2000sq m space.

“This new space is very much dedicated to the learning needs and play space for the very young child, from babies to five-year-olds,” Ms Meyer said.

“The original children’s gallery was built when the Museum was built in 2000 so it was 16 years old and time for a refresh.

“That space was aimed at three to eight year olds but so much more is now understood about how learning occurs from birth and how a child’s brain develops from birth and the importance of coming to cultural institutions and making them welcoming for babies and toddlers.”

The features were created after consultations with hundreds of children, including babies. Picture: Joel Checkley

The new gallery features a one-third life size model of Victoria Railway’s first 1917 C-class ‘Consolidation’ steam locomotive with a child sized tunnel, giant clock, sounds and lighting, a dinosaur dig, indigenous storytelling and sculptures, street art with interactive shapes, projections and collection objects, a camouflage disco where lights turn children spotty and stripy, a giant climbing net and some quiet spaces for time out.

“We spent a lot of the past two years working with more than 500 children, asking them what they would like to see in their dream museum, and testing different ideas,” Ms Meyer said.

Museum staff set up prototype exhibits and watched how children responded to the space and how they used the facilities and activities provided.

Most popular were tactile experiences, particularly woven fabric and prickly grass, sound and light, and being able to touch, crawl, climb and pull themselves up in spaces.

Mirrors also won the tick of approval, with part of the new gallery home to mirrored surfaces, light projections and soundtracks.

A mirrored play area is part of the interactive gallery. Picture: Joel Checkley

The camouflage disco will see children move past a display of spotted, striped and patterned creatures, then view an animation where the animals escape from the showcase before they move into the camouflage disco and lights transform them into spots and stripes themselves.

“Some of the babies who trialled this new work were completely captivated for up to 15 minutes,” she said.

There are also spaces for parents to make it easier to bring their young children to the museum.

A new cafe has been built in the children’s gallery, meaning parents no longer have to traipse to the other end of the vast museum for a caffeine fix and can instead relax while their children explore.

“As well as needing coffee, parents said they just need somewhere to sit down so we have incorporated a lot of seating and outdoor eating places for picnics so families and groups can bring their own food and eat inside or outdoors.”

One-year-olds Gus and Domenic testing the sandpit at Melbourne Museum’s new children’s gallery. Picture: Josie Hayden

The new outdoor area includes a dinosaur skeleton stretching across two fully-accessible sandpits, seating and picnic areas, a rock garden featuring geologically important rock types from across Victoria, a crystal cave, growing cubby houses fashioned from apple trees, and other hiding spaces.

Philanthropists Pauline and John Gandel donated $1 million toward the project, with Mrs Gandel describing the new space as “a true game changer in the field of early childhood development and education.”

“Children are our future and we must do everything we can to give them the best possible start in life,” Mrs Gandel said. “Enabling them to have fun while they learn is at the core of the new Children’s Gallery and they are in for a real treat.”