Draw them in... children enjoying Art on the Square. Photograph: Linda Nylind
The world may be competitive but it's hard to beat a pushy parent. Cultural one-upmanship is a very modern focus for parents trying to breed (or inspire) their children to be the next Damien Hirst or Sarah Lucas. If there were toddler courses at St Martins, the waiting list would be phenomenal.
But it would be wrong to say that kids aren't interested in art and it's only parents forcing sophistication down their offsprings' throats. School is one of the few times in life where making art is encouraged. Drawing, painting and making stuff is a huge part of childhood experience. Arguably, the desire to be an artist is just a desire to continue that childhood exploration of the world. Children are often naturally drawn towards the visual but galleries can seem dull duties and modern art obtuse. (Maybe you have to train kids to get conceptualism from birth for it to seem interesting.) Institutions, including the Serpentine, the Tate, the V&A, and the Design Museum, are constantly trying to attract the next generation of art patrons with their kids activity packs or day courses. It was only a matter of time before children got their own art magazine.
London-based American artist Louise Stern (formerly Sam Taylor-Wood's assistant) has recently launched Maurice, an art magazine for kids. Its aim is to inspire kids to relate to contemporary art. The first issue is a punchy, fun and accessible publication, with artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Jamie Shovlin and Sam Griffin making cutout artworks and interactive games, and documenting projects with kids. It's a serious endeavour: Maurice was the only magazine at the Koenig bookshop at the Frieze Art Fair, and it has gone out to 7,000 children at their schools.
Maurice is not the only publication enamoured with a school-age audience. Artist-illustrator Supermundane, formerly the creative director of defunct style mag Good For Nothing, is launching Anorak, "The Happy Mag for Kids". The forthcoming debut issue is a playful activity magazine with interactive artworks and colouring pages by lo-fi artists such as Marcus Oakley, Simon Peplow, Jon Burgerman and Harriet Russell.
But who is really interested in the magazines - the kids or the people filling their pages? Adult art magazines can be very academic and inaccessible. Uber-publications like Artforum and Frieze employ a hefty dose of intellectual distance (in between acres of advertising, of course). Making work for a children's art magazine allows adults to think about contemporary art in a fresh, fun way: the artists are obviously inspired by the process and the results feel honest.
In some ways, these magazines are a print version of the adult toy craze. A few years ago, Atlas Press released a Ladybird-style mini-hardback called Marcel Duchamp: A Life In Pictures. It looked like a kids' book, but was undoubtedly bought by grown-ups. The success of Harry Potter and Philip Pullman novels is due as much to the adult readers as kids. None of this makes the intention to inspire children any less valid or successful. It just proves that adults want to be stimulated too.
