Mini Masterpieces - Under 5's Art Activities

Mini Masterpieces is on at Ferens Art Gallery on Wednesday 18 November, from 10am to 12pm. It's a morning of pop-up art activities for children aged 0-5 and their families, running as part of Baby Week. The whole thing lasts up to two hours, so you can drift in and out as you like.

The activities are spread across a selection of stations, each with its own set of materials, alongside the gallery's own resources. It's designed for the under-fives to get stuck in, and since it's a drop-in session, you don't need to commit to the full two hours if you've only got a short window. It's the kind of thing where you can just turn up with your little ones and let them explore at their own pace.

Everything takes place in Explore Art, the award-winning ground-floor room at Ferens. It's a hands-on space specifically for young children to investigate line, shape, texture and colour, so it's built for this kind of thing rather than being a quiet corner of a main gallery. It's a good spot to let them make a bit of a mess without worrying about the art on the walls.

And there's plenty of art around them. Ferens is one of the most important regional galleries in England, with a permanent collection that runs from the medieval period to the present day. There's a Renaissance and Baroque room with Lorenzetti, an Eighteenth Century room with Guardi and Canaletto, and modern and contemporary work from Kossoff and Wearing. The gallery holds pieces by Frans Hals and David Hockney, and it hosted the Turner Prize in 2017. A multi-million-pound refit in 2016 left it with twelve galleries plus the Centre Court, so there's a lot to see beyond the ground floor if you fancy a wander after the session.

Mini Masterpieces runs from 10am to 12pm on Wednesday 18 November in the Explore Art room on the ground floor of Ferens Art Gallery. It's free and drop-in.