Ask the average four-year-old a question, and you’ll probably get a wild, winding explanation in return. Case in point: Last month, little visitors to the V&A Museum of Childhood were invited to share their visions of what the future holds. The predictably weird and wonderful results — Invisible owners of the world! Butterfly people! Three-eyed, Cheerio-loving aliens! — were turned over to artists at the Central Illustration Agency, who each teamed up with a tiny counterpart to turn those predictions into full-colour 2D realities.
“Mind of a Child — Eye of an Artist” is a freaking brilliant campaign to promote a project called Big Draw: Draw Tomorrow, aimed at encouraging creativity in the younguns of today. It’s enough to make even the most level-headed grown-up give a quick thought or two to the coolest possible future imaginable, and the perfect way to get mental engines geared up to make the next years, decades, and centuries on earth even better than the last.
Scroll down for some of our faves. [Creative Review]
Ahoy There! and Nikakare, aged five
“I’ll live in Jamaica, because there will be a beach. Dolphins will swim with me in the sea. Which will be blue. There will be sea turtles, purple jelly fish and purple seals. There will be 101 dalmatians because I love them, they will be purple spotted dogs.”
David Holmes and Summer, aged three
“Everyone will live on one big boat except animals who will have one boat each. We will keep fit by jumping up and down and people will eat chips and tomatoes, while animals will eat grass.”
Matt Taylor and Cal, aged six
“We will wear glow in the dark clothes and live in weird underground tunnel buildings. Cars will have propellers so they can fly and we will spend most of our time digging for diamonds to give to the owner of the world. You can’t see him because he is invisible.”
Paul Wearing and Agata, aged five
“Everyone is a butterfly except from teachers, who are caterpillars. There will also be lots of spaceships and tiny little iPads.”
Sir Peter Blake and Evie, aged eight
“Here, the colour of the sky reflects our mood — yellow for happy, purple for angry. Trees will sing when we’re happy — oh, and everyone will wear spacesuit onesies and bounce along paths made of jelly.”
Richard Wilkinson and Hamish, aged four
“Aliens have three eyes and 10 fingers on each hand. They will also like to eat Cheerios.”
Telegramme and Kham, aged four
“We will live on another planet with chickens and yellow dinosaurs and two sharks that can walk. It will be sunny with snow.”
Tobatron and Rohan, aged 4
“In the future, Rohan will deliver milk on a lorry with five wheels while wearing a magic cloak. There are no cows, except invisible ones, so the milk will appear like magic.”
Jacob Hinrichs and Mae, aged eight
“Everyone has a little bit of curly hair…animals are the same but some can fly … dogs can swim underwater like a fish with snorkels on. Everyone eats chocolate because chocolate is healthy. Everything that’s healthy is unhealthy and vice versa. There’s no school, the sun always shines and everyone wears long dark dresses that are blue.”
