Toy

Despite young children’s ability to understand flexible concepts around their own gender, there is often pressures from adults to define their children’s gendered experience. Even before children are born, parents have determined their own child’s gender and these traditional ‘roles’ are reinforced by toy, clothing and media conglomerates in strict and limited binaries.  Blue, Pink, Trucks, Fairies, Action Hero, Barbie, Male, Female.  

TOY challenges these dominant structures and encourages a play space where children can explore their own identity without being limited by gender-specific pressures that are often determined by adults. TOY explores the notion that gender is taught to children by adults, when actually it should be a determined by children in their own time.  

This workshop series allows children to build alternative toys of their dreams, providing a creative space to explore fluidity and multiplicity against the backdrop of traditional gendered roles and responsibilities.

Creators: Lenine Bourke, Tristan Meecham, Sam Routledge and M’ck McKeague.