Discovering art with a toddler: Laing Art Gallery family visit in Newcastle

After a week at home with an eight-month-old recovering from a chest infection, I was desperate to see something other than my own four walls. Even a trip into Newcastle city centre was beginning to feel like an expedition.

Cyrus was on the mend, but we had both had enough of being cooped up. Eldon Square had already become something of a second home during maternity leave, and I knew too much about its lifts, loos and coffee stops. This time, I wanted to go somewhere different.

So I took my eight-month-old son to the Laing Art Gallery. An art gallery might not seem the obvious place for a baby who couldn’t yet say “art”. But that was the attraction, I wanted to find out whether one of Newcastle’s best-known cultural spaces could work for somebody whose current critical vocabulary was made up of pointing, staring and an occasional gurgle.

I had visions of gurgling echoing around silent rooms and serious gallery-goers wondering who had let the baby in.

Art galleries can feel intimidating when you’re carrying a baby. There is the quiet, for a start. Walk into a hushed gallery with an eight-month-old and suddenly every squeak, babble and rustle from the changing bag seems capable of reverberating around the building.

I had visions of Cyrus choosing that moment to discover a new octave while serious gallery-goers contemplated paintings in silence. As any parent knows, babies have an ability to sense the exact moment you would most like them to keep quiet.

The reality at the Laing was much less daunting. I didn’t feel as though I had brought a small, noisy baby into a grown-up space. We could wander at our own pace, and stop when something caught Cyrus’s attention. Nobody appeared troubled by the presence of a baby. So, I stopped worrying that they might be.

Adults have a habit of making art complicated. We read labels, search for meaning and stand thoughtfully in front of paintings wondering what the artist intended.

Babies have none of these concerns. Cyrus just looked. Colour caught his attention, and anything bright warranted further investigation. He wasn’t interested in technique or artistic significance. Something either fascinated him or it didn’t.

There was something refreshing about seeing a gallery that way. I wasn’t trying to teach him about art. We were just somewhere new, looking at things together.

Our visit coincided with Quentin Blake: Inside Stories, an exhibition exploring the work and creative process of one of Britain’s most recognisable illustrators.

For adults of my generation, Blake’s drawings come with a considerable dose of childhood nostalgia. His loose, energetic lines are instantly familiar from books by Roald Dahl and other writers. His characters rarely sit politely on the page. They wobble, leap, scowl and look as though something chaotic is about to happen.

The exhibition offered a look behind those finished illustrations, showing how Blake developed characters and stories from early ideas and rough drawings through to completed artwork. I found myself looking at pictures that transported me back to childhood. Cyrus found a parrot.

The children’s area quickly proved that my son had his own opinions about what constituted the highlight of the exhibition. Bold parrot wallpaper and vividly coloured furniture were far more compelling to him than any attempt by his mum to provide a sophisticated introduction to illustration.

He stared, looked around and shifted his attention between colours and shapes. These were tiny reactions, but watching them made me notice something I could have missed. Babies experience spaces from an entirely different physical and visual perspective. I walk into a gallery and look towards the walls. Cyrus notices whatever is bright, contrasting or conveniently positioned at his height.

Not every outing with a baby needs to come with a developmental objective attached.

At eight months old, Cyrus was too young for many of the hands-on activities intended for older children. There was no masterpiece coming home for the fridge, and I wasn’t about to claim that an afternoon with Quentin Blake had awakened a previously undiscovered artistic talent.

But I also didn’t leave thinking we had gone too early. The visit made me think differently about what counts as a worthwhile day out with a baby. Parenthood can come with an exhausting pressure to make experiences “educational”. Activities are supposed to stimulate development, encourage sensory exploration or help babies achieve the next milestone. But sometimes a baby can just go somewhere new. He can look at colours, watch people, experience a different environment and spend time with his mum.

What surprised me most about our afternoon at the Laing was how much I needed it myself. Early motherhood can shrink your world without you noticing it happening. Life becomes organised around feeds, naps, changing bags, illnesses and equipment.

After a week indoors with a poorly baby, walking through the Laing felt like rejoining Newcastle. For a little while, I wasn’t thinking about chest infections, sleep schedules or whether I had remembered everything in the changing bag. I was standing in an art gallery with my son, looking at illustrations I remembered from childhood while he stared happily at a parrot.

I would take a baby to an art gallery again, although not because I believe eight-month-olds need an education in British art. I’d go because galleries offer families somewhere to go without having to buy something or stare at a screen.

Taking Cyrus challenged one of my own assumptions. I had imagined the gallery as a quiet adult space into which I would be bringing a potentially disruptive baby. Once inside, that distinction felt artificial.

Children don’t suddenly become entitled to culture when they reach an age at which they can explain it. Their first encounters with art can be much simpler than that. It begins with a picture or a splash of colour. And sometimes, despite an entire gallery of art around him, your eight-month-old decides the parrot is the best thing in the building.

The Laing Art Gallery sits in the heart of Newcastle upon Tyne city centre. Our visit coincided with Quentin Blake: Inside Stories, an exhibition exploring the illustrator’s creative process and featuring material designed to appeal to younger visitors.

For parents wondering whether it is worth taking a baby into an art gallery, my experience was reassuringly uneventful. We wandered, looked and left when we were ready. There was no requirement for Cyrus to understand what he was seeing and, mercifully, no requirement for me to pretend that he did. After a week staring at my own living-room walls, I suspect I needed the art more than he did.

Have you ever taken your baby or young child somewhere you thought would be completely unsuitable, only to be proved wrong? And do we sometimes underestimate the places babies and young children belong? Tell me in the comments.

Occasional stories, experiments, discoveries and questions from Saffron & Cyrus.