Future You: 21st Century Skills Exhibition

London Transport Museum

19-22 April 2024

These are my own personal views of the exhibition and do not represent any of the views at any of the organisations I am working in.

This exhibition is a triumph of energy and imaginative problem solving from the children, the future. It is a reaffirmation of the fact that the human race has always solved any problems that have come into its path and will do so again. That we do not lack inventiveness and ways of thinking around and through things. Even with problems that we have created for ourselves. It is a reaffirmation of optimism in the world and in the future of our children and the species. This world which we have spoilt can be fixed. That is the message of the exhibition.

Six primary schools were set an imaginative task in collaboration with the London Transport Museum – they had to find solutions for the climate change crisis. Aliens had told them that their planet was no longer liveable and they needed to start over again in an environmentally friendly way. The inspiration for their planet-friendly technology was to come from animals and plants.

As I walked around the masses of reclaimed cardboard boxes and lollipop sticks, the resourcefulness of the children was in abundant evidence. These cast away objects had been magically transformed. They had become something again. They had become the visions of the future. The tinkering of the children, with the artistic designs, showed their enviable creativity and collaboration skills.

Inventions were strewn about everywhere like a mad scientist’s frenzied laboratory:

‘The Helpful Bumblebee cleans the air and rubbish. The Earthly trees stop flooding and pollution as well as cleaning the Earth and so prevents coughing and sneezing. The Legendary Pigeon sucks in pollution through its nose.’ (Exhibition Text).

The models for each of the animal inspired inventions were cute and beautiful in their way – the innocent and sweet and simple beauty of children’s art and the infantile imagination.

The young artists and inventors had become curators too, and told us about the most interesting and important facts about the exhibits in the museum. It was beautiful to see what they had learnt and what had inspired them to share.

A nice touch was to show an old poster that imagined the future in London as a skyline with skyscrapers and flying vehicles. The idea that we have always dreamed of a better future for transport, that we have always had dreams which have changed this world that we live in for the better, that allow us to make a fantasy world that we live in in reality. The strength and far seeing sight of our mind’s eye.

This was a beautiful exhibition –  full of dynamism, an adventure into a mad scientist’s laboratory. An excursion into possibility and the resilience of the children’s mind that can respond to the death of a world to create new life and new beginnings, to build a world entire, the world of the imagination. The desire for a better world from the innocent that have not been corrupted by dismay and stagnation in the selfishness and greed that is around us. But which rejuvenates itself in animal and plant life, in caring and positive change.