Young V&A

Name: Young V&A
Address: Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 9PA, GB
Rating: 4.4

#30

Reinvented with children and teens as co-designers, Young V&A fuses play, imagination and design into one learning engine. Play turns physics—balance, rhythm, weight—into something you feel; Imagine pairs historic dolls and board games with screen-age characters to show how stories migrate from print to pixels; Design lifts the lid on making, from sketchbook scribbles to prototypes and polished objects. Calm sensory zones welcome under-fives; step-free routes and generous seating keep mixed-age groups comfortable. Plan 60–90 unhurried minutes; arrive early at weekends for space to repeat activities and swap roles between adults and kids.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 17:45

Monday: 10:00 – 17:45

Tuesday: 10:00 – 17:45

Wednesday: 10:00 – 17:45

Thursday: 10:00 – 17:45

Friday: 10:00 – 17:45

Saturday: 10:00 – 17:45

Highligts

Play Gallery

Hands-on making and movement

Climb, balance and build across large-scale structures that turn curiosity into problem-solving and teamwork.

Pick one challenge and iterate three ways—swap roles, change pace, add a house rule.

📍 Ground floor, central hall

Imagine Gallery

Stories through toys and games

Victorian dolls and board games sit beside contemporary icons, tracing how characters leap from page to screen to playroom.

Spot a favourite character, then find its earlier analogue two cases away.

📍 First floor, north side

Design Gallery

How things are made

Real sketchbooks, material swatches and prototypes reveal the steps from spark to finished object.

Match a prototype to its final object and note what changed—and why.

📍 First floor, south side

Under-Fives Space

Play designed for toddlers

Soft, sensory stations focus on colour, texture and sound for calm, confident first museum visits.

Co-play one activity, then step back and let independent exploration lead.

📍 Ground floor, dedicated zone

🤓 Fun Facts

The building’s iron skeleton reuses parts from London’s 1862 International Exhibition—industrial kit turned into a museum frame you can still see in the riveted columns.

Before reopening in 2023, the museum ran co-design sessions with school pupils and young advisors; several labels preserve children’s own wording, so you’re literally reading the curators’ junior voices.

It opened in 1872 as the Bethnal Green Museum—an East End outpost of the South Kensington Museum (the V&A’s earlier name)—to bring art and design learning closer to working families.

Some prototypes in the Design gallery are intentionally ‘imperfect’: look for 3D-printed objects left with visible build lines so fingers can feel how printing layers stack.

Victorian ‘manners’ board games in Imagine quietly doubled as etiquette lessons—penalising rudeness and rewarding ‘proper’ choices—so playtime trained behaviour as well as strategy.