A Century Through Children’s Eyes

Alanus University seeks to preserve a unique archive of children’s drawings for the future.

With around 200,000 children’s drawings dating from 1920 to the present day, Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Alfter is home to a children’s picture archive that is unique in Germany. The collection is an extraordinary testimony to cultural and educational history. Over the course of an entire century, it shows how children interpret their world through drawing – between everyday life and social change. To preserve this visual memory of childhood for the long term and make it accessible for research, the university is now specifically seeking partners and supporters.

The children’s picture archive has been based in the Department of Artistic Therapies and Therapy Sciences for several years. Around 15 years ago, the holdings were taken over from the University of Cologne via Prof. Dr. Barbara Wichelhaus and have since been continuously expanded. Today, the collection includes works from different regions and cultural backgrounds and provides impressive documentation of how children’s visual worlds have changed across generations – from early analogue experiential spaces to the complex, media-shaped visual worlds of the present.

The drawings are far more than art education material: they offer direct insights into children’s perceptions of the world and of themselves and are significant for art education, cultural and media studies, psychology, as well as therapeutic and artistic research. Many of the older works, however, are threatened by material deterioration. Funding is currently being applied for through the archive funding programme of the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR), but these funds are not sufficient to implement the necessary conservation measures, digitisation, and the establishment of a professionally managed archive.

“This archive is far more than a collection of children’s drawings – it is a unique cultural-historical memory,” emphasises Prof. Dr. Rabea Müller, Head of the Institute for Art Therapy in the Department of Artistic Therapies and Therapy Sciences at Alanus University. “The drawings reflect social change as much as individual perspectives. To preserve this treasure for future generations, we need strong partners by our side.”

Alanus University therefore invites institutions, sponsors, and experts to support the project through donations, collaborations, or professional expertise and to help make the professional archiving and academic use of this unique collection possible.

Contact for cooperation inquiries:
Prof. Dr. Rabea Müller, Alanus University
Rabea.Mueller@alanus.edu

Contact for press inquiries:
+49 (0)2222 9321-1944
presse@alanus.edu

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Image: “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf,” children’s drawing from Germany, 1976
(© Alanus University / Children’s Picture Archive)