Victoria and Albert Museum
The V&A welcomes families all year round to participate in our exciting programmes and be inspired by the Museum's collection. We are delighted to support National Family Week and to celebrate the creativity, discovery and enjoyment to be found in doing something together.
David Anderson, Director of Learning & Interpretation
Website: www.vam.ac.uk
Sackler Centre for arts education, Victoria and Albert Museum
The new Sackler Centre for arts education is the V&A's Centre for learning through creative design. Working with creative professionals, universities and others, the Museum helps families, young people and adults to think about and develop skills in design - from digital media to fashion and architecture.
The Sackler Centre is one of the most innovative museum education spaces in the world, with facilities including a digital studio, an auditorium and design and practical art studios. The new Centre more than doubles the space within the V&A available for educational use, and has given the opportunity to integrate educational programmes and collections in a way that it had not been able to do with previous spaces which were in different parts of the Museum.
The Sackler Centre opened with an exciting and diverse Autumn events programme emphasising its commitment to revitalise and expand learning in the Museum.
Sackler Centre and Family Learning
The Sackler Centre provides stimulating, welcoming and dynamic new teaching rooms for families - bright with colour, rich with creative activity and broad with scope to support adults and children learning together. Importantly, the Sackler Centre provides unique spaces for creative play and dedicated facilities designed to meet the needs of family visitors.
Free Art Fun defines the V&A programme of inspiring, creative events for families. Free Art Fun happens every weekend and school holiday and includes: Drop-in-Design, unique, hands-on imaginative workshops; Activity Backpacks containing self paced games and puzzles based on our collections; and Free Art Fun Festivals which are large scale themed festivals taking place throughout the Museum, offering new family
audiences creative, dynamic and accessible opportunities to engage with culture and design, together.
Events in the Sackler Centre
Our programme of events based in the Sackler Centre is innovative, vivid and distinctive. In addition to our programme for families, we create exciting revitalised programmes for all audiences. Our new facilities have enabled us to develop programmes that were not previously possible, such as cutting edge digital activities and a residency programme for artists of all disciplines, with all of our programmes embedding access, inclusion and diversity, an integration that is almost unique among national museums in this country. Our programme includes:
Residency Programme: one of the flagship programmes of the Sackler Centre. Practitioners in residence work on projects across all of our audiences and hold regular open studios so that all visitors to the centre can engage with our artists.
DesignLab: design programmes for schools, working directly with designers on workshops, teachers programmes and high-profile one-day events.
Create!: programme for 11-19 year olds. The Create! season includes digital workshops, design workshops, auditorium events, portfolio surgery and Create Futures - a special strand aimed at young people at risk of exclusion.
Events for adults, students and the creative industries: high profile, all-day or evening themed events, Exhibition Evenings, Student Nights and Inspired By... as well as our popular programme of Year Courses, Short Courses, conferences, Study Days and Symposia, and debates.
