Shhh...children have taken over the museum

It sounds like a recipe for a big insurance claim. Take a collection of priceless artefacts from one of London's most esteemed museums, send the curator home and install a group of 12 children to do the job.

The 10 and 11-year-olds from St Vincent's Catholic Primary School in Marylebone oversaw a new exhibition which opened last week at the nearby Wallace Collection.

They did everything from choosing the objects and deciding where to hang them to writing the labels, as well as helping with the press and marketing.

The exhibition is titled Shhh...It's A Secret and explores the mysteries behind the collection, such as Jean-Francois Leleu's oak writing desk which is fitted with dummy book spines.

It has been billed as a celebration of the small details which may have been overlooked. One of the curators, Chelsea Coates, 10, said: "It's been a good journey. Near to the end it got very hard but everyone keeps you going. We even got a little bit of time off school."