The Secret Life of Clay: Inside Aardman: Wallace & Grommit and Friends Exhibition at V&A Young Museum.

In a quiet English village in 1980, a five-year-old boy sat cross-legged before a boxy television set as the late-afternoon light turned the carpet gold. Then it happened. Morph bounced onto the screen — not drawn, not inked, not flattened between celluloid sheets — but sculpted. Rounded. Touchable. Alive.

The boy leaned forward.

Before that moment, animation meant hand-drawn fantasies flickering in two dimensions. But Morph existed in space. He cast shadows. He toppled, squashed, stretched — and yet remained gloriously, defiantly clay. The colours were bold, the world tactile, the humour mischievous. It felt less like watching television and more like discovering a secret universe hiding in plain sight.

Through the 80s and 90s, the boy grew — and so did that universe. Wallace and Gromit blasted off in a homemade rocket. Shaun the Sheep outwitted farmers. Chicken Run proved clay could command the big screen. Yet one question lingered: how did they do it? How did fingerprints become feeling? How did stillness become life?

This month, at Young V&A in east London, he — now 51, a father of three — finally has his answer.

Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends (12 February – 15 November 2026) is not nostalgia packaged in glass. It is revelation. Created to mark the studio’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition lifts the lid on the Bristol-born studio that quietly revolutionised animation in 1976 under founders Peter Lord and David Sproxton.

Over 150 objects — from early sketches and character “bibles” to puppets, props and full sets — trace the journey from sketchbook to screen. There are development drawings for Morph. A hand-drawn storyboard from The Wrong Trousers train chase. The original rocket from A Grand Day Out.

The motorbike and sidecar from Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), displayed publicly for the first time. Even the monumental galleon from The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! Towers in delicious absurdity.

But what makes this exhibition worthy is its refusal to mythologise the magic. It demystifies it.

Children storyboard their own plots. Families light miniature sets. Visitors create live-action planning videos and experiment with foley sound — footsteps conjured from everyday objects.

There are touchable material samples revealing the hidden armatures beneath the clay. One of Aardman’s last physical scheduling boards sits on display — a reminder that enchantment is built frame by painstaking frame.

Alex Newson, Chief Curator at Young V&A, calls the studio’s aesthetic its “thumbiness” — that visible trace of the human hand. And therein lies its quiet rebellion. In an era racing towards frictionless CGI perfection, Aardman’s worlds insist on tactility. They celebrate imperfection. They honour craft.

Dr Helen Charman, Director of Learning at Young V&A, hopes families leave “excited and inspired to try animation at home.” Meanwhile, Ngaio Harding-Hill, Head of Live Experiences at Aardman, describes the show as a chance to shine a light on the “creativity and craftsmanship behind the animation process — from initial sketch through to post-production.”

And then there is the shop — a collector’s dream of character figurines, anniversary memorabilia, art prints and beautifully designed keepsakes that allow devotees to carry a fragment of that thumb-marked magic home.

Let’s be clear: this is not merely an exhibition for children aged 8–14, though it delights them. It is for the grown-ups who once waited breathlessly for a plasticine dog to blink. For animation students hungry to understand lighting rigs, armatures and narrative timing. For families travelling to the UK in search of something genuinely intergenerational.

This may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step inside the handcrafted engine room of Britain’s most beloved animation studio. To see the fingerprints. To understand the patience. To witness how still images, stacked in succession, pulse with life.
And so the 51-year-old man walks through the doors of Young V&A.

He sees the rocket. The living room set. The tiny museum from The Wrong Trousers, complete with its irreverent Mona Lisa. He watches children animate a character, frame by frame. He notices the light hitting clay just so.

The secret was never a secret at all.

It was care. Craft. Time. Human hands.

And as he stands there — heart full, question answered at last — he realises something extraordinary: the magic was real.

For tickets and more details, visit vam.ac.uk/young

*Photos by David Parry for the V&A.

© and TM Aardman Animations LTD.