Toyssimi — "100 children + 100 designers = 100 extraordinary toys!" — is a collaboration between Scuola Tam Tam and ilVespaio, in which 100 children create the toy of their dreams together with 100 designers. The design workshops are held in a hospital's paediatric ward, in a family home, or in a school, and each designer is paired with a child.
Each participating designer filled a suitcase with the most varied materials — rope, wire, putty, small pieces of wood, plastic caps, waste, production offcuts — and met a child with whom they formed a creative pair.
During the workshops the traditional roles dissolved: who is the teacher, who is the pupil, who is the designer, who is the child? Throughout the creative process, each designer always left the child full freedom and autonomy: in this way, imagination was unleashed without limits, generating unpredictable and surprising results. The children thus invented a fantastical, astonishing, amazing and above all unique toy.
In 2015 the Triennale Design Museum presented, in the spaces of TDMEducation – La Balena, the Toyssimi exhibition, gathering the results of the collaboration between 100 children and 100 designers, over the course of the workshops held by Scuola Tam Tam in partnership with ilVespaio, which took place in the paediatric wards of several hospitals in Milan and other cities, in family homes and in schools. The 100 toys were exhibited in the spaces of La Balena — designed by Blumer&Friends, and used as an exhibition space for the first time — accompanied by photos and videos documenting the entire creative process.
