Play cafes are not for me, but that doesn’t make me a monster. I don’t drag my toddler around museums and galleries demanding that we look at art every day of the week (what fresh hell that would be). Instead there is, I’ve discovered, a middle ground. Museums that are family oriented and fun and capable of sparking curiosity in arts and culture while they’re at it. Museums such as the Story Museum in Oxford.
The place is a gem. I love it from the moment we’re given colourful wristbands that will allow us to come and go throughout the day (no pressure to power through when whining turns to wailing). Tucked away from the tourists in a higgledy-piggledy former post office and telephone exchange building on Pembroke Street, it’s full of imaginative galleries that invite you to step inside the pages of great children’s books from across the ages.
First we’re booked in for an hour-long session in Small Worlds, a bright and cheery room for under-fives inspired by picture books and nursery rhymes. The session begins and ends with a story, with free play in between, but as soon as my son sees the so-called story bus that’s it. My husband is here, too, and we tell ourselves it’s OK, that he’s too little to sit still and listen to a nice lady read for 15 minutes, even if she is incredibly enthusiastic. We briefly manage to coax him away with the promise of going through swishy, swashy grass on a bear hunt, and he does enjoy making his own patchwork pattern on Elmer the elephant, but then it’s back to the driver’s seat.
Conscious of the time, we slip away before the hour is up, and take the spiral staircase up to the main galleries. We pass through the story portal, where my son receives a special passport. Through a carved wooden door we find the Whispering Wood, an indoor forest filled with fables and fairytales from around the world. My son is wary of the talking trees – who could blame him? – and he’s too wriggly to wear the headphones. But his eyes widen at the sight of soft-toy woodland animals, and he scurries from stump to stump opening tiny doorways that reveal silhouettes of scenes from stories.
When we visit, the temporary exhibition space is overrun with all things dragon, co-curated with How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell. You can dress up as a dragon, create your own origami dragon claw, discover what a dragon’s den might smell like. I feel irrationally proud when my son picks up a picture book and plonks himself down on a beanbag to read (he can’t read, obviously) then instructs his father and me to do the same. We’re grateful to oblige.
Next up is the Enchanted Library, which, in the words of the museum’s head of learning, Lucy Webber, “takes you through the history of children’s literature in the least dry way possible”. We play digital Pooh sticks in the Hundred Acre Wood before clambering through a wardrobe into the frosty forest of Narnia. It’s nostalgic for us, and inexplicably exciting for my son, who strokes the fur coats, before emerging on the other side and giggling when he hears the crunch of snow beneath his shoes.
“We’re very much the opposite of a don’t-touch environment,” Webber tells me. “So, do talk, do touch, see what happens.” I’ll tell you what happens. Small charges are free to charge. Adults are able to let their eyes wander, without fear of what their offspring might get up to. You could say it’s lulling the lot of us into a false sense of security. That, when we try taking our kids to the nearby Ashmolean Museum, say, they’ll poke and prod at the paintings and we’ll pay the price. Or, just maybe, they’ll recognise – even understand – that things are a little different there.
Any museum that makes arts and culture accessible and fun for children should be celebrated. And, by the way, it turns that out my son is as interested in the literary memorabilia stowed away behind glass. He presses his nose up against the display case containing the Wombles. Gazes adoringly at Paddington. Waves hello to Judith Kerr’s famished tiger. The same goes for the felt figures of Mr Toad, Ratty, Mole and Badger.
By the time we’re done, it feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface, but lunch and a much-needed nap call. And so, we have a quick whiz around the Story Arcade, a new gallery of story-inspired video games; I can see him, in a few years from now, wanting to spend an entire visit here – we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Then he chooses a book from the shop, and we head on our way. You never know, thanks to these wristbands, we may even be back later today.
Three more story-focused museums
Seven Stories, Newcastle
Discover, London