“Art is about realising children’s dreams with adult gestures”
– Mathieu Simonet
TRIBUNE LOTFI AOULAD | FEBRUARY 2025
A Relay of Childhoods : Weaving Happy Futures
The year 2024 marked the centenary of the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The year 2025 offers the opportunity to reflect on a unique space that would celebrate childhood – not as a bygone period, but as a source of creativity present within each of us. Nurturing this connection would give us the sensitivity needed to face the challenges of our times. What if we imagined a place where children and adults could meet, share, and design a better future together?
Why is this fundamental?
Childhood and youth are much more than stages of life. They are invaluable times of exploration, wonder and creativity. In these moments, we experience both the beauty and the harshness of the world with spontaneity. Yet children are often reduced to “adults in the making” – a vision that diminishes their essential contribution to shaping our present. The younger generations show us their strength. Faced with global crises, they rise, mobilise and demand to be heard. But are we truly able to listen to them and act together? It is essential that we build our societies with children and young people. Art and culture can be a way to think about this construction, to reconnect with the creativity of our own childhoods, and to keep moving forward in order to counter the societal paralysis that so often leads us to repeat our failures.
Why doesn’t this exist already?
Since my discovery of the Boston Children’s Museum in 2016, I have dreamt of a cultural space dedicated to childhoods. Founded in 1913 by the Science Teacher’s Bureau, the Boston Children’s Museum is the second oldest museum for children in the United States, after the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (founded in 1899). It is also one of the largest, with more than 50,000 objects! A brilliant concept that struck a deep chord within me. In 2018, I created the Temporary Museum of the Child in Saint-Denis, in collaboration with the local artist Délivrance Makingson, who was orphaned and adopted at the age of three. For nearly six months, we worked with schools and community centres across the city, meeting children aged 5 to 12 to run playful and creative workshops on the theme of “hope”. The children’s artworks were later exhibited at Galerie Adada, celebrating their creativity and their ability to inspire adults.
CHILDREN'S WORKS @LERELAIS FESTIVAL 2018
CHILDREN'S WORKS @LERELAIS FESTIVAL 2018
CHILDREN'S WORKS @LERELAIS FESTIVAL 2018
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ABOUT LOTFI AOULAD
Formerly a lawyer and then a public policy advisor, his journey has been shaped by a desire to inhabit different worlds: from the suburbs of Saint-Denis to international institutions, self-managed rural communities, as well as hospital and prison settings.
In 2024, he became a certified birth doula after a year-long training at the Maternité des Lilas.
He serves on the board of the association Rêv'Elles. He was also co-director of Nejma, a journal of Mediterranean literature, and supports several initiatives in the arts and fashion sectors. He is a member of the expert committee for the Arab World Fashion Prize.
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