We chose a pinwheel as our emblem for the Museum of Childhood Ireland.
Why? A pinwheel can be homemade from items readily to hand, or inexpensive to purchase. Played with by children regardless of gender or class, and frequently a memento of a wonderful seaside day trip, a pinwheel demonstrates science, engineering, craft, art and philosophy. It has cause and effect action, and moves in whatever way the wind blows. It signals change, or what change, through your own exertions, (blowing) you can affect yourself. Pinwheels also allow great scope for creative expression. The pinwheel links to time, to seasons, and the cyclical nature of everything.
A pinwheel is a powerful and appropriate symbol for the Museum of Childhood Ireland for several key reasons:
- Universal Play & Childhood
- Pinwheels represent playful innocence and joy
- They’re a simple yet magical toy that transcends cultures and generations
- They embody the museum’s core message of “letting children be children” and respecting that
- Movement & Transformation
- The spinning motion symbolises:
- The ever-evolving nature of childhood
- The dynamic, changing perspectives the museum captures
- The continuous flow between past, present, and future childhood experiences
- The transformative power of children’s voices and actions
- Interactive & Participatory Nature
- Like the museum, a pinwheel requires engagement to come alive
- It represents the participatory nature of the museum where children and adults are active contributors
- Symbolises how the museum responds to and is shaped by its community
- Environmental Connection
- Pinwheels respond to their environment (wind)
- This mirrors the museum’s sensitivity to changing social contexts
- Represents sustainability and environmental awareness
- Connects to the museum’s desire for garden spaces and natural elements
- Multiple Perspectives
- As it spins, a pinwheel shows different facets
- This represents the museum’s commitment to showing diverse childhood experiences
- Symbolises the many viewpoints and stories the museum shares
- Accessibility & Simplicity
- Like the museum’s vision, a pinwheel is:
- Simple yet meaningful
- Accessible to all
- Cross-cultural
- Timeless
- Sustainable
The pinwheel is a simple child’s toy made of a wheel of paper or plastic curls attached at the axel to a stick by a pin. Designed to spin when blown upon by a person or by the wind, It’s a predecessor to the more complex whirligigs. Made by adults for children, alongside children or by children themselves and most often with natural, reusable or materials to hand.
During the nineteenth century any wind-driven toy held aloft by a running child was characterised as a whirligig including pinwheels, and growing up in Ireland in the 50s and 60s this is what our family called them. Later in the 70s my younger siblings knew them as windmills. Pinwheels provided children and adults with hours of enjoyment and amusement, both in the making of and playing with them.
Pinwheels have been around for a very long time. The first documented history of a “whirligig” was in China in 400 B.C. The pinwheel is significant in Chinese culture where its symbolism is “to turn ones luck around”. It is especially used at Chinese New Year celebrations for good luck and fortune.
Pinwheels began appearing in paintings in Europe during the 15th century. These are the ancestors of the plastic and tin pinwheels we all played with in our childhoods, and are still in use today.
“English-speakers, and particularly children, began spinning whirligigs as early as the 15th century. Since then, “whirligig” has acquired several meanings beyond its initial toy sense. It even has a place in the common name of the whirligig beetle, a member of the family Gyrinidae that swiftly swims in circles on the surface of still water. The word whirligig comes to us from Middle English “whirlegigg” which is itself from whirlen, meaning “to whirl,” and gigg, meaning “(toy) top.”
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The pinwheel has come to represent such diverse concepts as childhood innocence, unseen energy and spiritual freedom. Most of us though just remember the fun, whimsical, playful toys of our childhood that we loved to make, or receive as gifts, and watched blow in the gentle breeze on a lazy sunny, summer afternoon at home or at the seaside. Pinwheels are as much a part of Irish childhoods as they are representative of childhood the world over.
United States Patent Office (17 June 1919). “Design for a Wind Wheel” (PDF)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_(toy)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strong-wind-science-the-power-of-a-pinwheel/
Background to the Project-From little acorns
Paula Wiseman chats with Majella McAllister from the Museum of Childhood Ireland Músaem Óige na hÉireann. Majella talks about the Museum and its origins plus all of the different events they have going on. www.museumofchildhood.ie
The Museum of Childhood Ireland Músaem Óige na hÉireann, Charity number: 20205452, Company Ltd by guarantee (accounts publicly accessible*) is an Islandwide multi-award winning inter-genarational museum with an important collection of over 25,000 artefacts of material childhood culture. The museum has a superb social media following too with 37,000+ Followers on Facebook alone.
It began its journey, as all the best stories do, with small steps. The museum project was interested in exploring the reuse of a vacant Carnegie Library and adjacent buildings, in Dún Laoghaire, as the museum of childhood. To raise awareness of, and for an initial funding stream (no Capital fundraising was initiated at this time) a hugely successful, vibrant little second-hand book and bric-a-brac shop business was opened in Dúnlaoghaire, in what had been the wonderful Doyle family’s shop. The shop, rented from Doyle’s on a 5 year lease, was Dúnlaoghaires’s first ever and much loved community book shop, being a well organised, well stocked, inviting space ( spotlessly clean, tea was served on China tea cups and fresh flowers featured on the reading tables!) settled down to provide full-time work for one paid employee, James Farrell ( all other staff were volunteers.) It provided free weekly creative writing /art / other classes and literary events for children/ teenagers / adults in the community, (it also provided a museum office / HQ/storage), and a free annual whole-town Event Day during Heritage Week each year. Excellently managed in a voluntary/non expensed capacity by Majella McAllister, it provided all funds required for the early development phase of the museum.
We will always be very grateful to the people of Dúnlaoghaire, through the shop’s support, for supporting the early development of the highly ambitious museum project for Ireland and for helping us progress the museum mission: To ensure a museum dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of childhood Past to Present; ensuring that all children in Ireland are placed “Front and Centre,” that they are ‘Seen and Heard“.
Read all about the museum and the incredible work it has continued throughout the years on the website link below (warning-there is a lot! The museum team are an incredibly dedicated and hardworking voluntary, unexpensed group)
Conor Woods and Robert O’Riordain of Woods & Partners https://woodspartners.ie/ were the accountants for Eduventure/Piggybank Shop for the MoCI.
From little acorns…
Mol an Óige…
Engaging
Crafting and storytelling
Adolescent engagement
Senior and intergenerational engagement
Art projects
Outdoor play and play on the way…
Resources
Writing
Designing
Volunteering