Proceeds from the Outset annual membership for 2005 were dedicated to Kids Company, a charitable organisation that offers help to disaffected young people through counselling, practical support and the therapeutic use of the arts. Kids Company has a permanent team of art therapists and holds regular art exhibitions through which children express their experiences.
In 2005, the Shrinking Childhoods exhibition was composed of the works of over 1000 children, aged between four and twenty, who attended a number of workshops over the summer, organised by Kids Company, in collaboration with Tate Modern. The work they produced was exhibited in various Portocabins situated on the South Lawn, in front of Tate Modern. The creations displayed aimed to express the experiences and everyday struggles of these children, coming from a background of violence and poverty. The rooms inside the Portocabins included the hellish recreation of a crack house, with an unmade bed and an ignored child in the corner, as well as tables filled with 'brains', made out of resin and plastic. These brains showed the children's deepest fears left in their heads after years and years of abuse, from a black scorpion and a gun with the word 'kill' on it to severed wires labelled 'love'. Shrinking Childhoods was an exhibit simultaneously filled with hope and despair.
The exhibition was realised with the help of Sir Nicholas Serota and the Tate team on the grounds of Tate Modern.
