Erika Cann | Llyr Davies | Sam Machell

Amelia | Audrey | Ava | Christina | Dylan | Ellie | Freya | Georgia | Hollie | Isaac | Izaak | Lily | Louis | Lucas | Luna | Mhairi | Olivia | Olivia | Phoebe | Ronnie | Rosie | Stanley | Teddy | Thea | Thomas | Tilly

100 Languages brings together artworks developed through Harbour House’s children and young people’s engagement programmes, alongside work by the artists who collaborated with them. At the centre of the exhibition is a simple idea: children are not merely participants in cultural life, but imaginative collaborators with their own ways of making, thinking and understanding the world.

The exhibition takes its title from educator Loris Malaguzzi’s idea of the “hundred languages of children”. Malaguzzi argued that children communicate and learn in many different ways, not only through words, but through drawing, movement, play, making, sound and experimentation. 100 Languages demonstrates what is possible when we make space for those different forms of expression for local children in the community.

The artworks featured in the exhibition emerged from creating that space over a series of workshops held at Kingsbridge Community Primary School over the school term and Harbour House over the school holidays. Children made murals and cyanotypes, worked with clay, drew comics, built obstacle courses and invented islands and other worlds. 

Working with artists including Erika Cann, Llyr Davies, and Sam Machell, the children helped shape each project as it unfolded. This open-ended way of working gives children space to follow their own ideas without the pressure of getting something ‘right’. The artist-faciltators’ work is shown alongside these projects, revealing some of the connections between their individual practices and their work with communities. These relationships move in both directions: artists bring their own interests and ways of working into the room, but are also challenged and influenced by the ideas that emerge through working together.

100 Languages celebrates the value of giving children the freedom to play and seeing where it takes them.