ELJA Kindermuseumlab
For Amsterdam children aged 9-12
The ELJA Children's Museum
In the period 2023-2025, Amsterdam children (9-12 years old) will have the chance to help think about the city museum of the future. What will it look like? And what does the ultimate museum for and by children look like? By taking part in the Amsterdam Museum Camp, collaborating on artworks, putting together exhibitions, and installing a children's sounding board group and children's board, Amsterdam children are helping to build their own children's museum.
They help open the eyes of the public and staff and make the museum the place for children. But above all, making and looking at art provides opportunities for the children to reflect on themselves, their environment and the world.
The Amsterdam Museum Camp
Since 2023, the Amsterdam Museum Camp has been organised in the school holidays, where children experience for a week what it is like to create their own work of art! Editions will again take place in the May and autumn holidays of 2025 in the Zuidoost, Zuid, Centrum, Noord, Nieuw-West, West, Oost and Weesp districts.
The Amsterdam Museum Camp starts on the Monday with a visit to the Amsterdam Museum, where they are challenged by the artist to look at the exhibition in a different way. They take this with them to the rest of the week, where they get to work on their own with a professional artist at a partner location in the boroughs. Equality is key: together they will create a work of art that everyone can be proud of.
Je kunt gewoon zijn wie je bent.”
Ameya, 9 jaar
Kinderkunstenaar
Exhibition and acquisition
The artworks of the ELJA Children's Museum Lab will be displayed in a festive exhibition at the museum. In December 2023, the children's mayor opened the first edition, on the theme of Freedom. In December 2024, the second edition opened, with the theme Identity. It will be on show till the 4th of May.
A number of works chosen by children from the ELJA Children's Museum Lab will be acquired for the Amsterdam Museum's leading collection after the exhibition.
Children's focus group and children's board
The Amsterdam Museum's first children's sounding board group and children's board were appointed in March 2024. The children's sounding board group meets three times a year to cast their critical eye over the Amsterdam Museum's plans. They decide which artworks from the ELJA Children's Museum Lab will be acquired and what the exhibition should look like.
The four-member children's board represents the voice of the children in the museum. The board attends exhibition openings, public programmes and other museum activities to make the children's voice heard. In addition, members of the children's board go behind the scenes at the museum, where they give solicited and unsolicited advice on how to make the museum the place to be for children.
Methodology
In sessions with education and museum experts, the children then discuss the children's museum of the future and what conditions it should meet. Each afternoon, the children work on a collaborative artwork. The art assignments follow the methodology of Wicked Arts Assignments by Melissa Bremmer and Emiel Heijnen (Amsterdam School of the Arts) and tie in with visual art, performance, theatre, music, dance and design, but more importantly, they encourage interdisciplinarity. They reflect themes, practices and concepts from contemporary art and provide opportunities for children to reflect on themselves, their environment and the world.
This video was made during the Amsterdam Museum Camp in the summer holidays of 2023.
Made possible by
The ELJA Children's Museum Lab is made possible by the ELJA FOUNDATION.
The Amsterdam Public Library is programme partner of the ELJA Children's Museum Lab.
The lectorate Art Education of the Amsterdam School of the Arts supervises and researches the ELJA Children's Museum Lab.
