Guided play and imagination at ACMI’s Preschoolers Program

The ACMI museum is a vibrant social and creative space, with ample opportunities for discovery, interactivity and social connection for people of all ages. Many families visit our centrepiece exhibition The Story of the Moving Image with young children who make the most of playful opportunities to interact with early animation toys, make digital flipbooks and watch tiny TVs in miniature living rooms.

Seeing young people inspired within and by the museum setting to experiment and explore highlights the learning prompted by curiosity and hands-on discovery. As children explore, they engage with the wonder and science of the moving image, while also developing some emerging screen literacy.

ACMI’s free monthly Preschoolers program has been created to support and extend the informal learning activated by our museum by giving families with young children (aged two – five) access to guided play-based experiences designed to help young learners engage with ideas and concepts explored at ACMI. We offer young learners the chance to wonder, imagine, explore and discover, while providing parents, grandparents and carers a chance to join in the creative fun while also finding out how to activate art-based play and learning at home with their preschool children. Developed by Senior Education Producer Ellen Molloy, an expert in primary learning and the Arts, our Preschoolers program presents a different activity each month based on a theme inspired by an ACMI exhibition.

The very first ACMI Preschoolers sessions took place inside our large exhibition gallery during the run of Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature, an experiential exhibition that featured monumental screen-based works connecting visitors to the natural world and beyond. This unique exhibition was not designed with young children in mind, and the size of the artworks, the dark expansive spaces and the dramatic soundscape posed a challenge when creating a fun and family-friendly experience. Aware of these issues, Ellen designed a program that gave families exclusive access to the gallery prior to opening hours, and reinvented the cavernous spaces and mirror-finish floors as an opportunity for children and adult carers to engage actively with the exhibition environment and to use their bodies in responding to the artworks. They grew into tall trees, used breath to blow themselves up like balloons that floated in the air, and lay quietly and breathed in harmony with the journey of a single breath depicted on a screen suspended above them.

Young children are full of wonder and curiosity about the world around them, and enjoy looking at and engaging in conversations about artworks and creative practice. As Ellen led young visitors through the Works of Nature exhibition, she modelled ways to talk about artworks and the moving image with children, showing parents and carers how to lead fun, thoughtful conversations that encourage young people to look closely, think out loud, and share what sparks their curiosity.

Visitor feedback from the Works of Nature Preschoolers sessions left us in no doubt that this program was a wonderful way for ACMI to welcome young families to our museum. However, after some reflection, we decided a more sustainable model would be to invite visitors to join us for a workshop in one of our learning labs. Families could then choose to visit our galleries afterwards for further exploration, or head outside to see what else might be happening in the lively Fed Square precinct.

Since moving into workshop mode, Ellen has introduced families to activities relating to green-screen technology, light and shadow, coding, production design, character creation and a number of fun and funny experiments with animation. The children were fascinated by the way the green-screen could be used to propel them into another world, giving them the chance to do magical things such as ride through space on a broom, or swim in the ocean depths. They've also had the opportunity to create and populate their own miniature cityscape, which was then brought to life on the big screen using a webcam. And parents and children have learned about coding and gameplay language via a super-sized grid laid out on the floor of our learning lab.

For young children – and for many not so young – there is nothing more exciting than the magic of animation. In our Preschoolers workshops, we’ve decided that if something can be animated – let’s do it! Everyone enjoyed making googly-eyed curious creatures inspired by the delightful animation We are all Unique from ACMI’s Beings exhibition, and then seeing them come to life in an animation. Beings also inspired an animated walk cycle that played with texture, change and movement; the work at the heart of this activity was the mesmerising Transfiguration. Young people and their adults have even animated their bodies in a pixilation activity!

Craft activities are evergreen and using paper scissors and felt-tip pens to make a simple animation toy such as a thaumatrope is great fun. But it’s even more fun when you can help capture this simple movement frame by frame and then see your thaumatrope come to life on the big screen

Hands-on creation is at the heart of our Preschoolers program, but we also want to acquaint our preschooler audience with the grown-up experience of watching a film on the big screen. They meet the special people who make our film sessions possible – our wonderful projectionists and helpful ushers – and find out how the lights and ticket scanners work. For this short introductory session, we screen a selection of sweet and funny short animations, and leave the lights on low, so it’s not too dark.

When the regular Preschoolers date (every third Friday of the month) lands in the school holidays, we invite our young audience to bring their older siblings and friends to a free feature film screening. If this is a bit much for some young viewers, we’re happy for them to pop in for a short taste of movie magic; it’s all very relaxed and fun.

ACMI Preschoolers highlights how much our museum has to share with young visitors and their families. We introduce them to concepts about how screen-based content is made and encourage them to respond actively and creatively to the media that surrounds them in our switched-on world. We’re also passionate about providing parents and carers with hints about how to offer playful creative experiences at home, have conversations with their children about art, design and creative process and see screen-based activities as something that can be shared and discussed together. And, just as important as offering creative learning and some early screen literacy, Preschoolers provides a friendly social space for carers and their children to share create together and celebrate what they have made. Spread the word!