Reimaginging Play and Wonder: Behind the making of ACM & Me
An overarching view of the ACM & ME exhibition entrance, showing children and families entering through colorful geometric archways, with banners and signage that signal a playful, immersive experience inside.
When we were invited to conceptualize a new interactive installation for the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), the brief was both exciting and open-ended: create a space that brings children and families into deeper connection with the museum, through the language of play, art, and imagination.
The result? ACM & ME—a vibrant, multi-sensory installation designed by Arterly Obsessed that turns the museum into a portal of creativity and play for young minds.
A New Kind of Museum Experience
Museums can be daunting places for children. Often full of untouchable objects behind glass, they’re rarely designed with little hands—and even littler attention spans—in mind. With ACM & ME, our aim was to flip this on its head.
We envisioned a space where kids could play freely, explore tactile materials, and see themselves reflected in the stories told through Southeast Asian art and artefacts. But more than that, we wanted to create an environment that would become a formative memory—something kids could look back on years later as their first encounter with beauty, creativity, and cultural imagination.
Thematic Zones: A Journey Through Identity and Imagination
The space is divided into three thematic zones:
1. Who am i?
This first zone is all about self-expression and the beauty of individuality. We introduced two interactive activities:
Magnetic Shape Play:
Using simple, colorful magnetic shapes on mirrored surfaces, kids are invited to create self-portraits, abstract compositions, or anything their imaginations conjure up. It’s a nod to our studio’s belief: if you can draw a circle or square, you can draw anything.
Stamp & Doodle Station:
Here, children can customize stamp prints using modular stamp pads and draw directly over them—encouraging layers of personal interpretation and storytelling. There are two stages to the personalisation. The first is in the stamps they choose, and the second is in what they choose to doodle over the image.
2. What’s My Story?
This zone brings together myth, light, and motion. Inspired by Southeast Asia’s tradition of hybrid mythological creatures, children create new beings of their own:
Creature Projectors: Using transparent acrylic parts shaped like wings, claws, tails, and trunks, kids layer the pieces on light projectors to invent fantastical animals. It’s storytelling through silhouette and light. We were surprised what simple shapes can evoke in the imaginations of our children!
Phenakistoscope Play:
With spinning turntables and translucent silicon mats, children can doodle iconic Singaporean scenes and watch them come to life through this early animation technique. The activity bridges history and contemporary creativity, teaching persistence of vision while sparking awe. In a digital age, getting kids to appreciate old forms of craft and ways of seeing is a wonderful activity.
3. What Can I Create?
The final zone is pure, uninhibited play. A foam-padded rave room filled with trippy lights and colorful shapes invites kids to run, dance, and move their bodies freely. No instructions. No expected outcome. Just joy.
What surprised us most was how quickly children responded to the energy of the lights—even without music, they danced, sang, and invented their own games. Outside the rave room, kids built forts out of the foam shapes. It affirmed for us the importance of designing for play.
Just before the exit, we included one final reflective space: a weaving wall where kids could use recycled T-shirts to weave their thoughts, feelings, or stories into a growing tapestry. This activity added a quiet, collaborative dimension—an invitation to co-create something lasting with others, weave by weave.
Design Intent: Shapes, Color, and Visual Wonder
From the start, we asked: how do we make this space feel joyful, creative, and deeply inviting, while still echoing the spirit of the museum? And how do we embed the Arterly Obsessed ethos into every part of it?
The answer, for us, was simple: shapes and color.
We reduced the letters “A-C-M” into core geometric shapes—a triangle, a semicircle, and three stacked ovals—and from there, built a visual world of colours and shapes. This wasn’t just about aesthetics. It was a design philosophy rooted in accessibility.
At Arterly Obsessed, we always say: everyone can draw a circle. Everyone can draw a square. Start with what’s simple, and suddenly, art becomes something you can do. Something that’s not cold or intimidating—but warm, approachable, and even fun.
Too often, children’s spaces overthink functionality and underdeliver on wonder. We wanted ACM & ME to flip that script. We designed every corner to feel like a place where beauty could be felt—in the shapes of the walls, in the overhead flags casting colored shadows, in the rainbow-lighted floor that feels like a dance party waiting to happen. Even the doorways were intentionally rounded and shaped, and the walls shortened—to soften the space, to spark curiosity, and provide connection and openness while still indicating door ways and the seperation of zones.
Above all, we wanted the space to create visual excitement—where every turn holds a new surprise, every surface bursts with saturated color, and every element is carefully designed to spark wonder.
Beauty shouldn’t be reserved for grown-ups or galleries.
We believe kids deserve to experience awe and delight in their environments too.
Our goal? To create a space that would leave a mark. A space a child could visit once and remember forever as the moment they realized art could be theirs.
Building It Together
None of this could have been achieved without our partners. Working with AE, the technical consultants, helped ground our vision in reality. They provided invaluable guidance on structure, materials, safety, and scale. Their technical drawings translated our imagination into feasible builds, and they worked with us to preserve as much of our sketch detail as possible.
We also worked closely with Umami FX, our long-time lighting collaborators. Every project we do with them teaches us more about how light transforms a space. For ACM & ME, they created lighting designs that felt immersive, energizing, and otherworldly—elevating the sensory experience of the entire exhibit.
Trio Packaging also played a vital role by supplying our seating: durable, eco-conscious benches made entirely from cardboard. Not only did they meet the design brief for sustainability, they doubled as sculptural forms within the space.
Of course, there were compromises. Time constraints meant we had to scale back some of our ideas: animated floor lights, interactive music triggers, and even a mascot character were cut from the final design. But we see these as seeds for future iterations—perhaps when the exhibit is refreshed down the line.
Looking Ahead
ACM & ME is just the beginning. Our hope is that this collaboration sets the stage for more child-led, design-driven spaces in cultural institutions across Singapore. Spaces that value play as much as pedagogy, and that recognize beauty as a crucial part of early learning.
If we could do it again? We’d go even bigger. More rooms. More stories. More light. But even in its current form, we hope ACM & ME leaves its mark—as a space where children felt seen, inspired, and utterly free to imagine.
We invite you to experience ACM & ME for yourself. Whether you're a parent, educator, or simply young at heart, come play with us.
ACM & ME is located at the Contemporary Gallery, Asian Civilisations Museum. Open through 2025. Admission is free for Singaporeans and PRs.
