WHAT DO TOY MUSEUMS CARRY INTO THE FUTURE?

Toy, game and fairy tale museums on the theme of childhood in Türkiye came together at the Istanbul Toy Museum on 8 June… The symposium, on the theme “What Do Toy Museums Carry into the Future?”, took place with the participation of ten museums.

Representatives of the Musa Baran Game and Toy Museum, the Ankara University Toy Museum, the Antalya Toy Museum, the Ataşehir Düştepe Game Museum, the Kartal Fairy Tale Museum, the Osmaniye Korkut Ata University Toy Museum, the Istanbul Toy Museum, the Rahmi M. Koç Museum, the Samsun Canik Toy Museum and the İzmir Ümran Baradan Toy Museum shared their experiences and their thoughts about the future at the second of these meetings, the first of which was held in Ankara last year.

At the symposium, Prof. Dr. Fethiye Erbay, Head of the Department of Museology at Istanbul University, Esra Molo, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Marmara University, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Işık Kamaraj from the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Marmara University each gave a presentation evaluating toy museums from an academic perspective.

Giving the opening speech, Sunay Akın stressed that museums are the memory of societies and that countries which fail to grasp this truth will fall ill with Alzheimer’s disease, and he emphasised the importance of toy museums with these words: “What we put in front of a child as a toy is the future of humanity. If we keep buying dolls for girls and guns for boys, we cannot stop the murder of women, because when they grow up, one will kill the other. Toy museums are the first museum people visit in their lives, the first step taken through a museum’s door. The development of museology begins with understanding the importance of toy museums. We are not only raising the museum visitors of the future, we are also instilling the idea of conservation in our children. Toy museums are places that tell the truth that it is our children’s dreams that create the future and that, in the light of this truth, help adults to take the right steps through the documents and information they offer their visitors. What creates a country’s future is not the promises of politicians but the dreams of its children. To create the future, it is not children who need adults; it is we who need their dreams.”