Over the summer I visited a number of museums and galleries with my children. During our camping trip in France we went to the Musée de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême, featuring the artwork from a wide range of comic books which my boys enjoyed visually even though many of them were in French! We also visited The Cathédrale de Jean Linard, an outsider art sculptural masterpiece created by one artist in a wooded area not far from Bourges (see image below). I could have stayed there all day!

Back in London, we enjoyed a day with friends at the newly opened Young V&A with the kids enjoying, in particular, the small worlds art commission, the arcades area and the theatre performance space. The front of house staff were very friendly and it was amazing to see how the building has been transformed.

I also took my children to do the detective hunt along the South Kensington pedestrian tunnel that I created with Monster Chetwynd as part of her Art on the Underground Commission at Gloucester Road tube station. This culminated with a brief visit to the Natural History Museum to find the ‘treasure’ and we explored the Earth Galleries but not for long because it was very hot. The bonus of Exhibition Road is you can pop in and out of the different museums if you know where you want to go inside them, so we also went to the V&A to look at their musical theatre display and the boys loved seeing Scar’s costume from The Lion King.

We also met friends at Hampton Court Palace one day, enjoying actors recreating an event in the Great Hall and visiting the Magic Garden. We are often away during the school holidays so it was enjoyable to visit so many interesting cultural venues not too far from where we live. We are lucky to have London on our doorstep as such an amazing cultural resource!