WeltSpielZeug and emergency toys

Homemade toys are now almost unknown in this country. This exhibition provides an insight into the everyday play of children from other countries, which is often only marginally known to us in the well-off West.

For many families in developing countries, industrially manufactured toys are virtually unaffordable. Girls and boys build their own toys there - from natural and residual materials. With a lot of imagination and great skill, they create dolls from leaves, radios from cardboard, lorries from cans, aeroplanes from bottles or rickshaws from wire. Plan International Germany is presenting around 300 of these creative exhibits from 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in its travelling exhibition WeltSpielZeug. The toys reveal the great creativity of the young inventors - but they also bear witness to the poverty in the countries of origin.

As part of this exhibition, the MUGS is also focussing on a juxtaposition or comparison with reference to Schwabmünchen. This is because the wealth of ideas born of scarcity in the war and post-war period, which is reflected in the "emergency toys", is similar and comparable. Following an appeal to the population, a number of regional examples will be on display here, not only of home-made toys. In both cases, it is very clear that play and creativity are a basic human need.

We have also integrated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into the exhibition for anyone who is interested. These are the rights to which every child and young person under the age of 18 has an unrestricted claim. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been in force in Germany since 1992 and consists of 54 articles. It commits the member states to always take into account the interests and needs of the children concerned when taking state action.

Last edited on 07.08.2024