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IAG Kids: Children's Gallery, 2024. Photography, Thomas Oliver

Just for Kids

Thanks in advance for your patience as Ipswich Art Gallery undertake extensive exhibition installations

Temporary closure 

COMING SOON - Enter the dazzling world of LightPlay, where curiosity sparks and ideas really come to light!

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IAG Kids: LightPlay

Join us at Ipswich Art Gallery on Friday mornings for play-based explorations of our current IAG Kids exhibition, LightPlay

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Friday Morning Toddler Time: LightPlay

Step into a world where light becomes an element of creativity, curiosity, and discovery.Immerse yourself in an environment filled with glowing possibilities. Using light boxes, overhead projectors, torches, and translucent materials, investigate how light behaves, and experiment with kaleidoscopic patterns that shift and change with every movement. Build, arrange, and transform your surroundings, revealing the surprising ways light interacts with shapes and textures.

Use your body to paint with light, watching colours mix and shadows stretch in unexpected ways. These playful interactions encourage curiosity, problem‑solving, and a deeper understanding of cause and effect.

LightPlay&nbsp;embraces the educational philosophies of Reggio Emilia and REmida to provide a creative environment for children which encourages collaborative play, experimentation and discovery-based learning. The environment is intentionally designed to support open-ended discovery of ideas through hands‑on interaction.Let your imagination shine and experience the wonder of illuminated discovery at LightPlay!

Toddler Time includes hands-on activities, song and sensory play designed to engage and nurture artistic expression and build connection.





















Friday mornings, 1 hr session from 10:00am – 11:00am between&nbsp;these dates:&nbsp;





Friday, 24 April 2026 - Friday, 26 June 2026

































































<ul><li>no Toddler Time sessions during school holidays</li></ul>







































Bookings are not required for families and individuals, just drop in!

Coming soon

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Ipswich Art Gallery takes play seriously. Our goal is to create dynamic pathways for lifelong relationships with art. 

This summer, IAG Kids is bringing back your favourite hands-on activities in a brand-new exhibition, Move It.

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IAG Kids: Move it

It’s time to reimagine, remake, reinterpret! ​​​​​​​'imagine...' is a fresh, hands-on program that invites visitors of all ages to slow down, look closely, and view the gallery’s collection in a whole new way, by making it your own.

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IAG Kids: imagine… 

Join us at Ipswich Art Gallery on Friday mornings for play-based explorations of our current IAG Kids exhibition, 'imagine...'

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Toddler Time: imagine...

You don’t need to 'imagine' there are dinosaurs in the Art Gallery - they're here, just waiting to be found!

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IAG Kids: Dinosaur Hunt

Knead it, roll it, shape it, name it! Get hands-on and bring your very own Clay Creature to life. 

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IAG Kids: CLAY Creature Feature

Join us at Ipswich Art Gallery as we take inspiration from our main gallery exhibition.

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IAG Kids: Dazzle and Create

Award-winning Bunk Puppets returns to Ipswich these Easter school holidays with a new live shadow puppet performance, BUNKTOPIA.

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BUNKTOPIA: A Bunk Puppets Show

Join us at Ipswich Art Gallery this summer for the hands-on, immersive exhibition where everyone is encouraged to take part!

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IAG Kids x Slow Art Collective

Join us at Ipswich Art Gallery for play-based explorations of our current exhibition, Make It Slow - designed especially for our youngest artists!

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Toddler Time: Make It slow

Join us for play-based explorations of our current exhibition, Walking Together - designed especially for our youngest artists!

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Toddler Time: Walking Together

Journey through the landscapes, stories and traditions of First Nations peoples in this all ages, interactive exhibition.

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IAG Kids: Walking Together

Discover design.it — an innovative all-ages program, blending art, design, and language to inspire creativity in a hands-on environment. 

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design.it | art language design play

Welcome to Toddler Time! Join us for play-based explorations of our current exhibition, design.it - designed especially for our youngest artists!

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design.it | Toddler Time

Discover the magic of shape and design with Pattern Play.

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Pattern Play: IAG Kids

Families can get hands-on with STEAM-based exhibitions and activities throughout the school holiday period!

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School Holiday Workshops: Vibrant Vessels

This summer, enter a spellbinding world of possibilities in our Children’s Gallery exhibition Worlds of Wonder. Take inspiration from the innovative work of our Junior Curators and embark on a journey of creativity. 

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Worlds of Wonder

Let’s get messy!  

IAG Kids Clay Studio, based in our Children’s Gallery, offers children and adults alike the chance to get creative with their hands.

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IAG Kids Studio: Clay

It’s Toddler Time!

Roll it, squish it, press it, poke it!

Come and play with clay.

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Toddler Time: Kids Studio Clay

From crunching chips to tapping your toes, sweeping the floor or listening to birds singing, musical sounds surround us every day. Make Some Noise is a brand-new exhibition for children to explore these everyday musical concepts through hands-on open-ended activities and experiential play spaces.

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Make Some Noise

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It’s Toddler Time!

Join us for a morning of movement, music and making noise.

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Toddler Time: Make Some Noise

Can we save our stories when the robots arrive? And how can a whalebone help with it? 

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Whalebone

See your creation take flight, soar to the ceiling and defy gravity by hovering high overhead… or just fall to the floor. It’s all about air and invention, with a little bit of mid-air mayhem!

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Wind Tubes

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It’s Toddler Time! Join us for a Friday morning filled with flying, floating and fun!

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Wind Tubes for toddlers

Spinning discs and supersized Spirographs… come and play with the Drawing Machines!

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Drawing Machines

Join us this summer as we transform our Exhibition Gallery into a hands-on portrait studio for young makers.

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Just Be Your Selfie

Kids, come and take over the Gallery… it’s time to Celebrate Your Selfie at this exclusive Gallery party!

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Celebrate Your Selfie

Imagine a flower...
Imagine a car...
Imagine a bird...

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Imagine This...

Award-winning Bunk Puppets, creators of ‘Swamp Juice’ and ‘Sticks Stones Broken Bones’, present this raucous, new, all-ages adventure!

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Bunkasaurus

Does your brain play tricks on you? Is my reality the same as yours?

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Perception Deception

Join us in the Ipswich Community Gallery for Four Days of Fun!

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Four Days of Fun

Start your engines... Built for Speed is back! Thrills, spills and awesome crashes are guaranteed!

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Built for Speed

Enter the dazzling world of LightPlay where children can explore their artistic potential in an interactive space created especially for them!

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LightPlay for Kids

Calling all babies and toddlers! Come and enjoy an exciting experience in the LightPlay exhibition space.

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LightPlay Baby & Toddler

​Join us for The Big Draw 2021 and be part of the world’s biggest celebration of drawing!

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The Big Draw 2021

Enter an interactive transport world created in collaboration with illustrator James Gulliver Hancock.

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On the Move

Experience the thrill of discovery these school holidays!

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Treasure Hunt

Join us for The Big Draw 2020 and be part of the world’s biggest celebration of drawing!

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The Big Draw 2020

See colour as you’ve never seen it before!

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Colour: See the world in a new light

Unleash your inner engineer with the return of the popular Ball Run – an awesome hands-on activity within Construction Site Summer Fun.

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Ball run

Back bigger and better! Come and experience playing in the unique, immersive, multi-sensory STEM environment of the TapeScape!

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Tapescape

Visit Construction Site for awesome, hands-on summer fun the whole family can enjoy.

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Construction Site Summer Fun

Join us for The Big Draw 2019 and be part of the world’s biggest celebration of drawing!  

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The Big Draw 2019

Make your own motorised scribble machine and take it home to keep! 

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Make a Scribble Machine

Step out of the darkness and into Playing with Light. This full-body interactive exhibition explores our big bright, colourful world full of light, lasers and lenses. 

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Playing with Light

Join local artists, friends and families in a range of activities that teach what drawing can be and what it can do for you. 

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The Big Draw 2018

Make a Shadow Puppet

Shadow puppets in space! Two brothers embark on an epic quest to find a new home planet.

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Slapdash Galaxy: A Bunk Puppets Show

Reach new heights these Easter school holidays at the Ipswich Art Gallery!

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Climbing Web

Start your engines, Built for Speed is back! Thrills, spills and awesome crashes are guaranteed!

Just for Kids

Temporary closure

Coming soon

Ipswich Art Gallery takes play seriously. Our goal is to create dynamic pathways for lifelong relationships with art.

Past program favourites