Young V&A review: It’s like a playdate at the grandest house in the UK

As Young V&A flings open its doors – the UK’s new national museum for children in Bethnal Green – Charlotte Cripps tests out the revamp with her seven-year-old daughter

Kaleidoscopic staircase reflecting the ‘Microlino Electric Vehicle’, 2019, at the new Young V&A museum (© Jamie Stoker courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

I’m standing looking at a kaleidoscope-inspired spiral staircase that reflects everything around it. It’s dazzling. “Wow!” says my seven-year-old daughter, Lola, standing next to me. Her eye has been caught by a different delight: an electric car suspended from the ceiling that looks like it’s shooting off the upper gallery.

This is the breathtaking entrance to the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, which has been rebranded from the V&A Museum of Childhood and given a £13m transformation. Less than two weeks after the National Portrait Gallery reopened its doors to the public after a three-year closure and £44m revamp, London has another shiny new culture spot to take the kids – and it’s a winner.

As part of the Young V&A’s new look and feel, it’s no longer being marketed as a museum about childhood, but a dynamic new national museum for children aged 0 to 14. The shell of the 1872 building remains the same – but otherwise, that’s where the similarities end. With natural light flooding in through the newly uncovered skylights, it has a contemporary open-plan feel. The curated spaces, aimed at youngsters from babies to teenagers and featuring 2,000 objects from the V&A’s collection of art and design, have transformed the place into a cross between the Design Museum and a swanky Montessori nursery school.