Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit: London exhibition marks 50 years of Aardman animations

A new London exhibition is aiming to inspire children to follow in the footsteps of the creators of Wallace & Gromit and their beloved animated world.

The British capital’s biggest children’s museum is giving a behind-the-scenes look at Aardman, the studio that created Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run and others.

“Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends”, which opened at the Young V&A museum in East London on February 12, uses interactive and colourful displays to explore how the British studio’s iconic clay characters are brought to life.

Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Aardman’s first production and showcasing more than 150 objects – including models, sets and storyboards from the studio’s archives – the exhibition took nearly two years to prepare, says chief curator Alex Newson.

“It’s really celebrating … how those characters have survived the test of time, and if anything, are more loved today than they were when they first came out,” Newson says.

“We really also wanted to show the process behind how they are made,” says the curator, including how the creators came up with characters such as the hapless, cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his floppy-eared dog Gromit. “But more than that, we wanted to use those … to inspire children to become the next animators and the animators of the future.”