Things of the Least: Lively exhibition-making with children under 3

Things of the Least is an innovative exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, accompanied by a programme of public activities. The year-long exhibition opened in October 2025 but is now extended until April 2027. The exhibition draws on the material encounters, creative responses and priorities of children under three to challenge practices of exhibition-making. Shaw was co-I and lead artist, occupying a critical role in bringing together the practices of artists, gallery educators, early years researchers and designers to initiate a novel form of collective practice research.

The research and exhibition were funded through the first AHRC Exhibition Fund pilot and developed in collaboration with Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Metropolitan University and Sure Start. Co-lead by Rachel Holmes (ManMet), and Katy MacCall (Senior Family Learning Manager, MAG) over a period of three years. The research was co-produced with nine artists; four researchers; Manchester Art Gallery teams including curatorial, exhibitions, gallery education; and 2 early years settings. We collaborated with families of children under three at Platt Hall, Manchester Art Gallery and a Home Office hotel for refugee and asylum-seeking families.

The inquiry focused on the Mary Gregg Collection of domestic artefacts and toys from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries- small, handmade and fragile artefacts that are difficult to display safely. Artists worked directly with babies to distil qualities from the artefacts, which were then transformed into an exhibition. Display brought the objects into new proximity and extrapolated qualities to generate new and ongoing physical interaction with audiences.

By integrating research, community participation and artistic practice, Things of the Least pioneers new approaches to inclusive, participatory and decolonising exhibition-making, offering new avenues for exhibition-making that do not separate research and outcome, production and display, artistic research and other disciplines, or babies and other audiences.