Young V&A
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.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Play Gallery
Hands-on making and movementClimb, balance and build across large-scale structures that turn curiosity into problem-solving and teamwork.
📍 Ground floor, central hall
Imagine Gallery
Stories through toys and gamesVictorian dolls and board games sit beside contemporary icons, tracing how characters leap from page to screen to playroom.
📍 First floor, north side
Design Gallery
How things are madeReal sketchbooks, material swatches and prototypes reveal the steps from spark to finished object.
📍 First floor, south side
Under-Fives Space
Play designed for toddlersSoft, sensory stations focus on colour, texture and sound for calm, confident first museum visits.
📍 Ground floor, dedicated zone
Inspire your Friends
- 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.
