SOIL Family Guide

We collaborated with Somerset House to create an interactive family guide for SOIL: The World Beneath Our Feet, helping make the exhibition more welcoming, accessible and engaging for children and families. While the exhibition explored soil’s vital role in sustaining life and tackling the climate crisis, our guide added a playful, multi-sensory layer designed especially for younger visitors.

Designed to be read from the ground up, just like the journey through the exhibition, the guide paired selected artworks with playful prompts and sensory invitations that encouraged kids to notice, imagine, and ask questions. A simple interaction, like turning a stamped finger into a cheeky earthworm companion, helped bring the experience to life and make the learnings feel personal and playful.

The guide created moments for intergenerational dialouge, sparking conversations between children and caregivers and helping them explore complex ecological ideas together. It also extended the experience beyond the gallery, offering take-home activities such as composting and seed-bomb making to inspire curiosity and care at home.

This small but thoughtful intervention made the exhibition more inclusive and emotionally resonant for families. It showed that awe, curiosity, and play can open up important and complex concepts in ways that inspire care and action rather than fear. It’s a reminder that designing with children in mind brings depth, delight, and lasting impact to cultural spaces.