Art Show in Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg

In preparing the second exhibition in the Children Artists series (first one was “Finger Puppet Theater“), “City of the Future“, I decided to consult with my friend Ira Aktuganova, and so wrote her a letter describing the project and our first meeting with kids in order to create a “plan of an ideal city“.

Ira answered to me with three questions. My answers, from my point of view, describe very well the purpose and the goals of the project.

1. What are the goals?
I would like to see a distributed network of children’s schools, where children are actually engaged in interesting and important complex subjects, communicate with other children (from different cities and countries), working together with their parents and other concerned adults.

This is in contrast with the work of paid professionals in “normal” schools, alienated from children, seeking to archive abstract results, such as the highest test score. In these “schools” children should be spared the horrors of cramming, anonymity and other institutional repression.

2. What are your priorities?
The network should grow from exhibition to exhibition, from project to project, while maintaining a certain focus. For example, it should not commercialize or fall under the influence of any sects or political parties.

I will be very happy to participate in the creation of a non-profit creative social network for children.

3. What intermediate results do you expect?
The establishment of permanent exhibition sites, performing the role of hubs for the network, around which could form other projects, such as: the publication of books, including books by children themselves, creating films and cartoons, all sorts of creative production from computer programs, to growing plants in hydroponics.

The goal, of course, is a revolution—meaning communication, education, creation of exhibitions, books, movies.

Today we have 4 groups involved in the project:

• Russian speaking kids in Berlin
• Sankt-Peterburg school Epigraph, that will organise the show at the Ahmatova Museum
• New York group lead by the artist Dasha Ziborova
• Moscow group at the Jewsh Center led by the artist Sophia Israel