🎨 Exhibition: Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends
📍 Venue: Young V&A, Bethnal Green, London
🗓 Dates: 12 February – 15 November 2026
🎟 Tickets: £11 (£12.50 with donation), V&A Members free
There is a particular kind of pleasure in learning about the process behind something you enjoy.
In the UK, we all know and love Wallace & Gromit. So when I heard the Young V&A were putting on an exhibition about Aardman Animations, I knew I had to go.
Inside Aardman is an exhibition about their famous shows and films: Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Morph, Chicken Run and more.
But more than any of their characters, it’s all about how.
The materials and decisions and the incremental, painstaking effort that turns a lump of clay into something with a soul.
That focus on craft is what makes the exhibition worth your time.
In a world of AI, it really stood out to me as a love letter to human creativity.
The Young V&A
I visited the museum years ago when it was known as the ‘Museum of Childhood’, but this was my first time visiting its current form as the ‘Young V&A’.
It’s truly a lovely building, and worth visiting even if you’re not really into toys! I found it interesting to look at the different design styles of board games over the years.
Inside Aardman Exhibition Review
The exhibition shows you every stage that usually stays hidden. The finished films are seamless by design, so you’re never meant to see the sketches, the armatures, or the schedule that holds a production together. Here, all of that is put on display.
Wallace & Gromit are the most recognisable part of Aardman’s work, and you’ll probably be pleased to hear they’re everywhere in the exhibition: models mid-scene, sets rebuilt at close range, that unmistakable grin.
But the exhibition isn’t really about nostalgia. It’s about showing you how the illusion gets built, with human creativity and skill.
You start with sketches. Storyboards, character studies, early scribbled ideas for a face or a gesture. Then you see parts of models and materials used to craft them. Finally, you’ll find completed models and scenes, just like in the films.
One of the delights to me was a production calendar mounted on the wall, an enormous, colour-coded schedule mapping how dozens of animators, model-makers, and technicians stay coordinated across a shoot. It said so much about the sheer logistics of stop-motion!
Elsewhere, a ship built for Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (pictured above) dominates a corner, a reminder of just how physically large this “small” medium can get.
Then there’s the process itself, tracked all the way through: not just the modelling, but the mechanics, the lighting, the sound design, the editing. This is intended to disappear in the films, so seeing it laid bare here felt like being let in on a secret.
The interactive sections bring a lot of energy and joy to the experience. There’s a station for adjusting the lighting on a set, another for building your own short stop-motion clip frame by frame, a booth for creating sound effects (the kind where everyday objects get used to fake footsteps for example), and a corner where you can step in front of a camera and become part of a stop-motion film yourself.
It ends with a screen playing clips pulled from across Aardman’s catalogue, the perfect way to end the exhibit – admiring the work as intended!
Unsurprisingly, this is an exhibition that delights children. But the craft on display and the sheer levels of creativity, collaboration and skill that go into these films and TV episodes can (and I’d argue, should) be admired by all.
Exhibition Highlights
- Materials and processes for creating famous Aardman characters, from sketch to final model.
- The team’s production calendar, an enormous colour-coded schedule showing how everyone stays in sync during a shoot
- The full-scale ship built for Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!
- Hands-on stations: adjusting a scene’s lighting, building your own stop-motion clip, recording sound effects, and stepping into a stop-motion film yourself.
Worth Knowing Before You Visit
This exhibition closes on November 15th 2026.
You’ll find the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, a short walk from the station.
Exhibition passes are £11 for adults (£12.50 with donation), and V&A members can visit for free. Concessions are available.
Once you’ve purchased an exhibition pass, you can visit as many times as you like! Pretty cool.
Learn more on the V&A website.