How do cities work? New Canberra Museum and Gallery exhibition lets kids find out with interactive James Gulliver-Hancock illustrations

It's the type of question you can imagine a curious primary school student asking - which makes it an appropriate topic for theCanberra Museum and Gallery's latest interactive children's exhibition.

How Cities Work - the first exhibition from CMAG aimed at children - opened its doors on Saturday, ready to help the young and young at heart explore how the mystery, mayhem and magic of cities capture the imagination.

"It's encouraging kids to imagine or to visualise their city, their homes, the places that they go to, in an imaginative and artistic way," Canberra Museum and Gallery acting director Anna Wong said.

"These are great areas to play to build your own townscape and features places that they will be familiar with - museums, cafes and a zoo.

"The exhibition is in our new gallery that faces onto London Circuit and one of the objectives we have is to bring in a broader audience to see and this exhibition is specifically aimed at that younger audience."

Based on the best-selling book of the same name - published by Lonely Planet Kids, with the help of illustrator and city fanatic, James Gulliver-Hancock - brings the same illustrations to life in engaging ways.

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Gulliver-Hancock's playful obsession with drawing has led him around the world to capture buildings in New York, London, Sydney and Melbourne through children's illustration. And have now been replicated in this touring exhibition from the Museums of History New South Wales.

Whether it's a chance to enter the "construction zone" to build a skyscraper out of pool noodles and foam connectors, to interact with an animated display or a deep dive into a city's underground to see what happens under the surface, the exhibition is designed to be as much as play space as it is a learning one.

"This is to encourage kids to develop their own stories and their own role plays. So nothing's really scripted - they can just imagine whatever they want to imagine and just explore," Dr Wong said.

"What I love is that James has also created the underground of the city. So there's this sewer as well where kids can like walk through this underground tunnel - there are lots of animation and digital aspects to it.

"And James is coming down to run some art workshops in the July school holidays as part of the Uncharted Territory festival. Kids can learn how this is all created and how to make their own cityscape."

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