If kids just want slides in galleries, will they get them? Photograph:AP
This morning at 7am I consulted the infant Samuel on whether he would get up, have breakfast, put on his school uniform, pack his school bag, and go to school (extensive trialling having established that only this sequence produces optimal results).
The results being inconclusive, 10 minutes later I returned and invited him more forcefully to participate in the process in which he is clearly a major stakeholder. His view, that the question "Would you like to get up now or else?" was a cynical exercise, because the only acceptable response had already been determined, was regarded as unhelpful, and discarded.
I like to think this is part of his education, helping prepare him for a world in which he will be relentlessly, remorselessly, incessantly consulted, until he wants to crawl in under a stone and lie there weeping in the darkness until it all goes away.
Next week, 150 14- and 15-year-olds will assemble for the first sleepover in Tate Modern's giant Turbine Hall, the start of a stupendous exercise in bringing together the behemoths of contemporary Britain, mass consultation and youth culture.
It will be followed by simultaneous conferences this autumn, at the Tates Modern, Britain, Liverpool and St Ives, which they swear will be organised by the young 'uns, with adults admitted only by invitation. It would be enchanting if the young took them at their word, invited absolutely nobody, and spent an entire day closeted in the galleries with a queue of curators, security staff, teachers, parents, the Creative Partnerships chaps who are rounding up the children, and Nicholas Serota all anxiously pressing their ears to the keyholes.
The honest answer from any self-respecting young person, to any question whatsoever posed by any adult, is "Boooooorrrrriiing, go away." In some cases the adult may be able to do that. In most cases the honest adult answer - and this applies equally to consultation with adults - is "Actually, I lied. It wasn't a question, it was an order."
Tate says the whole operation - which will of course include websites and downloads and podcasts and forums and all the rest - will be the largest consultation with young people ever attempted, and I have no reason to doubt it. The purpose is to solicit their view of plans for Tate's future - more music, more film, more performance art, participation not passive consumption - and what should go into the proposed extension at Tate Modern, a building nobody has ever walked into thinking "Imagine what they could do with this if only they had a bit more space."
Serota, looking his most dauntingly upright and virtuous, said it would be cynical in the extreme to conduct such an exercise and then bin the results if they don't suit. But if the children vote, as well they might, for a return of Carsten Höller's slides, I wouldn't bother getting out that old potato sack yet.
