In the 100th year of the founding of our Republic, the Istanbul Toy Museum is preparing to celebrate 23 April National Sovereignty and Children’s Day and its own 18th birthday with a programme of events.
As it turns 18, the Istanbul Toy Museum is proud to be at the Nuremberg Toy Museum with a selection of 120 toys from the collection of its founder Sunay Akın, dating from the late 1800s to the 2000s, which tell the story of our culture and our toy history.
As we celebrate the holiday that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk gave to all the children of the world, and the new year of our museum, our events will turn us more towards science, raise our awareness of how to reduce the damage we cause to our world and its ecological system, and carry the idea of conservation into the future with our children.
In our first workshop, organised by Empower with Nature and led by its founder Maya Galimidi and the archaeologist and museologist Mine Küçük, we will learn how nature gives us resources, and how paper, one of the most important of these resources, which we use as a means of expression, is recycled. We will look at how paper was used throughout history in Anatolia. We will talk about the importance of recycled seed paper, and at the museum the children will experience the process of making paper that they can also make in their own homes. Our children will leave the museum with their own seed paper, plant it in pots at home and learn by watching their plants grow.
In the workshops run by the ALOHA Parent and Child Development Centre, we will first talk about what we must do to reduce the waste that we each leave in nature, and raise our awareness of recycling. We will learn what recyclable materials are and make our own rhythm instruments from waste materials. Then, with the instruments we have made, we will sing songs and dance in tune with the rhythm of nature.
The festive 23 April celebrations will take place from 13:00 to 17:00. On 23 April only, our guests aged 0–15 can visit the museum free of charge.
Programme of Events
13:30 – 14:30 “From Paper to Seed” Paper Workshop
15:30 – 16:30 “Recycling and Art from Waste” Design Workshop
16:45 – Music and Rhythm Workshop