… and all senses come into play

“Hands on, minds on, hearts on!” At ZOOM Children’s Museum, children are welcome to ask questions, to touch and to feel, to examine and to play to their hearts’ desire. At ZOOM, children explore the world with all their senses ? on their own or in small teams.

ZOOM Children’s MuseumIn their own individual way, they zoom in on objects and situations and, by doing so, find out about themselves and discover their own skills and abilities. In ZOOM’s exhibitions and workshops, the children playfully acquire sensory impressions and emotive experiences, which set learning processes into motion and allow them to acquire new knowledge. In contrast to museums for adults, ZOOM invites children to touch and try out exhibits and, through the sense of touch, take possession of the world. Play comes first at ZOOM and makes learning an individual and creative process.

Exhibitions and Workshops

The way children acquire knowledge is quite different from that of adults. The exhibitions and workshops available at ZOOM take children’s special requirements into account, both in terms of their design and thematic focus. At their centre are children aged 0 to 14. But the adults who accompany them are welcome to actively participate in the programmes, too. On a floor space of 1600 sqm, ZOOM Children’s Museum offers four different areas:

ZOOM’s interactive Exhibition introduces children from 6 to 12 to key topics in the areas of the sciences, art, architecture and everyday culture in ways that engage all senses. Through play, the children find answers to questions such as: What is sculpture? How do astronauts sleep in a space station? What do music and mathematics have in common? Do archaeologists really dig for bones?

At ZOOM Studio, children from 3 to 12 work with visual artists to playfully explore various artistic techniques. In the workshops, the children paint, cut, build, spray, assemble, make felt, glue, paste, mould, shape and lots more.

At ZOOM Lab, ZOOM’s multimedia lab, children and teenagers from 8 to 14 take the roles of screen writers, directors, cinematographers, photographers and sound engineers. With the help of state-of-the-art technology, they create animated films, 3D animations as well as sound collages and pop songs.

ZOOM Ocean, one of ZOOM’s permanent areas, is a colourful and varied adventure ground and play area for young children from 0 to 6. Its two levels, the “Underwater World” and “The Ship”, with a variety of unique playable objects and exhibits, invite the museum’s youngest visitors to play, stimulating motor skills as well as cognitive and social abilities in ways that take the needs of the various age groups into account.

ZOOM’s new umbrella brand, ZOOM Science, is all about introducing children to science. Many past programmes of ZOOM Children’s Museum have already placed special emphasis on conveying knowledge through play. It is these activities ? exhibitions, ZOOM Lab, ZOOM Studio, children’s lectures ? that ZOOM Science will serve to bring together, strengthen and further expand on.

Children and Art

ZOOM Children’s Museum was established in 1994 as Austria’s first museum for children. In 2001, ZOOM moved to its present premises at Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier, making ZOOM not only a focal point of children’s culture in Vienna but also part of one of the world’s largest cultural complexes. ZOOM is an independent institution, unaffiliated to other museums in terms of its structure or thematic focus. Its unique location at the heart of an exceptional cultural district has had a major influence on ZOOM’s orientation: More oriented towards the arts than many other children’s museums, ZOOM has become a centre of interaction between children and artists. Artists from a number of different disciplines work with the children on topics relating to science, everyday culture, sociology, philosophy and, of course, the arts. Artists and scientists collaborate in the development of the programmes offered by ZOOM. And it is visual artists and committed young architects who create a large part of ZOOM’s objects and installations. Experts of the senses, they manage to keep surprising us with original and playful ideas.