Updated October 2026
The kids corner, reconsidered...
Play Sculptures for Kids Areas
One way to use Oddtoe...
Kids Venue Installations
For pub, club, cafe and centre family teams
Use Case: Kids Areas in Pubs, Clubs & Cafes
Oddtoe is an experiential design and generative-AI animation studio based in Melbourne, creating projection, installation, and animated work for events, venues, and galleries. This use case follows one brief: a venue kids corner that needs to become the reason a family books.
For a kids area, Oddtoe designs the one sculptural piece the whole room is remembered by: a play sculpture a child can climb over and tell stories about. The piece is drawn first, approved in your space, then built by specialist workshops near the venue.
Most venue kids corners are furnished from the same catalogs, so most of them look the same. Meanwhile parents are out there searching for a family friendly venue every week of the year.
A designed piece is how your venue becomes the answer to that search: the photo does the advertising, and the photo has your venue in it.
Let's look at three steps in the process...
Three Drawings from the Sketchbook
Oddtoe starts every piece on paper. You see the idea before anyone orders fibreglass.
Ideation
The first drawings answer one question: what is the single thing in your kids corner that makes a family choose your venue over the one up the road? We draw a few directions and you cross out the ones that don’t fit. A concept sketch costs a fraction of a build.
Drawn into Your Room
The chosen concept is drawn into your actual space at the size it will be, so you can judge sightlines from the bistro, clearance around tables and how it reads from the entrance. What you approve is what gets built.
Materials & Make
Finishes are specified for a children’s area — smooth sealed edges and a stable base, in venue-grade materials — and the build goes to a specialist workshop near the venue, so delivery and install are local.
What the venue counts afterwards...
What It Does to Your Numbers
One strange, well-made piece in the kids corner, and the families arrive with phones already out. Afterwards, whoever runs the family side of the venue has a report to write. It should be an easy one.
I like the tracking in place before the piece arrives. Oddtoe shares a founder with the Datalabs Agency, a data visualization studio, so a dashboard that shows whether it worked can be part of the project.
Steal one of these
6 IDEAS FOR A KIDS AREA
Six pieces a venue could commission. Every one is designed to be photographed with a child in it. Roll over a circle and pick the one your room could carry.
The Melting Ice Cream
A giant half-melted ice cream cast like a public artwork, its drips flowing into low mounds made for climbing. Reads as sculpture first and dessert second, and photographs from every side.
The Hatched Egg
A cracked egg, child-sized hollow inside, sitting in a nest of sculpted branches. The child climbs in; the parents take the picture; what hatched is left to the child.
The Dig Pit With a Secret
A fossil dig pit where the skeleton is curled around its nest and one egg is missing — because the hatched egg is sitting across the courtyard. Two pieces, one story, forty minutes of brushing sand.
The Tipped Teacup
An oversized teacup on its side, carpeted within: a burrow for reading, hiding and waving at parents from. The saucer is the doorstep.
The Chair That Shrinks Everyone
An armchair built far too big. Every adult who sits in it becomes six years old, which is the photo the whole table wants.
The Creature Assigner
A small digital moment beside the piece: a screen that solemnly tells each child which creature they are today. One screen with one task, and a queue past the banquette.
Want one of these designed for your room? Send the brief — the stranger the better.
Pubs, clubs, cafes and centers
Who Commissions Work Like This?
Pub and club groups have been spending between A$1.5 million and A$7.5 million per venue on family-format renovations, and the kids area is a named line in those projects; trade press such as PubTIC has covered a run of them since 2022. A designed piece is one line item inside a budget that already exists.
For smaller venues, one piece and a fresh coat of paint can do what a full refit does.
Shopping centers and attractions commission the same work for school-holiday programs, where a piece tours between sites. Registered clubs invest heavily in family facilities.
The common thread: whoever runs the family side of the venue needs one thing worth photographing.
The bit that is not a service
Why Oddtoe Likes the Kids Corner
I trained as a cartoonist, so a brief that asks for one strange creature or object in a room full of children is close to the reason I draw at all. The kids corner is the one part of a venue where odd wins.
And it is underloved. The corner usually gets whatever the catalog had left, which is exactly why one designed piece stands out so far there.
Sat in, climbed over, told stories about...
Designed to be Climbed »
Photographed with a child in it, every weekend...
« Built to be Photographed
The piece, the drawings, and the quiet bit
What Does a Kids-Area Piece Actually Get?
The piece itself, the approved drawings it was built from, and a care guide for the finish. If the design should stay exclusive to your group, that is written down; if you may want a second one for another venue, the build is planned so a repeat costs less than the first.
And the quieter thing: a kids area the staff stop apologizing for. The corner becomes the reason a family books, which is a bigger ask than keeping children occupied.
Everything in the box
What the Package Covers
Ideation
We work out what the room needs before we work out what to build. Bring the floor plan and the date that matters.
Visualisation
The piece is rendered into photos of your actual room at true size. You sign off on a picture of the thing, at the size it will be.
Feasibility
Clearances and finishes for a children’s area are designed in from the first sketch, before fabrication is quoted.
Fabrication
A fixed quote from a specialist workshop near the venue, then the build, in venue-grade materials you approved on paper.
Project Management
Oddtoe directs the build and the install around your trading hours, and hands over the care guide with the piece.
Six
ideas to steal
One
piece the room is remembered by
Three
drawings before any build
Two
pieces can tell one story
Weekends
when it earns its keep
Yours
the design, in writing
A cartoonist first, a studio second
Why One Artist Designs All of It
A kids-area piece has to work three ways: as a character a child believes in, as a sculpture the room is proud of, and as a thing that survives a thousand climbs. See installation art for the built side of the studio.
One artist drawing all of it keeps the character, the sculpture and the build one idea instead of three departments’ compromises.
Where the kids-corner budget actually goes
Catalog Soft Play, a Themed Fit-Out, or a Designed Piece?
A family-format budget usually has one line for the thing that makes the venue different. Here is what that line buys three different ways.
| Catalog soft play | A themed fit-out | A designed piece | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Priced per module, from a catalog | A builder’s quote for the whole corner | Staged: drawings first, then a fixed build quote |
| What people photograph | The children, from the next table | The room, once | The piece, with a child in it, from every angle |
| Whose idea it is | The catalog’s | The fit-out company’s | Yours — drawn for your room |
| How it ages | Like equipment | Like a renovation | Like a landmark — it gets a nickname |
| What you own afterwards | Hardware | A dated theme | The design, in writing, repeatable |
Questions about
kids venue installations?
Interested in seeing more…
built work?
A 2.1-metre carved baobab, lit and projection-mapped, built for Oddtoe's children's show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
A church renovation with a sense of humor.
Sculpture design case study of Oddtoe's limited edition, "Roman General with Pinkeye".
Tell me the room and the date.
Got a Kids Corner That Needs Help?
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