Whizz kid

“We’re going to put the world-class V&A collections at the eye level of a toddler,” says Gina Koutsika, the director (creativity and skills) of the V&A Museum of Childhood, in Bethnal Green, which is about to go through a significant redevelopment that is due for completion in 2022. 

But even before Koutsika started her role last May there had been critical audience research into what should happen to the sacred sandpit – should the museum even have a sandpit? Koutsika worked with the team and came to the conclusion, that yes, the museum can have a sandpit. 

“But kids should be able to discover something by using it, whether that’s seeing how sand falls or how colours mix,” she says. “The sandpit has to serve as more than a sandpit, but still have the physicality that children enjoy.”

The sandpit might seem somewhat trivial, and it’s only the tip of the redevelopment iceberg. Most essential, Koutsika says, is that the new-look museum will be entirely built around the child’s visitor experience. 

“Objects on display will double-up as props in such a way that children and young people can engage with them and relate, understand, touch and smell them,” she says. “We want very little children to have whole-body experiences.”

It’s a huge undertaking. “I say this flippantly, but we get to play with just under 40,000 artefacts in the collections here but also 2.3 million artefacts in the V&A’s larger art, design and performance collections,” says Koutsika. Quite the box of toys. 

Putting the kids centre stage is at the heart of Koutsika’s practice and forms the inclusive backbone of her career. Wherever someone’s from, whatever age or stage they’re at, the respective museum should be able to provide for them. 

It’s something that became particularly apparent during her time at Imperial War Museums (IWM). She started there as the head of national and international programmes and projects in 2010, hired by IWM director-general Diane Lees, and was promoted to head of national and international learning and engagement in 2015. “That museum was a wonderful, life-changing experience for me.”

During her time there, Koutsika had a wide remit, which ranged from looking over the collections, overseeing work the museum did with service personnel in Afghanistan and in a war stories project, redeveloping the First World War Galleries, to outreach in prisons for the Cultural Olympiad in 2012. 

But she says the most important project she worked on was the First World War Centenary. “It was an institutional, personal and national journey that we went on.”

The project resulted in 14-18Now, a four-year nationwide programme of events and exhibitions commemorating the first world war.

“It wasn’t just about the battleground and the death toll – I don’t mean to be flippant – but all the hidden stories too. Irish people thought they were going to fight the French; Greek people thought they were going to fight the Serbs; the stories about women, about different minorities,” she says. 

“And seeing how many people came and discovered that they have a personal connection with the first world war, that’s why I say it was life changing.”

Koutsika talks about that centenary as life changing, but she also says that without Lees (a former director of the V&A Museum of Childhood) giving her such responsibility she wouldn’t be where she is now. 

“Di empowered me, without ever sitting me down and saying as much, but by how she was and what she was asking of me, to believe that I have a voice and people are going to listen to that voice.” 

It’s now Koutsika’s turn to empower her staff – on arrival at the museum, she made sure she met with every single team across the organisation. 

“In fact, when I recently met with a staff member here in my office, he said that in all his years working at the V&A, nobody had ever asked him in here,” she says. “I’m a very open person and I absolutely believe that everyone has something to contribute.”

She’s not a fan of organisational hierarchy, so when Koutsika moved on from IWM in 2017 to start at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, south west London, and mentioned her aversion to this at a dinner it came up against opposition. Across the table was Richard Deverell, the director of Kew. 

“I was complaining about the hierarchy at Kew and he turned around and said, ‘Gina, you know it all depends on how long the organisation has been established – the IWM is only 100 years old, Kew is 250 years old, so of course there is more hierarchy here,’” she recounts, but smilingly adds that she still doesn’t completely buy this explanation.

Right on Kew

Kew has more than 250 years of history, over a thousand staff and a global reputation, so as it’s head of visitor programmes, commercial events and exhibitions, Koutsika had a lot on her plate. 

“It was the first time that I was really working commercially,” she says. “I’m very proud that we succeeded in creating very popular and profitable events that were also meaningful.”

She worked closely with scientists and horticulturalists and created a five-year plan of events at Kew, for the first time in the world heritage site’s history. She also worked on the reopening of the Temperate House, which focuses on the conservation of plants, many endangered, in temperate climates. 

The topic of conservation, Koutsika says, is often told as “all gloom and doom”, but she was given the task by the head of conservation to convey the positive aspects of it. And anyway, how do you get kids all fired up about conservation? 

“I met with the head of the Kew scientists and said that I wanted their team to have a creative workshop with some acrobats. They didn’t know what on earth I was talking about. 

"But they trusted me and we had an amazing workshop, making sure all their research was integrated into the final aerial performance. One performer represented the plants, the other played a human, to create a visual synergy between human and nature and how they affect each other.”

She left her position there after just two years to become director (creativity and skills) at the V&A Museum of Childhood. 

“I didn’t want to leave, but things don’t happen when you want them to, they just happen when they happen,” says Koutsika. “And the V&A was just such an incredible opportunity to bring everything together that I have done in my life.”

Gina Koutsika at a glance

Gina Koutsika is the director (creativity and skills) of the V&A Museum of Childhood in east London.

She began her career as an explainer in London’s Science Museum and during her five years there was promoted to deputy education manager.

She then moved to the Hellenic Children’s Museum as director of exhibitions.

After a short stint at Christie’s Hellas, Koutsika became a freelance consultant for 10 years. She then moved to the Natural History Museum as head of gallery learning.

She then worked as head of interpretation at Tate Britain, then led the programme at Imperial War Museums, then moved to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as head of visitor programmes.

 

The V&A Museum of Childhood at a glance

The V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London, is about to embark on a major redevelopment, due to be completed in 2022. The museum of childhood itself was set up in the mid 1970s, but the building it is housed in is much older.

The building’s iron structure was first built in west London, on the site of what is now the main Victoria & Albert Museum, to house displays from the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The building was later dismantled and rebuilt with new facades in east London, where it remains. The space used to house objects from the Great Exhibition – namely food and animal products – South Kensington collections and 18th-century French art from Richard Wallace.

The latter moved to London’s Manchester Square to become the Wallace Collection.