The Museum of Small and Overlooked Things

What do children find incredibly important, but adults overlook? In The Museum of Small and Overlooked Things, hundreds of children come together to build a temporary museum full of personal treasures: small invaluable objects from their own world that adults might have never even noticed.
Behind display cases, collections, memories and stories appear that are normally preserved nowhere. A pebble, a broken toy, a note, something glittery from the street. Together they form an alternative archive of daily life, assembled by the youngest residents of the city.
For adults, a visit to the museum is not only a glimpse into the world of children, but also an invitation to think again about what gets assigned value and who decides that. What do we keep, what do we forget, and why? The Museum of Small and Overlooked Things swaps the grand and the great for the small things that mean the world.

Andy Field and Beckie Darlington work with children and young people on projects that spark new and unexpected conversations between children and adults. These conversations explore how we live together and the role each of us can play within our communities.

Recent projects include a vision for the future of Beijing, designed by children of migrant workers; the establishment of a social action collective with elementary school students in St Helens; a travel guide to Budapest, written and compiled by Ukrainian refugee children living in the city; and a collaboration with over 450 children from Greater Manchester on a legacy for children living a hundred years from now.

Over the past decade, they have collaborated with a wide range of partners, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; the Manchester International Festival; the D-CAF Festival; Cultura Inglesa; and the Homo Novus Festival in Riga.

Over the past ten years, they have collaborated with a wide range of partners, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the Manchester International Festival, the D-CAF Festival, Cultura Inglesa, and the Homo Novus Festival in Riga.