The ACM Trends Reports team has continued to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s museums. To understand the situation, we conducted two surveys, the first in May 2020, and the second from September 24 to October 18, 2020. Overall, 96 US-based children’s museums participated in the survey.
In the fall 2020 survey, 81 museums reported starting new collaborations or expanding existing collaborations since the beginning of the pandemic, while 15 museums reported no new or expanded collaborations. Those with collaborations started an average of two or three collaborative activities during the pandemic. This Trends Report focuses on collaborations with social and health services organizations, including food banks, shelters, blood banks, and community health clinics. This is the first of three Trends Reports that tell the story of how children’s museums have undertaken collaborative work during a time of crisis.
The Museums in a Pandemic series of Trends Reports illustrates the ways children’s museums have adapted to the evolving national and local situations surrounding the pandemic. This series is also part of Museums Mobilize, an initiative of the Association of Children’s Museums that documents COVID-specific responses and innovations by children’s museums. While many children’s museums’ buildings have been closed to the public and they have faced unprecedented operational challenges throughout the pandemic, institutions around the world are offering critical programs in service to children and families.
We asked museums about whether they had expanded existing collaborations or initiated new collaborations with different types of organizations during the pandemic. Out of 96 museums, 59 museums (61%) reported collaborations with social and health services organizations, such as food banks, homeless shelters, blood banks, community health clinics, and hospitals. We also asked participants about the goals for their expanded or new collaborations. Partnerships around social and health services most likely focused
Figure 1. Goal of children’s museums’ collaborations with social and health service organizations.
on the goal of sharing resources and information (Figure 1).
This was followed by the goal of developing content and programming, with cross-institution promotion and outreach coming in third. COVID planning was not a top priority for this type of collaboration. Fundraising was the lowest priority for museums in terms of their collaborations with social and health organizations.
What follows are short accounts from four children’s museums about specific collaborations they developed with other organizations centered on providing social and health services to their communities.
Above & Beyond Children’s Museum, located in Sheboygan, WI, is collaborating with Mental Health of America-Sheboygan County and YMCA of Sheboygan County on a mental health initiative called Play is Healing that uses play as a powerful healing agent. This is a three- phase program that spans a full year. Each phase centers on mental health and wellness through virtual and take- and-make options. Participants who sign up receive a link to participate in the sessions. Activities for the first phase of this collaboration include a Mindful Recess. These 20- minute virtual sessions are offered as mindful and playful breaks for elementary school students and their families.
The second phase of the collaboration features an initiative called POP up in the Parks! In this phase, the partners are providing outdoor programming in parks and outdoor venues throughout Sheboygan County, including at a local YMCA and two botanical gardens. This programming provides opportunities for children and families to participate in play, games, movement, and exercise. The partners are planning a third phase, slated to take place in 2021, which will offer indoor programs at the museum and the YMCA. The proposed programming will involve various exhibits and take place in different locations throughout both facilities. The intended age range for the program is 2 to10 years old, and parents, families, and younger and older children are all welcome to join as well. The goal of this collaboration is to provide space for communities, families, and caregivers to reconnect through play as a way to heal the trauma brought on by isolation during the pandemic.
Commenting on the importance of mental health programming, leaders from the museum noted that “We strive to be collaborative and respond to our community’s needs in creative, innovative ways. Carving out a focus on mental health in youth is part of our strategic plan and sets us up to continue expanding on this programmatic initiative moving forward.”
In addition, the museum offered community activity packages in partnership with Boys & Girls Club of Sheboygan County, Mental Health of America-Sheboygan County, and Nourish Farms during summer 2020. These packages provided 2,003 families with kits containing 5 to 9 different activities from collaborating organizations throughout the county. Each package included STEM, art- making, healthy nutrition, and mindfulness activities, as well as games to play.
The Children’s Museum of Greater Fall River, located in Fall River, MA, is collaborating with multiple partners: Fall River Public Schools, Department of Children and Family Services (DCF), and Bristol Community College. Their programming is focused on early childhood and is funded partially with a state grant. Specific partnership programming includes the Service Learning with Early Childhood Students initiative, which pairs college students studying early childhood with children ages 2 to 10 on STEAM projects. Students spend 10 hours each semester on a STEAM activity. The list of activities includes Sink and Float, an activity that incorporates the museum’s water room, and opportunities to mix colors based on the book Mouse Paint by Ellen Walsh. There are also opportunities for participants to make homemade play dough and slime. This program was put on hold in fall 2020, when Bristol College was remote due to COVID-19. However, the museum expects to resume the program in fall 2021.
The museum partners with DCF to host supervised visits for families that need support through weekly visits from case workers. Specifically, social service agencies use the museum space primarily for play with mentors and caseworkers. This offers children a more stimulating play area during social services meetings. The museum also offers private space for meetings. Before the onset of the COVID pandemic, the museum collaborated with Fall River Public Schools on a weekly Play and Learn Preschool Program and hosted a Welcome To K. Night for the public schools every summer. The Play and Learn program was suspended due to COVID-19.
Commenting on the benefits of these programs for members of the community, museum leadership remarked that they are “very proud of our reach in the community in 8 short years of being opened with a small staff.”
Bucks County Children’s Museum, located in New Hope, PA, is collaborating with United Way of Bucks County. The collaboration, dubbed PECO STEAM Kits for Kids, is funded by PECO, a Philadelphia-area utility company. Additional support comes from Weis Markets, Books in Homes USA, and United Way of Bucks County. The program provides low-income families with preschool STEAM activity kits that they can enjoy at home.
The partners collaborate on preparing, assembling, and distributing the kits. United Way of Bucks County develops an annual preschool STEAM guide filled with family-friendly educational activities for young learners. United Way provides Bucks County Children’s Museum with the list of materials needed for each kit. Once the museum secures the materials and assembles the kits, United Way distributes them to preschool programs, parenting programs, and local hunger relief sites. To date, more than 1,000 kits have been distributed. By June 2021, 250 more kits will be distributed.
According to Buck County Children’s Museum leadership, partnerships increase the museum’s capacity to serve all members of their community. “We are grateful that we can promote lifelong learning and make a deep impact despite our temporary closure due to the pandemic. Collaboration makes it possible for the museum to reach local kids experiencing the greatest need at a challenging time.”
Pretend City Children’s Museum, located in Irvine, CA, offers several programs to support its community. In partnership with First Five Orange County, Early Childhood OC, Children’s Home Society, and The Boys and Girls Club of Orange County, the museum served as a distribution site for personal equipment and cleaning supplies to childcare providers. This program benefits licensed daycares and preschools in Orange County that serve essential workers and first responders. The supplies were packaged at the museum and were distributed to over 550 preschools and daycare centers each month during the COVID pandemic.
The museum has two other programs that are offered via its Play at Home initiative. This initiative includes Play at Home Virtual Programming and Play at Home Guides. The Play at Home Virtual Programming releases content weekly through Facebook Live that features materials for children and their families. The Play at Home Guides are designed to help families bring Pretend City exhibits into their homes. The guides offer resources for discussing different developmental milestones for each age group. Each guide includes activities that are themed to Pretend City exhibits to foster child development.
This content is also provided on the museum’s website and Facebook page. The program targets children ages 0 to 8 and their families. The second program, Parenting Under Quarantine: Winter Webinar Series, offers biweekly parenting webinars that cover topics in parenting and offer other forms of support. Winter topics focused on race and diversity, screen time, and mental health. The webinars have featured guest speakers from various local agencies and colleges. This content is viewed by parents and caregivers in Orange County, as well as across the US. The program also provides access to free developmental screening tools online. This tool is vital for parents to understand their child’s development, especially during this turbulent time.
Commenting on the benefits of the programming for the community, museum leadership said, “We are fortunate to have such great community partners that help us to provide services to our community. Our goal is to become a HUB for all early learning in the county, bringing together early childhood education and health experts.”
Children’s museums have a natural compatibility with organizations and agencies that serve the social and health needs of their communities. After all, children’s museums are social services for young people and their families. The variety of collaborations featured in this Trends Report demonstrate the diverse approaches that museums can take in this type of partnership, all of which support critical aspects of childhood development and families’ health. These stories also highlight the resources that museums can gain access to when they collaborate with social and health service organizations, including experts on topics important to families and volunteers with broad reach in their communities.
Overall, 96 museums responded to at least part of the fall 2020 survey. A subset of museums that indicated they had new or expanded partnerships received an additional set of questions that asked for more information about collaborations focused on providing social and health services that they formed or expanded during the pandemic. Some of the data used in this report came from an online survey that ACM sent to US-based children’s museums.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been incredibly difficult for children and families. Whether caregivers are essential workers, working from home, or stay-at-home care providers, they have needed to navigate childcare and online or hybrid schooling in the midst of the extreme stress and isolation of the past year. In many ways, this year has exposed the failings of our social safety net—and many children’s museums have found ways to provide support and fill the gaps. On April 6, the Association of Children’s Museums held “Museums Mobilize to Support Parents and Caregivers,” a webinar looking at three museum-community partnerships in this parent support space.
This webinar was the second in ACM’s Museums Mobilize webinar series, following “Museums Mobilize to Combat Food Insecurity during COVID-19.” ACM launched Museums Mobilize last year to show how children’s museums around the world are supporting children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While 70 percent of ACM’s member museums are currently open to visitors, this number is a high point over the past year. However, children’s museums’ work has always gone beyond their physical venues. All children’s museums function in four ways, which ACM defines as the Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums: as local destinations, educational laboratories, community resources, and advocates for children. During the pandemic, when most children’s museums couldn’t fulfill this local destination role, they were able to innovate and expand across the other three dimensions.
One trend that has emerged from the Museums Mobilize initiative’s documentation is programming to support parents and caregivers, especially as it relates to the stresses they’ve endured during the pandemic, as explored in “Museums Mobilize to Support Parents and Caregivers.” ACM Executive Director Laura Huerta Migus began the webinar with an introduction of the Museums Mobilize initiative, and how it builds from ACM’s Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums. The speakers then engaged in a fireside chat about their work in support of parents and caregivers.
Leslie Perovich, Chief Operating Officer of Pretend City Children’s Museum and Tiffany Alva, Director of Partnerships and Government Affairs at First 5 Orange County, discussed their organizations’ partnership to offer free development screenings to all young children in Orange County, California. Developmental screenings assess children’s social-emotional wellbeing, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The partnership has extended into information-sharing and support.
Julia Bland, CEO of Louisiana Children’s Museum and Past President of the ACM board of directors, and Dr. Angie Breidenstine, a psychologist with the Tulane Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, talked about their In Dialogue video chat series, which demystifies mental health issues for caregivers and their children. Launched in March 2020, the series has covered critical topics facing families over the past year.
Alix Tonsgard, Early Learning Specialist at DuPage Children’s Museum, discussed DuPage Children’s Museum’s Partners in Play program, formed in partnership with Jump Start, to support caregivers. Funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Partners in Play had hosted two in-person sessions before the pandemic hit. They quickly pivoted their program to continue to engage families, many of whom had no other supports in those first few months off the pandemic. (Read more about Partners in Play in “Building Relationships through a Pandemic.”)
Together, all participants discussed the needs they identified in parents and caregivers that inspired them to start their programs, and why they chose to collaborate with like-minded organizations.
The next Museums Mobilize webinar will take place on May 6 at 2:00 p.m. ET, focusing on how children’s museums are supporting children with special needs during the pandemic. This fireside chat-style discussion will feature leaders from Pretend City Children’s Museum, Louisiana Children’s Museum, and DuPage Children’s Museum, along with community partners.
As the world looks to reopening, it’s clear the pandemic will have consequences on museum operations for years to come. ACM’s Museums Mobilize initiative highlights the need to invest in children’s museums as community responders. Learn more about the efforts of children’s museums worldwide the hashtag #MuseumsMobilize and by viewing the Museums Mobilize dashboard with key stats on ACM’s website.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
By March 19, 2020, all children’s museums in the U.S. had closed their doors to the public in response to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, children’s museums have innovated and transformed, creating new programs to support their communities and fill critical needs all while facing unprecedented operational crisis. Through our Museums Mobilize initiative, the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) is documenting these programs in service to children and families. We currently count 167 programs from 78 children’s museums in 34 states and four countries.
Immediately following their initial physical closures in March 2020, children’s museums began pivoting to serve their communities in new ways, and more than 70 percent of ACM’s museum membership offered virtual programming by June 2020. Children’s museums have pursued other innovative strategies, such as partnerships with schools and activity kits to help close the digital divide. At the same time, the pandemic has had a major effect on children’s museum operations, resulting in lost revenue and reductions in staffing. In summer 2020, 75 percent of children’s museums reported only 28% of the attendance they received during the same period in 2019. A survey from the American Alliance of Museums found that individual museums lost on average $850,000 as a result of the pandemic.
One emerging trend seen through Museums Mobilize is museum programming to combat food insecurity. In the first-ever Museums Mobilize webinar on March 4, 2021, speakers from three children’s museums shared how their efforts to combat food insecurity intersect with their institutional missions. In the words of Steve Long, president of the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton, NY, “if children are hungry, how can they play?”
ACM Executive Director Laura Huerta Migus started the webinar with an introduction of the Museums Mobilize initiative, and how it builds from ACM’s Four Dimensions of Children’s Museums document, which states that all children’s museums—regardless of size—function as local destinations (featuring designed spaces such as exhibits), educational laboratories (via programming), and act as community resources and advocates for children.
Long shared the story of CMEE’s Food 2 Play food pantry, launched during the pandemic to serve children and families in their community. (Learn more through his recent Hand to Hand article, “Food Pantry Fulfills a Need and Opens a World of Possibilities.”)
Cindy DeFrances, executive director of Lynn Meadows Discovery Center (Gulfport, MS) discussed the museum’s partnership with a local food bank to distribute Discovery at Home Kits, take-home educational activity kits.
Lara Litchfield-Kimber, executive director of the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum, discussed how the museum’s local farmer’s market has been a lifeline during the pandemic, providing a source of healthy, locally-sourced food in the midst of a food desert.
Watch the recording here!
The next Museums Mobilize webinar will take place on April 6 at 2:00 p.m. ET, focusing on how children’s museums are offering resources to support parents and caregivers during the pandemic. This fireside chat-style discussion will feature leaders from Pretend City Children’s Museum, Louisiana Children’s Museum, and DuPage Children’s Museum, along with community partners. Register here.
As the world looks to reopening, it’s clear the pandemic will have consequences on museum operations for years to come. ACM’s Museums Mobilize initiative highlights the need to invest in children’s museums as community responders. Learn more about the efforts of children’s museums worldwide the hashtag #MuseumsMobilize and by viewing the Museums Mobilize dashboard with key stats at ChildrensMuseums.org/Museums-Mobilize.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Photo courtesy of Children’s Museum of the East End.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Collette Michaud, Children’s Museum of Sonoma County
The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County (CMOSC) closed to the public on March 13, 2020, and has remained closed since then. We have plans to reopen our outside exhibit area by April 2021, and the interior by the summer. First opened in 2014, CMOSC occupies a repurposed, sixty year-old building. While we are located on more than four acres of land, the museum has only 7,000 square feet of indoor space split between exhibits and administration.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, CMOSC’s 1,200-square-foot office space was maxed out, with more than twelve team members sitting shoulder to shoulder. Because we simply did not have the space for more desks, we were constrained in hiring additional team members. At least half of the desks were claimed by part-time team members who only worked two or three days a week. My office did triple duty as the only conference room—when I wasn’t working in it—and storage space. Prior to the pandemic, the idea of team members working from home was not considered viable for many reasons, such as accountability and regular and meaningful communication. To address our conflicting needs for growth coupled the lack of office space, we spent time and money on an expansion master plan that would double our office space at a cost of millions and take years to successfully complete. There seemed to be no other choice.
We discovered Zoom within days of closing the museum. Although we had previously used Zoom to attend webinars, we never considered it as a tool for operations. Overnight, as team members were was forced to work from home, it became our main tool of communication. We found that it was now possible to effectively and productively communicate with each other regardless of location. This was revelatory.
If there is a silver lining to downsizing our staff due to our COVID-based closure, we no longer have the problem of too many employees in one office space. Now there is room for a shared worktable, desktop laser printer, vinyl cutter, and meeting space. When we reopen and grow staff again, we plan to have “plop” spaces that can be shared among team members on different days—thus eliminating the need for so many desks in one space. Zoom has provided us the flexibility to reorganize and more effectively make use of our small office space.
During our temporary shutdown, another unintended use of our space emerged. The local symphony contacted us looking for a large space to safely hold practice sessions with their youth musicians. We made a portion of our outdoor area available to them once a week at no cost, working together to cross-promote our organizations through social media to area donors. After promoting this partnership in our e-newsletter, there was some confusion about the equitable use of our outdoor space from some of our members. If an outside group could use it, why couldn’t they? So, while the orchestra has continued to practice here, opening the museum’s outdoor area for special events or other reservation-only uses is under review.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to seriously rethink the expansion plan for our building, as we’ve realized creating more indoor office space is no longer the priority we once thought it was. It has also opened our eyes to other ways we can use our outdoor space moving forward, and the underlying equity issues involved in those decisions.
Collette Michaud is the CEO and founder of the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, California.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Tara MacDougall, Discovery Center at Murfree Spring
During pandemic pause and reset, four weeks into our closure to the public in April of 2020, we scanned our community for signals: what were the immediate needs and what was the long-term view? How could we strengthen our partnerships?
For years, Discovery Center (DC) had tossed around the idea of an “ambassadorial” group—young parents and caregivers who may not have the immediate financial capacity to be donors, but embrace play, accessibility, and inclusivity. This group would be in the tradition of supportive museum guilds of the past, but with a different mission and makeup. Our participation in the Cultural Competence Learning Institute (CCLI) was transformational in terms focusing our vision on creating change through incremental actions. However, until the pandemic pause, the ambassadorial group never materialized.
DC started exploring this model by surveying and having conservations with our members and guests. Following this outreach we were approached by Julie King, a dedicated member and passionate advocate for the Discovery Center. Like many of us saddened by the disparity and inequities revealed through the pandemic, Julie was determined to do something to make her community more welcoming to newcomers and create a space where families from diverse backgrounds could find a hub. While DC had long considered starting an ambassadorial group, her contributions sparked the transformation into what would become our Discovery Guild.
Within weeks, we held our first interest meeting and established the Discovery Guild with its own board of directors, consisting of seventeen community leaders, and a chair, who also serves a one-year term on the center’s board of directors. Naturally, that dedicated member and passionate advocate, who was the guild’s catalyst, is its inaugural president. Given the museum’s emphasis on diversity and inclusion and today’s ongoing national reckoning with racism, we wanted the guild board to reflect the diverse families we serve each day. It was also critical that the guild board hold the needs of the most under-resourced families at the heart of their outreach and fundraising efforts.
Discovery Guild leadership created the following mission statement: “The Discovery Guild is a network for families, caregivers and community leaders to connect and engage within the mission of Discovery Center. They embrace the vision of our local children’s museum to ‘value meaningful exchange on societal issues where understanding of science is essential’—and always in the spirit of tolerance, peace, and respect for cultural identities and diversity.” Through social networking and fundraising, the guild strengthens ties among the many communities who gather and learn at Discovery Center and bridges the gap to those communities we struggle to serve.
Guild co-creator and community volunteer Regina Ward had the following to say about her work with Discovery Guild:
“Being a part of forming the guild is one of the most exciting advocacy opportunities I have ever had. The hope and desire that this organization can not only help to fund the outstanding work of the Discovery Center, but also to open the minds and hearts of our community is outstanding. We have the ability to stretch the possibilities of play, education and wonder, in the lives of our youngest members of society, via equitable and shared experiences. All of which support the mission of DC, by engaging curious minds to fuel the future.”
At the Discovery Guild board’s second meeting, each member completed a survey to determine what area of the museum’s mission they would like to support and how their fundraising dollars would be allocated. The board decided almost unanimously to focus on DC’s diversity and inclusion efforts (free days, special needs nights, etc.). They also decided they would prefer dollars raised by guild fundraisers to be directed toward free memberships for underserved families and ensure that the center remains a hub for STEAM learning for every child regardless of any physical, cognitive, cultural, or economic circumstance. A community solicitation, launched in late February, will expand the guild beyond its founding board members. We plan to recruit from our whole community, as well as reach out to multicultural partners. With a guild that reflects the diversity of our community, we’ll share clear messaging about Discovery Center’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Discovery Guild is a key ingredient in Discovery Center’s development strategic plan to increase donor cultivation. The annual membership fee to join the guild is $25. Guild members are also charged with hosting an annual membership wine-and-cheese solicitation event and a major fundraiser each fall. However, this group will expand the role of the traditional museum guilds of the past. Meetings are filled with fresh, creative, and thought-provoking ideas. More important than the fundraising, the guild will have significant potential for creating more inclusive experiences, engaging more diverse visitors, and creating a brighter future for our regional children’s museum.
Prior to assuming the role of president and CEO of the Discovery Center at Murfree Spring in 2012, Tara MacDougall was a wealth management advisor with Northwestern Mutual.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Kyrstin Hill, Creative Discovery Museum
For working parents of young children, finding quality, affordable, flexible childcare was already difficult before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2019 poll done by New York Times Parenting and YouGov, an international polling and marketing company, 28 percent of U.S. respondents reported childcare as being a “very significant financial strain,” with average costs consuming 37 percent of a family’s average household income. Now, almost a year into the pandemic, with limited capacities, unexpected closures, and tighter budgets, this challenge has not diminished.
Children’s museums across the country have a variety of different missions but most center on supporting children and families in their communities. But does that translate to supporting the children and families of those on staff? Is it possible? Can it be done equitably?
Those are some of the questions Creative Discovery Museum’s Babies at Work Task Force brought to the table in the fall of 2019. Historically, Creative Discovery Museum (CDM) has bolstered a family-first environment through its Children of Staff policy, which allowed staff members to bring their children, grandchildren, or siblings to work as long as productivity wasn’t disrupted.
“I always was very appreciative of the option to bring the kids with me when I needed to,” said Brianna Daignault, CDM’s membership coordinator and mother to Charlie (10) and Autumn (8). “The family-first mentality at CDM is amazing, especially in my department. As long as I was able to complete my work and be available, I could still be a mom.”
However, for obvious reasons, this accommodation typically applied to older children, not babies. I became pregnant in October 2018. I was eager to find a way to maximize time with my infant after my maternity leave ended. I was also eager to get back to a job I loved.
Research has shown that allowing parents to bring their babies to work has a wide variety of benefits for the health and well-being of the parent and the infant. Based on that research, coupled with the complete support from museum leadership, a policy was in development to allow parents and infants to clock in together. Near the end of 2019, two staff members in different departments, both parents of babies, were bringing their young ones to work with them on a regular basis. I was lucky enough to be one of them.
The task force began tackling the challenge of making the policy as equitable as possible across departments and among staff who did not have children. Based on a template from the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, the task force created a policy addressing topics such as crying babies and unhappy staff members. I was used as a test case to see if our policy could work. It did, but I had an office mostly to myself with a door—a luxury many staff members did not have. Equity remained our biggest challenge.
Then COVID hit. CDM closed to the public on March 14. Supporting working parents and their families was no longer an option: it had to happen. And for the majority of staff, it had to happen remotely.
Over time, the fears and logistical hurdles of remote work were alleviated. Staff continued to be productive, and in some cases, were even more productive. Weekly full staff meetings via Zoom created stronger internal communications. IT capabilities were assessed and modified to meet remote work needs of all staff. Paid sick leave was extended in the event that a staff member needed to care for themselves or a sick family member. In June 2020, CDM was lucky to be able to reopen to the public.
But for some staff members, returning to work at the museum created even more challenges. Many families opted to keep their kids at home to do remote schooling. Some schools and childcare centers were operating on flex schedules. In the first phase of re-opening, children of staff weren’t allowed to come to the museum for safety reasons.
“Since we were encouraged to work from home and my kids were already home, it worked out,” said Daignault. “But when I was needed on the floor more when we first re-opened, it was challenging. My kids were still out of school. I was relying heavily on my family for daycare.”
Daignault wasn’t alone. In keeping with the museum’s commitment to support children and families in our community, the museum launched Destination Discovery @ CDM (DD @ CDM), an academic support program from children in kindergarten through fifth grade. Certified teachers helped no more than ten students per museum “classroom” stay on top of their virtual schoolwork Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents could go back to work knowing that their children were in a learning-rich, safe environment where informal and formal learning worked together to help students succeed in an unfathomable school year. And DD@CDM family enrollees included CDM staff.
“Jay is currently in DD @ CDM three to four days per week,” said Amanda Ward, mother of Jay (8) and Sarah (2), and CDM’s museum educator and volunteer manager. “We are fortunate to have a place for Jay that is affordable and enables us to keep working full-time. Without DD @ CDM, I would probably only be able to work part-time.”
Staff members have been allowed flexible schedules to balance schooling and childcare at home with their responsibilities at the museum. Some job descriptions were renegotiated to allow staff to work fewer hours. For some staff, especially those with young children and infants, flexible scheduling provided significant peace of mind and completely removed the need for external childcare.
DD @ CDM has had more than 600 total registrations since launching in the fall of 2020. But with the vaccine and hopes of returning to a normal visitorship, the museum will lack the physical space to continue this program. And more staff will be needed back onsite to resume full operations.
So, does all of the work we’ve done to create a more flexible, supportive work environment go out the window? Or has COVID taught us that when there’s a will there actually is a way?
CDM’s future looks bright. In the spring of 2021, the museum’s $10M capital campaign, Ignite Discovery, will come to an end. We will begin comprehensive renovations of the entire facility in the summer. As a part of that overhaul, in February, administrative offices will move permanently to a building across the street from the museum. An entire office will be available for parents to utilize when they bring their young children or babies to work. Children of staff are once again allowed in the museum whether they are enrolled in a program or not.
CDM’s baby and child at work policies currently work only for administrative staff; making this equitable for all staff is difficult. In a perfect world, CDM would house onsite, free childcare for its employees. But the museum lacks the physical space and finances to bring this to fruition in the foreseeable future.
Flexible work works. With sufficient infrastructure, CDM continues to offer this option to its employees. A fully-remote administrative staff is not feasible today. However, learning from the flexible work models required by the pandemic, we can take steps toward a better balance.
Kyrstin Hill is the marketing and communications manager at the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Julia Bland, Louisiana Children’s Museum
Our venture into the world of mental health support began September 12, 2001 when I called Andy Ackerman, then director of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM). It was the day after 911, and he was already arranging to bring grief counselors into the museum, a perceived “safe place,” to help parents process the international disaster. CMOM’s response was an example of compassion, relevance, and child-centeredness—a lesson I was glad to have learned when, four years later, our museum was struggling with another type of disaster, the Category 5 hurricane Katrina.
With CMOM’s help, we began a ten-year healing journey that included big doses of mental health support, even sharing our resources with three other hurricane-ravaged and flooded cities in need. In the process, we learned that children—even very young children—pick up on the anxiety and worry of their caregivers. Whether it stems from widely publicized events, like a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or a pandemic, or arises quietly from pernicious sources, such as family violence or poverty. No matter the cause, the anxiety is real. Children’s museums can help families understand the needs of young children and the roles of caring adults as we go through many challenges including those presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The morning after the museum closed to help stop the spread of the coronavirus, I reached out to our partner at the Tulane Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health. We began mapping prioritized ways to reach local families in this time of great need. Ultimately, three projects emerged from this collaborative effort. First, our weekly Zoom series called In Dialogue, presented by various Tulane mental health experts, offered information on topics such as maintaining kids’ friendships while social distancing; the ABCs of trauma; self-compassion and mindfulness; promoting healthy sleep; and parental self-care. Second, we developed a set of resources called “Building Resilience,” a tip sheet with links to nearly forty additional resources for guidance. Finally, we created a new initiative called The First 1,000 Days, designed to help parents grow into their important role as their child’s most important caregiver.
Additionally, when the museum closed its doors to the public, we opened them to a nearby charter school, welcoming 120 Pre K and K students to use our facility and grounds as their school for seven months of the school year, ensuring in-person education and the joy that comes with going to school in a children’s museum.
Having weathered a variety of disasters since that call to CMOM in 2001, we’ve been rethinking our role as a children’s museum. We have learned a lot about caring for our families—both in our community and on our staff. How do we take heart and comfort our weary souls while telling our children that “it’s going to be ok” even when we don’t always believe our own words? What can we do as a welcoming community institution, even a temporarily closed one? Each museum follows a different path, but for Louisiana Children’s Museum, which in 2019 completed a thirteen-year project to build a new museum, only to close it six months later due to the pandemic, the focus remains true: finding meaningful ways to help families replace fear, loss and uncertainty with information and straight talk a parent can use to navigate everyday life in good times and bad.
Julia Bland has served as the executive director of the Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans for the past twenty-four years.
By Scott Burg & Claire Quimby, Rockman et al
Children’s museums need actionable data from audiences to plan virtual programs during this pandemic. However, few large-scale surveys gathering such data have been administered to date. At Rockman et al, a research and evaluation company based in Oakland, California, we wanted to address this issue. In the fall of 2020, we approached Carol Tang, CEO at the Children’s Creativity Museum, to conduct a pro bono survey on behalf of Bay Area children’s museums to learn more about how their guests view virtual museum programming for children. Survey questions, developed in collaboration with museum CEOs, covered program content and formats as well as children’s age and school or care situation.
We soon expanded the opportunity to include any interested museums in the member network of the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM). Ultimately, thirteen museums participated by distributing the online survey to their audiences. We prepared real-time web reports to provide participating museums with immediate access to the survey results. Over 950 responses were collected between November 2020 and January 2021. The majority came from the Minnesota Children’s Museum, Chicago Children’s Museum, Bay Area Discovery Museum, and Explora (Albuquerque). Additionally, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis incorporated a subset of the questions in their own survey and shared those results with us.
While our deeper analysis of the data has just begun, results clearly show that parents are quite divided in their interest in virtual programming from children’s museums.
Percentages indicating no/slight interest in virtual programs for their child were even with those indicating moderate/high interest. Sixty-two percent of those with moderate/high interest indicated they would be willing to pay for programs. We also found that a child’s age was not a driving factor in determining interest: parents of two- and three-year-olds were just as likely to be interested in virtual programming as parents of seven and eight-year-olds—a surprise given the different attention spans of children these ages.
Interest does appear to be linked to the child’s school or care situation, however. Parents of children attending in-person school or daycare expressed less interest in virtual programs than those who attend school online, which begs the question: Will families continue to seek virtual programming after the pandemic ends? We invited open-ended feedback for participants to explain their current interest levels. Those with greater interest in virtual programs said they wanted to provide their child with a diversity of meaningful educational experiences. They also seek programming that is developmentally appropriate and provides for safe socialization opportunities with other children. Those who were less inclined towards virtual museum programming were most concerned about excessive screen time, lack of attention span, or the age of their children.
Parent’s screen time concerns are warranted. The majority of parents with children ages seven and up said their child was getting more than three hours of screen time per day. If they are going to take part in virtual programs, parents indicated a strong preference for programs that require active participation rather than a passive experience. This was especially true of parents whose children are attending school virtually. It was also interesting to note that most participants didn’t care if programs were designed to align with in-school learning (excepting the small number of responses from parents of children ages thirteen+).
These are just a few of our findings, and there is much to learn from this dataset. You can find further analysis through our website (https://bit.ly/3o3KC4I).
Scott Burg is senior research principle and Claire Quimby is research associate at Rockman et al, a research and evaluation company based in Oakland, California.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
Convened by the Lawrence Hall of Science, the Bay Area Science and Children’s Museum Consortium (SCMC) is as a loose coalition that formed following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent “stay-at-home” order in California. SCMC currently includes eleven institutions, ranging widely in terms of budgets (from $2 to $70 million), earned revenues (from $1.5 to $20 million), and annual visitors (from 100,000 to 800,000).
Initially made up of institutions focused on high-touch experiences, consortium conversations ranged from advocacy to day-to-day operations. Of particular interest were membership models and how each institution was handling the change in demand for traditional membership services, e.g. free admission. Several institutions had already been looking into alternative models.
This sparked questions that led the group to seek advice from the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California Community Partners (HBSCP), soon leading to a partnership to explore membership models in a post-Covid world.
HBSCP serves about fifty different nonprofits each year, providing pro bono consulting and advisory services through about 200 HBS alumni volunteers in the Bay Area. Over the past thirty-five years, clients have included social-service nonprofits focused on families and children, housing, food security, healthcare, homelessness, and education, as well as cultural organizations such as museums and performing arts organizations.
What follows is a Q&A with HBSCP Project Coordinator Jane Greenthal and some of the project team members. They share what they discovered about how museums are adapting traditional membership models to meet today’s needs.
What new museum membership models have you examined?
We looked at several other museums nationwide. The monthly subscription model is new but seems to be gaining notice. The Dallas Museum of Art added a Kids Club at a $50 annual fee atop their regular membership for digital access to children’s online programming and events. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has several add-ons, including digital access, for additional fees. The Brooklyn Museum has offered shorter term options, such as six-month memberships. We looked at time-based pricing for admission, and joint museum memberships as well.
Are there membership models from other types of organizations that bear relevance to museum models?
Subscription models have been sweeping the business world. So many more people are now not only digitally connected but also digitally accessing many of the services once delivered on a single transaction basis, e.g., movies, car services, or toothpaste. Subscription models appear to increase the connection the consumer feels to the provider and also the amount of information the producer/company/museum has about what the customer wants and enjoys, allowing the provider to better tailor services.
What have you learned from regional membership managers about the current state of memberships? What do people want from a membership now?
For the most part, memberships have been relatively transactional, especially for children’s museums. New memberships are traditionally gained onsite, when a visitor realizes that a membership is a better “deal” than paying a single-entry fee. Memberships, for the most part, have been priced this way as well.
With the pandemic, museum visits obviously fell dramatically, throwing into question their value. Most museums reacted by extending the memberships for the period of their closures to the public, or longer. However, these extensions didn’t address the fundamental assumption that membership value was tied to onsite visits. Many institutions shifted to creating a digital presence, but found charging for online content challenging given the availability (and expectation) of similar content free elsewhere. Moreover, demand began to weaken as parents didn’t want more screen time for their kids. While families still want place-based experiences, decoupling memberships from museum visits provides new opportunities to add value in terms of content and outreach not limited by geography.
How do museums determine and communicate the value of their memberships? How should they?
There’s great interest in a membership model that is more subscription-based than the traditional annual renewal model; however, this ups the ante on what value you provide beyond a discount on museum visits. This is where children’s and science museums could learn from fine arts museums that have cultivated members with intangible benefits such as shared mission and status, as well as access to exclusive content, events, and experiences. Creating more emotional value can also enhance loyalty and philanthropy.
Museums in the project range widely in terms of budget, size, attendance, key audiences as well as content. Traditionally, people join different types of museums for different reasons. Art museum memberships may be associated with use but also status and tend to have a longer renewal life, while children’s museum memberships are highly transactional and have a short life (children age out quickly). In what ways are all membership programs in this project’s scope similar? How will you identify and account for differences?
Membership strategies for family-focused museums are moving away from patronage models towards monthly subscription models—the latter being more relevant to children’s museums, where the visiting population stays for only a few years. In contrast, art museums may have non-resident and life-long members.
A number of subscription initiatives are already taking place: A group of eleven children’smuseums in Northern California has developed new monthly membership models, at $25 permonth per person and $60 per family.
In another post-Covid development, regional subscription-based membership programs often include online reciprocity components. These appear successful because online costs are much lower and leave room for discount incentives on shared virtual tours and children camps.
Our study revealed that all SCMC members are interested in monthly subscription models in some form. We identified three main reasons:
1) Subscription models allow much better targeting of new populations. For example, a large SCMC member experimented with the data they gathered to increase participation of lower economic demographics—with demonstrable success.
2) In this digital age, monthly subscription models give their promoters a much-increased ability to understand their members’ priorities.
3) Families are key to all SCMC members. They all have a strong education orientation and need membership programs oriented towards families—even though they may also have corporate programs catering to employees of Bay Area companies. Not all SCMC members have such corporate membership programs. Monthly subscription programs, on the other hand, are likely to be developed by all SCMC members.
Were you surprised to learn anything about how museums operate, particularly related to memberships?
How small membership revenues were as a percentage of total revenues for some. There’s also an obvious overlap between membership and development, but they were distinct functions in many institutions with some missed opportunities to share data and collaborate.
Will new membership models specifically help museums through the pandemic and recovery? Or will they have application for a longer future?
We’re predicting that many institutions will begin to experiment with new membership models, more likely as adding to, rather than replacing, current annual models. This could include less expensive monthly subscriptions for lower income and otherwise underrepresented audiences. Compared to full-price annual memberships, these may be limited by number of visits, number of family members admitted, or limits on visits on the most crowded days. We may also see digital-only subscriptions or lower-priced memberships for non-resident members.
The additive upside we see for the subscription model is that it is less transactional, i.e., “I join because I get something tangible such as visits, in-person lectures and tours, or merchandise discounts, etc.” Non-traditional membership models have the opportunity to be based more on identification with the museum’s mission, values, or cause.
Project team members included: Jane Greenthal, Rita Koselka, SB Master, Qingxi Wang, Etienne Deffarges, Arthur Hindman, Helena Geng, and Jim Mills.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Carol Tang, PhD, Children’s Creativity Museum
Over the past few years, the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) has grown dramatically; both attendance and overall budget have increased by more than 50 percent since 2015. We diversified our earned income streams to benefit from the tourists and convention travelers that visit our San Francisco neighborhood. That financial foundation allowed us to offer 60 percent of our field trips for free to Title 1 schools and free admissions to thousands of families through Museums for All, library passes, and free memberships to community organizations and families.
Since our closure on March 12, 2020, those carefully built financial foundations have disappeared—and perhaps will not return until 2025 when tourism and business travel are projected to fully rebound. However, the other foundations we built around our values, equity, and inclusion during the same time period are even more valuable than the financial ones and provide us with a clear path for rebuilding: focus on the neighborhood.
A June 2020 member survey indicated that 28 percent of respondents usually walked to the museum. Many of them visited many times a month—one member came more than 200 times in a single year! This high proportion of very local visitation will provide a base as CCM explores reopening to the public. Meanwhile, the 37 percent of members who reported coming by public transportation may now be uncomfortable with that mode of travel, as well as further impacted by the elimination of weekend service for some time to come.
CCM is located in a dense, urban neighborhood in downtown San Francisco with few open spaces or opportunities for play or social gathering. The museum sits in a green oasis, Yerba Buena Gardens, which has a playground, free live-music venues, and planted landscapes. With the recent construction of high-rise luxury residences, this rapidly-changing neighborhood has evolved from being one of the poorest districts in San Francisco to one of the highest-income ones in just five years. Yet, on average, 84 percent of the children in the four public schools within a mile of CCM are socio-economically disadvantaged. Among the low-income families who have remained in the neighborhood are hundreds of school children who face housing insecurity. In fact, when CCM was founded more than twenty years ago (as Zeum), it was in response to an earlier community redevelopment project that displaced many low-income, blue collar, and immigrant residents. This change left many children and families with few out-of-school learning activities, particularly technology-based ones at a time when most low-income families had no access to computers. Today, our neighborhood has been designated a Filipino Cultural Heritage District, named SOMA Pilipinas, to preserve some of its rich history.
By returning our focus to serving our local community, we can not only think more deeply about engaging all families within walking distance, but also apply and track our own theory of change based on developmental research. This research posits that the more time children spend doing creative activities with caring adults, the more likely the museum is to achieve our desired outcome of building “creative confidence and creative collaboration.” In a neighborhood where families come from an extremely wide income spectrum, CCM may become a hub where children grow up together and help each other to thrive.
Finding the silver lining in a pandemic, we are adapting. We are replacing our focus on boosting visitation numbers and earned income from (now absent) tourists and one-time visitors with pursuing equity strategies for neighborhood families. How can we engage families in the museum, at home, and in the surrounding Yerba Buena Gardens setting? By finding more open-ended activities that serve multiple generations and multiple ages, bringing families back again and again. By re-examining our membership, pricing structures, and fundraising strategies to equitably serve both high- and low-income families. By providing a place for people to re-learn how to create things together and thrive in the local communal spaces now available to them.
In January, we were honored with an award for Excellence in Community Engagement by our local business improvement district. While we know that we need to re-consider our entire business model, we are building on the formerly sustainable pre-pandemic foundations and finding new solutions to put our neighborhood visitors at the center of our work. We expect this new focus to give us renewed energy as a museum for years to come.
Carol Tang, PhD, has been the executive director of the Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco, California, for six years.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Kerry Falwell, Explorations V Children’s Museum
When the pandemic hit and local businesses here in Lakeland, Florida, began to close, Explorations V Children’s Museum leadership staff and the board looked for something to serve as our institutional lighthouse. Our organization was in the midst of a capital campaign to build a new museum, and needed a broadly informed document to guide hard decisions about what programs and offerings to cut, change, or move to virtual in the present while continuing to plan for the future. When George Floyd was murdered, leadership once again found ourselves without a clear way to express to the community the museum’s stance that all children deserve equitable access and that Explorations V is committed to anti-racist practice.
The work that followed became a board, community, and staff directive to re-define the mission and guiding principles of the institution. The first decision was to develop a new mission statement to serve as an anchor and guide for the work of the museum. In October 2020, the board adopted the following new mission:
Curating the world for all children to explore.
The next step was to develop a set of standards to inform all decisions and justify resource allocation. These guiding principles serve as a contract between the museum and the community we serve. If these principles are lived daily, the museum will enact its mission.
The seven guiding principles:
For example, looking at our existing literacy initiative through the lens of the new guiding principles, it became clear the museum was honoring content and not creators. We saw that titles long been considered staples in teaching diversity to young children were all written by white authors. Directly informed by guiding principle #5 (We serve our community), we reimagined this initiative to feature diverse authors, people who reflected our community and spoke in the many voices of those around us.
Learning to work within the guiding principles is an ongoing challenge. It is hard to examine things that appear to be working, based on traditional measures, and see that, in a new light, changes are needed. For example, when nominating new members to our board of directors, the board built a demographics dashboard to visualize the gaps in their own representation. They then sought to include leaders who share a passion for the museum and who also identify with a non-represented group. This insures guiding principle #4, “We are here to stay.”
These changes may or may not have happened without the impacts of the pandemic. Maybe, after years of meetings and focus groups, we would have re-defined our purpose or tweaked things here or there. But the pandemic forced our hand; the stakes have never been higher. We were forced to be clear on what the museum stood for in order to determine what was most important to protect with whatever resources we had left. We did not have that clarity before, but we do now. And this clarity was motivated by the need to respond efficiently and purposely to a pandemic and social unrest.
Explorations V closed to the public on March 13, 2020. We were asked by Department of Children and Families to provide emergency care for children of essential workers, which we began on March 17th and continued through mid-August. Scrambling to operate this much-needed program was supported by all of our guiding principles.
The museum reopened to the public on September 1, 2020, under our new, COVID-response-based SAFETY + KINDNESS Reopen Play Plan. The brandmark appears throughout the building and on our website/social any time we have augmented the program or space for COVID safety concerns. (#6 safe and secure). The work continues. A clean, vibrant, and compelling mission, along with clearly articulated guiding principles, have created the lighthouse needed to navigate in this storm, and the ones to come. But, in fact, these changes, tough as they may be to implement, have energized the board and fundamentally changed how they act. In our ongoing capital campaign, we now state that Explorations V is not just building a bigger place, we’re building a bigger purpose.
Kerry Falwell has been the CEO of Explorations V in Lakeland, Florida, for three years. Prior to this, she was the director of education at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Joe Cox, Museum of Discovery and Science
Friday the 13th of March 2020 should have been the 25th Annual Bank of America Wine, Spirits & Culinary Celebration here at the Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS) in Fort Lauderdale. During this wonderful evening, almost 2,000 guests come together to celebrate the work of the museum and raise funds to support our accessibility programs. Instead, the fundraiser was cancelled, marking the beginning of one of the most challenging periods in our forty-three-year history.
Faced with the prospect of being closed for months, our team rose to the challenge of continuing our mission of “connecting people to inspiring science”—only now, through innovative virtual programming. Two days after we closed, we transformed our exhibit floors into a video production studio. In that first week, we produced forty-five STEM learning videos focused on our four strategic pillars of Environmental Sustainability, Physical Science, Health & Wellness and Early Childhood Education.
Using those initial videos and supporting activity guides, we worked with our local school district to create eight weeks of PreK–12 curriculum to support their virtual learning programs. The “MODS Challenge” allows students, teachers and to solve real-world problems through STEAM content and project-based learning. During a time when distance learning is at the forefront, this partnership-developed curriculum bolsters 21st century skills, including creativity, critical thinking, design, teamwork, leadership, risk-taking, and perseverance. Additionally, each week’s challenge offers selected readings for every grade level and access to some of the IMAX® films in MODS’ library of documentaries.
Our partnership with Broward County Public Schools, a district serving over 250,000 students, was key to our success. Superintendent Robert W. Runcie stated, “Our District values the strategic relationship we have with the Museum of Discovery and Science. The MODS Challenge is just one example of how we are working to transform virtual education with real-world activities that engage students while supporting their ongoing learning.”
The success of the “MODS Challenge” encouraged us to reimagine physical events into virtual experiences and to launch INSPIRE (INnovative STEAM Programs in Remote Education) as a new way of providing ongoing engagement with students and professional development for teachers not just locally, but around the world.
Held each May at MODS, Eye of the Storm is traditionally a hurricane awareness and preparedness day that welcomes 3,500 visitors. Recognizing the importance of this programming in South Florida, we worked with our partners at Florida International University’s International Hurricane Research Center and the Florida Division of Emergency Management to produce a twelve-episode, “Eye of the Storm” video series that has now been viewed over 300,000 times. The production brought together dozens of our community partners as well as other museums in hurricane prone regions, the Science Museum of Virginia, and the Louisiana Children’s Museum.
“Wise Bodies” has been a successful assembly program over the past two years that addresses the critical issue of HIV/AIDS awareness in Broward County Public Schools. As a result of the pandemic, our partners at Aids Healthcare Foundation worked with us to create a virtual version including a supporting educational curriculum that is hosted on the School District’s learning platform.
Each of these programs was generously supported by our board members, private foundations, and corporate donors. Our approach overall was to secure funding to present the programs at no cost to our viewers or program recipients. We are continuing this approach with the launch of our new STEMobile, a new mobile museum makerspace
designed for the many schools and families not able to get to the museum as a result of the pandemic. Our goal is to raise funds to deliver free programs to 50,000 children over the coming year.
Whether at the museum (we reopened December 1 and are seeing about 40 percent of our 2019 attendance), virtually (900,000 views of our content and counting) or through our community outreach programs, our mission has never seemed more critical, and our role in helping to reverse the “COVID slide” more timely. Our role at the Museum of Discovery and Science is to connect people to inspiring science and encourage young people to pursue STEM careers, building a workforce that is ready to solve future challenges.
Joe Cox is president & CEO of the Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Beth Fitzgerald, The Magic House
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum, opened in 1979. Our founders created an earned income driven organization with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and for the first fifteen years, we did virtually no fundraising. Admission fees were kept low to encourage attendance. This strategy worked well until the early ’90s, when St. Louis experienced two consecutive years of flooding during peak tourism season. At that time, a very wise board of directors felt it was time to focus on fundraising. Since then, about 20 percent of our income is contributed, and 80 percent comes from a wide variety of earned income sources.
Then 2020 happened. We quickly realized the importance of our long-term relationships with regional donors as well as with a local bank that helped us navigate and secure a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan. That said, it became immediately apparent that we needed to focus on sustainability. In character, we took an entrepreneurial approach to survival and began looking for new ways to fill community needs, remain relevant, and generate revenue.
Museums in St. Louis were only closed to the public for three months. In mid-June, all the major museums in our region reopened with strict protocol documents in place approved by city or county health departments, to ensure safe operations during COVID-19. These protocols included greatly reduced capacity numbers—basically 25 percent. We never reached that number. And because we had extended memberships by three months (like most museums), we had no renewal membership income.
So, we began looking for earned income outside of admission and membership fees. First, we made the controversial decision to offer summer camp programs at both our main location and our downtown satellite. In both places, parents were more than eager for their children to have play, creativity, and social interaction back in their lives after being isolated at home. We abided by all the new CDC protocols for schools; divided each class in half, with a maximum of eight to ten children per room; added plexi-barriers to tables; and converted lower interest exhibit galleries into classrooms. We filled all our camps and had no positive COVID cases among educators or campers.
In early August, regional school districts announced that children would continue to learn virtually from home or be in a hybrid model through at least the first quarter of the new school year. We quickly converted our summer camp to an in-person camp to support virtual learning. Approximately 120 K-5 students enrolled in our Fall Learning Camp, in which museum staff assisted children with their online school classes and provided support for asynchronous learning. Our museum café provided “school lunches” and museum educators provided daily hands-on enrichment experiences. Outdoor play spaces were used for “recess” and campers played in indoor exhibits every day. It was a big learning curve, but everyone pulled together and the parents and children were very grateful. The Learning Camp generated about $150,000 in new revenue, while at the same time filling an important community need.
Families, desperately seeking a sense of normalcy while still wanting to ensure the their children’s health, were behind the launch of private playtimes outside of normal visiting hours. From 9 to 10 a.m. each weekend day, a family of up to six could rent one eighth of the museum for $100. (Due to contact tracing responsibilities, a family was defined as a group of people who lived together.) In addition, we offered Picnic and Play times on Friday evenings. Limited to ten families at a time, families had the museum to themselves for two hours—with a picnic dinner provided to eat outside—again for $100 per family.
To drive attendance and meet families where they were comfortable, we expanded our outdoor experiences. Sandcastle Beach remained open the entire summer instead of the usual six weeks. Our September Safety Town exhibit became Trick or Treat Town in October and then Gingerbread Village for the holidays. While we typically do not offer special holiday programs, this year we offered a Visit with Santa in an outdoor sleigh with social distancing built in. Close to 1,000 families made reservations at $15 per visit, allowing more than 3,000 children to experience this holiday tradition. With no corporate after-hours holiday rentals this December, we created other evening events complete with twinkling lights, an outdoor Snowball Carnival, story time with cookies and milk, plus an added S’mores experience. Attendance was set at a maximum of 150 and we sold out most of the twelve nights, raising more than $30,000.
With a staff-wide entrepreneurial spirit and a deep-seated commitment to save The Magic House for future generations, we survived 2020 with no new debt and with new earned income sources in place that would never have been considered under other circumstances. We plan to offer more holiday programming and private playtime events in the future and we will continue to offer more outdoor-themed experiences year-round.
Would any of us want to live through 2020 again? No! But there were certainly “diamonds” that emerged from the pressure of the situation that will continue to benefit our earned income base in years to come.
Beth Fitzgerald has been the president of The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum for over forty years.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest—unless an external force acts upon the object.
—The Law of Inertia
Back in March 2020, COVID-19 swept through the country unlike any force in recent times, essentially breaking the children’s museum industry, and our inertia, overnight. Exhibit floors fell silent. Too many beloved museum personnel lost their jobs. Our future became uncertain, bewildering, scary.
How does a children’s museum, a place-based institution where people congregate, achieve its mission during a pandemic? Every museum has confronted this same question with its own unique set of circumstances. For the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the answer has been to embrace our newfound state of “rest”—to slow down, even stop, and give ourselves the time and space to innovate so that we can one day go fast again. As a result, we decided almost immediately not to focus our energy and resources on reopening to limited attendance, burdensome COVID restrictions, and an untenable expense profile. Instead, we would seek long-term, transformative change through synergistic partnerships with people and organizations whose skills and reach far exceed ours.
The past ten months of public closure have been both devastating and liberating, providing an unprecedented opportunity for renewal, experimentation, and risk-taking. We’ve enjoyed the freedom to be open to new possibilities, especially by mining our extended network for opportunities. And sometimes it all starts with a simple exploratory conversation. In one example, through staff connections we were able to forge a new partnership with a local artist and performer, Wes Tank, whose videos rapping Dr. Seuss books to Dr. Dre beats went viral early in the pandemic. Tank now produces “Story Raps” content for streaming service Kidoodle.TV entirely at our museum—using our exhibits, props and playful environment as inspiration for his work. We are also planning joint content and events for virtual and (eventually) in-person audiences.
The museum and Tank share the same values and target audience. His reach and popularity as an emerging streaming media star are very attractive to the museum—just as our facility and constant stream of visitors are very attractive to him. Together, we are stronger, more relevant, and have more opportunities than we would have individually… and that’s the magic of synergistic partnerships. Would we have even identified, much less explored, this possibility if we had been open to the public or working feverishly towards reopening? I doubt it.
Slowing down also provided much more freedom to think, listen, and read. While COVID hasn’t stopped the relentless barrage of emails, voicemails, messages, and social media, we can pay attention to that data differently now, with an eye towards discovering new opportunities. And we’ve found some gems.
In late spring, for example, I received an email from someone at an exhibit company I didn’t know. The first sentences were a bit salesy in tone, but I read it carefully even though I thought it would be a waste of time. It wasn’t. That email seeded a licensing agreement in which the exhibit company is now marketing, selling, and fabricating two of our flagship exhibits in every market worldwide except for North America. While it’s early, I am optimistic that the long-term passive income possibilities will transform the museum’s finances—all because I slowed down and read my email carefully.
In addition to slowing down and widening our gaze, the museum has also been careful to know our limitations and seek partnerships to fill our deficits. Like most children’s museums, our superpower is that we understand kids and the importance of play; we are experts at translating that knowledge into fun, educational experiences on our exhibit floors. When the pandemic shuttered museums and exiled families to an extended quarantine, our natural inclination was to “go virtual,” to somehow repackage an intensely three-dimensional experience into small, two-dimensional rectangles on a screen. But as creative as the staff at Betty Brinn are, I knew immediately that we lacked the expertise to make a high-quality pivot to virtual. So, we searched for a partner with an overlapping mission but very different skill set. That’s how we found GLOMADO (GLObal MAkers and DOers), the educational technology company that became our partner in bringing live, interactive, virtual workshops to children anywhere in the world.
Our new virtual learning platform, Play in the Cloud, offers a rich array of hands-on workshops led in real time by instructors around the world. Teachers are increasingly using it to enrich their curricula and as field trip alternatives. Right now, almost all of the usage is schools—many in underserved communities—and it’s 100 percent free for them thanks to funding. This program has established a new avenue for fundraising not only for schools, but eventually for families. The platform’s real value will grow over time, especially in a post-COVID world when virtual engagement becomes a valuable option instead of the only choice. If that reality comes to be—and I’m optimistic that it will—this strategic partnership will transform the museum into a global institution with no boundaries. And that, ironically, would be thanks to COVID.
These are just a few examples of how the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum is innovating our way through crisis. With the pandemic raging on, our industry’s “new normal” probably won’t be clear until 2022. That means for better AND for worse, we all have more time to explore the possible. Opportunities are out there. We just have to slow down, widen our gaze, and look for them.
Brian King has served as the executive director of the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, since 2019.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Patti Reiss, Mississippi Children’s Museum
Mississippi Children’s Museum’s (MCM) Launch into Learning (LIL) program provides tutoring, afterschool, and day camp services. LIL developed organically out of our successful summer camp, in response to our community’s critical fall need for childcare and educational resources.
With COVID-19 recommendations in place, MCM started its traditional summer camp program at the beginning of June 2020. It was the first time that children had been on the grounds of the museum since Sunday, March 1, when we closed to the public. MCM hosted a full eight weeks of camp while operating regular museum hours with a capacity limited to 250 visitors at a time. By August, schools began announcing their plans for fall—some opting to start in-person, others postponing start dates, and still others adopting hybrid or virtual models.
During the last week of camp, a group of campers’ parents approached the museum about hosting afterschool programming in the fall. They had recently been notified that their previous aftercare option was no longer available, highlighting the sudden urgency for childcare that many parents faced. MCM staff knew if they could successfully run day camps during a pandemic, they could certainly host many of the same children for just a few hours every afternoon.
Discussions began about implementing an afterschool program. Less than a week later, the Jackson Public School District (JPS), Mississippi’s largest public school system and MCM’s home district, announced that their classes would be virtual for the first four weeks of the semester—a timeline that quickly evolved into the entire fall. Many JPS children already faced increased academic challenges after losing nearly a semester in the classroom in early 2020. Underserved students who lacked access to technological resources, faced even more critical challenges.
One of MCM’s longstanding community partners, Stewpot Community Services, a local nonprofit organization that helps families in need, was already providing childcare services to a group of JPS families. However, Stewpot’s facility was not equipped to handle COVID-19 distancing measures, or provide the technological support to fifty virtually-learning elementary students. The museum had the space, the tools, and a staff trained to work with children on educational, social, and emotional learning. In previous years, the museum had talked with schools about starting afterschool care but had never worked directly with the school districts until COVID demanded new solutions for ongoing challenges. Now, together, we realized we could give children a remarkable experience.
Launch into Learning began in August with a dozen students, allowing MCM to continue regular but still limited daily museum visitation. By the first week of October, the program had grown to serve more than eighty students daily. MCM pivoted operations, delivering Launch into Learning during the week and opening the museum to members and visitors on the weekends.
LIL students are grouped by grade level in learning pods of eight children each. Their teachers provide curriculum content for them in the mornings. The museum then delivers additional STEM, art, and physical education activities in the afternoons. Sixty percent of the students have a diagnosed learning disability; 75 percent come from underserved families. For many of them, museum school has changed their outlook on learning. It is amazing to see students from fifteen different schools in the same district build connections among a broader network of children through shared topics that they would not have been exposed to previously.
The fall 2020 program was supported by the Mississippi Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER funds), supplemented by donations and a few tuition-paying families. The majority of participating students paid no fees.
MCM built relationships with individual teachers and parents, creating a circle of care for these students from school to museum to home. The parents entrusted MCM with their children, and the teachers put their faith and grace into our interactions. The program continued through Friday, January 15, 2021, having served more than 100 students from twelve JPS schools. With JPS students scheduled to return to in-person learning after ten months away from their schools, LIL is transitioning into an afternoon-only program.
Will Launch into Learning continue indefinitely? Public schools reopened for in-person learning on January 18, and everyone was thrilled to be back. Like many other COVID-based responses, the museum is taking it one nine-week program at a time right now. But we know that we are capable of using our expertise to provide all kinds of need-based learning programs as they arise—an opinion shared by many parents and now school district leaders, too.
Patti Reiss is director of museum experiences at Mississippi Children’s Museum in Jackson, Mississippi.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Neil H. Gordon, The Discovery Museum
From a professional point of view, responding to COVID-19 has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Every day brings decisions that involve the safety of staff and visitors, the livelihoods of employees, and both the short- and long-term viability of the museum. However, the pandemic has also forced us to be creative and devise ways of reaching children and families we never would have considered before. Some of these new approaches will help us address a challenge many museums face—getting playful learning experiences into the hands of more kids, especially those without access to them.
As a hands-on children’s museum, the mission of The Discovery Museum has always been carried out face-to-face, through child-directed exploration of our exhibits and grounds. Another important part of our work is what we do away from our campus, in schools. For twenty-eight years, the museum’s Traveling Science Workshops (TSW) program has brought hands-on science experiences to elementary and middle school students in their classrooms. Before schools closed due to the pandemic, we were projected to reach 46,000 children last year, up 20 percent from the previous year. We provide TSW free of charge to thousands of students in underperforming districts, where serving kids right in their classrooms is critical to reaching children of different backgrounds and experiences.
Like all of the museum’s programs, through hands-on exploration and experimentation, TSW’s goals are to improve students’ attitudes toward science, build their confidence as STEM learners, and help them recognize their own potential as scientists. At first it was hard to imagine how this could work in a socially-distanced world.
But when the museum closed to the public in March 2020, our educators immediately began working to adapt TSW to a digital format, in a way that preserves our inquiry-based approach to teaching science. In June, we piloted Virtual Traveling Science Workshops (VTSW), via Zoom webinar with eight classes of elementary students, all learning remotely from home. Our staff also worked with teachers and administrators in ten school districts, including many where we have a history of subsidizing programs, to refine the workshop delivery model and ensure they can be easily adapted to each district’s unique learning plan.
Our educators have been delivering virtual programs widely since October. Rather than present pre-recorded demonstrations, they actively engage students in real time, encouraging them to experiment with materials, ask questions, and make observations. As with our in-person programs, we still supply all the materials, only now we ship them to schools in advance, safely packaged for individual use.
As of the end of 2020, we had delivered ninety-five workshops to almost 1,500 students. Twenty-four percent of these workshops were fully subsidized—a fraction of our usual level, but a very clear proof of concept. In gathering feedback from teachers, we expected to hear some disappointment compared to the in-person programs. Happily, teachers have said things like this: “While this is a favorite program in person, given the times, I was impressed with how well it went over Zoom. The materials bags were perfect, and I was really impressed with how kids were engaged and really enjoyed the program. Thank you!” The surveyed teachers who experienced VTSW, unanimously endorsed VTSW, saying they would recommend it to a colleague.
We probably never would have developed VTSW if not for the pandemic. While we are not likely to replace TSW with VTSW, the virtual workshops have solved one of the museum’s long-standing challenges: TSW expansion constrained by the distance our teachers are able to travel from the museum. While we have grown within those limits, many districts, such as those within the Boston urban ring, were just too far away. VTSW has, in some ways, removed this barrier. In fact, we currently are not only able to reach those students “just out of reach,” but we have booked workshops in Georgia, suburban New York, and within New York City.
Over the years, as we have talked about how to reach more districts, we have considered satellite sites or “franchises,” but never virtual approaches. VTSW is the result of the museum staff’s willingness to try something new while staying very true to our guiding philosophy for all programs. Thanks to their creativity and dedication, we have significantly grown our potential audience for an important part of the Discovery Museum’s mission.
Neil Gordon has been CEO of the Discovery Museum in Acton, Massachusetts, since 2009. Prior to that he served as COO at Boston Children’s Museum for fourteen years.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By PAPALOTE Staff
On March 16, 2020, after PAPALOTE closed our venues in Chapultepec in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, and Monterrey to visitors to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we made quick decisions to remain present and in contact with our audiences: children, families, and teachers. Like everyone else, we thought this extraordinary situation would last only a few weeks.
Within ten days, we created a microsite called PAPALOTE en Casa (PAPALOTE@Home), with articles, activities, videos, and health department updates for a predominantly urban audience equipped with digital devices and internet connections. We disseminated this free content through different social networks (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter). Initially, our priority was to quickly generate useful content for families heading into confinement.
It soon became clear that our buildings would not reopen soon and that our primary audience contact would remain virtual indefinitely. We realized we needed to evaluate everything about the website, combining both quantitative and qualitative data to inform future directions.
A sampling of twenty weeks (March 26–September 15) of quantitative results revealed the following data about PAPALOTE@Home:
Social networks participation broke down as follows:
The numbers tell a powerful story, but we wanted to know more than the quantity of clicks or views. We wanted feedback on content, but also to know what people were feeling. Conducting opinion polls with a rigorous methodology was not feasible due to limited time and resources, especially with closed venues. Instead, we decided to carefully review the comments left by our digital community on social networks.
As of November, we had surveyed 12,000 opinions expressed by our social media followers. More than 70 percent (8,390 responses) of the comments were positive. Most of them congratulated the museum for helping families during confinement with activities specifically developed to carry out at home. Teachers appreciated the information about health and wellness.
Successfully engaging with virtual audiences involves a lot more than simply presenting a museum’s content online. Our digital visitors are different from our physical visitors. Among physical visitors, 50 percent were families with preschoolers. But visitor ages have broadened for our new online programs. Further, parents expressed interest in activities that children can do on their own, without parents’ help, because they are working from home. As a result, we now offer activities for kids ages zero to five that require parents’ help, as well as programs for kids six to ten and ten to twelve that they can do on their own.
With our virtual programming, PAPALOTE entered the privacy of our users’ homes, becoming present in their daily lives. Users prefer content that is related to what they are experiencing day-to-day. Social media has the power to reach people who cannot physically visit our museums, but digital content goes beyond a virtual visit to the facilities. For example, we have learned that characters work better on social media than straight museum content. The PAPALOTE’s Facebook Live stream features characters, like Santiago, who has thirty-five stories to tell. Our recipe: keep it simple and homely, not fancy.
Based on all that we have learned, we are designing the new version of PAPALOTE at Home 2.0. We are doing more with less. In some ways, PAPALOTE was a victim of the “sparkling effect”—everything at the museum was beautiful and shiny. Now, sizing down our programs without sacrificing quality, our team is looking at what we have done well, and what we have not. What topics should we address next?
Best case scenario, PAPALOTE’s Chapultepec museum will open in late 2021. Reopening dates for our facilities in Monterrey and Cuernavaca have not been determined yet. Even after we are fully reopened, the digital community we created is here to stay.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Dianne Krizan, Minnesota Children’s Museum
In May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed under the knee of a police officer eleven miles from Minnesota Children’s Museum (MCM). Despite being under a shelter-in-place order due to the pandemic, thousands of local protestors sparked a worldwide reckoning with the plague of systemic racism.
MCM staff and board were outraged by the inhumane treatment of Floyd, which was the latest (and sadly not last) killing of a Black man by police. As a predominantly white organization, many of us at MCM have the privilege of only seeing the ugly face of racism when a phone video broadcasts a blatant and tragic event. Our Black colleagues and community experience racism every day.
The events following George Floyd’s murder showed how far we need to go to reckon with racism—and the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated inequities in our communities. While MCM has been focused on diversity and inclusion for years, with particular emphasis on racial equity, in 2020 we committed to deepening our DEI efforts in the long run.
MCM’s strategic plan incorporates our DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) commitments, stating specific goals around diversity of staff, board, and audience, as well as a commitment to equitable access to the museum and to higher-touch programs for families with less access to resources.
Since 2014, the museum has participated in a collaboration among ten of the state’s largest arts and cultural organizations with a shared purpose to grow our individual and collective capacities as inclusive organizations. One of the outcomes has been co-investing our resources to jointly grow the intercultural competence of staff.
MCM staff take the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), a cross-culturally valid, reliable, and generalizable measure of intercultural competence along the validated Intercultural Development Continuum. The continuum describes a set of orientations toward cultural difference and commonality that are arrayed from the more monocultural mindsets of Denial and Polarization through the transitional orientation of Minimization to the intercultural mindsets of Acceptance and Adaptation.
Staff then participate in different training opportunities, such as deepSEE Filter Shift. This program effectively supports staff in moving a full stage on the continuum towards a more intercultural mindset. Through a three-step process, we learn how to:
We have also incorporated the understanding of intercultural differences into our customer service training. Discussion and role-play scenarios reveal how race and bias can play out in service situations, including recognizing the cultural differences in communication styles from restrained to expressive and direct to indirect.
Our board of directors has recently taken the IDI to understand where they are developmentally as individuals and as a group, and are now determining next steps for growth.
In 2019, our board adopted a new DEI value statement that included stronger language around our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. In part, it says:
“Given the reality that a history of exclusion and unfair treatment exists broadly in our community, our values compel us to be intentionally inclusive and welcoming of indigenous people and people of color. We are allies to marginalized groups.”
While we are proud of the attention given to DEI across the organization, the tragedy of Floyd’s killing caused us to ask, what does it mean to be an ally? Do we need to push further to tie activities to equity outcomes? Would alignment on outcomes help ensure our efforts are having an impact?
In learning more about allyship, the key insight was recognizing that ally is a verb, not a noun. Ally means taking action. How should MCM authentically support individuals and communities who have been marginalized?
Being an ally to marginalized communities includes being an equitable workplace. After evaluating staffing data from the past few years, in our pandemic down time, our newly focused internal equity lens has identified three outcomes:
In addition to making internal progress on these three outcomes, we plan to share them publicly including the work we are committed to doing. As we recover from the pandemic, MCM is increasing our efforts to address equity and increase inclusivity. With new publicly-accountable DEI metrics in place, we are changing how we evaluate our success as an organization.
Dianne Krizan has served as the president of the Minnesota Children’s Museum in St. Paul since 2010.
| This article is part of the “Forged in Fire: New Models” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Steve Long, Children’s Museum of the East End
In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” This adage aptly describes the Children’s Museum of the East End’s (CMEE) response to the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges. Located on the East End of Long Island in New York, the museum closed this spring to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. To ensure CMEE’s survival, we adapted, taking inspiration from the settlement house movement.
According to writer Jeffrey Scheuer, settlement houses are historically known for “institutionalized experimentation,” where decision-making is informed by an empirical assessment of their local community’s needs. Rather than superimpose a new element on their community, they function as glue bringing it together. Isn’t this a terrific description of a children’s museum?
While Long Island’s East End is widely known as “the Hamptons”—a summer retreat for the well-to-do—the museum’s community shares much in common with people served by today’s settlement houses. The year-round population has higher rates of poverty and substandard housing than the rest of Long Island, as well as a high immigrant population. Latinx students comprise over 50 percent of the population in East End school districts and a third of visitors to the children’s museum.
During the week following the museum’s March 2020 shutdown, staff and board focused on two primary questions: 1) How could the museum replace income lost due to the closure, which would total $750,000 by the time we reopened? 2) How could a “hands-on” museum continue to fulfill its mission “remotely”?
Faced with enormous economic volatility, we modeled a variety of budget contingencies to respond to the first question. But to answer the second question, we couldn’t determine what our stakeholders needed without asking them directly. So we developed an online survey in English and Spanish, which was emailed and texted to our outreach programming participants. Survey results revealed that the vast majority of respondents—more than 80 percent—had lost their jobs and were struggling to cope. Their overriding concerns were rent and food. CMEE launched several emergency initiatives to help families cope, including online support groups and programs. However, the museum’s most significant response has been a food pantry.
Almost every hamlet and village on the East End has its own food pantry. We initially anticipated guiding families to one in their specific area. However, we learned that in order to receive food, clients must prove residency in that hamlet or village; this requirement proved impossible for immigrant families already taking part in the museum’s outreach programming. Concerned about their naturalization applications, they did not want to provide contact information because they were afraid they would violate the “public charge” rule. Long an element of immigration law, tightening restrictions implemented in February 2020 widened the definition of what could be considered “public assistance,” which could be grounds for refusing citizenship. Despite the museum staff’s many attempts to allay these fears, the families made it clear they would go hungry before risking their immigration status.
If families were reluctant go to a food pantry, we needed to figure out how to bring the food pantry to them. With the help of a former museum trustee, the Bridgehampton Community Food Pantry agreed to offer curbside pickup of food for thirty families at the museum on March 31. Unfortunately, with skyrocketing demand and limited resources, that arrangement was short-lived. After failing to strike partnerships with any of the other food pantries, the museum decided to start its own “pop-up” food pantry in April. While a food pantry may seem to be outside the museum’s mission, if children are hungry, how can they play and learn?
Museum staff learned how to run a “socially-distant” food distribution center on the fly. Initially assuming we could rely on in-kind food donations, we quickly discovered that food pantries purchase the vast majority of food they distribute. We also underestimated the amount of staffing required to run it. Adding “food pantry manager” to our job descriptions, restaurants and other food pantries connected us with food service companies that began making weekly deliveries to the museum.
The biggest challenge was financial. Weekly food costs averaged $65 per family. Running a food pantry cost thousands of dollars each week out of a museum that was already losing $25,000 a week. The museum launched a “Food 2 Play” fundraising initiative. Major donors that had expressed little interest in simply subsidizing the museum’s lost revenue were far more eager to help with “Food 2 Play.” Asking donors to help the museum simply survive the pandemic was ineffective. We needed to be positioned as “first responders” helping vulnerable families through the crisis. Numerous corporations, philanthropists, and foundations began funding food banks and pantries. Leveraging a substantial portion of this support, CMEE raised more than $300,000 specifically for Food 2 Play and other COVID response initiatives in 2020.
Ordering and paying for the food was the first step; figuring out how to get it to families presented another set of hurdles. In addition to three paid staff committing a quarter of their time, almost two dozen volunteers unloaded, packaged, and arranged curbside food pickup every week.
While last spring’s school closures created havoc for families, it was a silver lining for the museum’s food pantry. Parents, eager for safe and meaningful activities to do with their children outside of the home, contacted the museum looking for ways to volunteer their time. In a few weeks—mainly through word of mouth— the museum had more prospective volunteers than it could safely accommodate.
The volunteer recruitment effort also reconnected the museum with more than a hundred former members. Like most children’s museums, families tend to “age out” of CMEE when their eldest child gets to be seven or eight years old. Over the years, the museum has developed an array of strategies, including community service projects, to keep these families engaged, with limited success. The pandemic changed that. According to one mom whose children volunteered, “The museum is giving older kids a greater sense of purpose.”
It’s not just teenagers who now see themselves differently in relation to the museum. Young children, like my six-year-old son, have been affected by their volunteer experience. When the museum was still closed to visitors, he pointed out that he used to play at the museum but now he helps families. During videoconference check-ins with his teacher or calls with grandparents, he would proudly describe his work at the food pantry.
In addition to teaching the value of giving back, the food pantry provides numerous learning opportunities for young children. Children as young as three or four help their parents count potatoes to go in a box or sort and separate pantry items such as rice, lentils, beans, and pasta. They also learned how to work collaboratively to make sure no family was skipped and every box had the right number of items.
Even though CMEE has reopened—at 20 percent capacity—we are still running our weekly food pantry for nearly eighty families each week. In total, the museum has provided food to 187 different families and a total of 804 people. In addition to reducing food insecurity, it’s promoted a sense of dignity and community. In contrast with many other food pantries, families feel no stigma. Prior to the pandemic, they came to play at the museum; now they also come for food.
In addition to food, CMEE has distributed art materials, offered free flu vaccines with Stony Brook Hospital, and provided bilingual information from Peconic Bay Medical Center about how to protect against COVID-19. Via the messaging service WhatsApp, families communicate with museum staff and each other, sharing recipes, artwork, and photographs. Food pantry recipients also volunteered their time at the food pantry.
While the museum started its food pantry to support its most vulnerable families, in fact, the museum itself was supported. Although we did cut expenses, support for our COVID response efforts meant we never had to lay off any staff. 2020 was one of the most successful fundraising years in the museum’s history. Grants and contributions more than made up for earned revenue we lost. For years, we have operated much like a settlement house, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that donors became fully aware of the range of educational, recreational, and social programs we provide for underserved children.
Will our food pantry operate after the pandemic? My sincerest hope is that it will no longer be needed. What we will continue is our “institutionalized experimentation” where we remain responsive to the needs of local families. By acting more like a settlement house than a traditional museum, we altered the East End’s perception of CMEE, moving it from a peripheral “nice to have” to the heart of the community.
Scheuer, Jeffrey. Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century. University Settlement, 1985.
Steve Long has served as president of the Children’s Museum of the East End in Bridgehampton, New York, since 2008. Prior that, he was vice president of collections and education at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City.
The latest issue of Hand to Hand, “Forged in Fire: New Models” is now available! Read each article here on the ACM blog. ACM members can find the full issue PDF in the Online Member Resources Library.
This issue of Hand to Hand shares stories from sixteen museums that have transformed their “temporary” pandemic responses into permanent changes, innovating new ways to deliver their missions and serve their communities.
Many of these stories build upon ACM’s Museums Mobilize initiative to highlight the ways children’s museums are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some changes involve totally new ideas. Others emerged as museums modified and accelerated existing programs or processes, or arose from ideas “on the shelf.” Read the issue to explore new models for museum finances, partnerships, workplace environments, and more.
Read the issue!
Food Pantry Fulfills a Need and Opens a World of Possibilities
Steve Long, Children’s Museum of the East End
New model: Transforming the role and identity of the children’s museum in the community by operating a food pantry.
Doubling Down on DEI
Dianne Krizan, Minnesota Children’s Museum
New model: Building upon existing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts to deepen DEI in the long run.
Learning through and about Social Media
PAPALOTE Staff
New model: Optimizing social media to become present in visitors’ daily lives.
Taking Science Learning to New Places and People
Neil H. Gordon, The Discovery Museum
New model: Launching Virtual Traveling Science Workshops to significantly grow potential audiences.
Supporting Children’s Learning When and How They Need it
Patti Reiss, Mississippi Children’s Museum
New model: Increasing flexibility in supporting families, from camps to virtual learning to childcare.
Look and Listen: Taking a Chance on New Partnerships
Brian King, Betty Brinn Children’s Museum
New model: Pursuing innovation with an entrepreneurial approach to new partnerships.
Expanding the Earned Income Menu: Camps, Seasonal Fun, Family Play
Beth Fitzgerald, The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum
New model: Strengthening earned income base by expanding indoor/outdoor programming and offering private playtimes.
Programs Multiply As Reach Expands
Joe Cox, Museum of Discovery and Science
New model: Innovating virtual programming to achieve their mission of connecting people to inspiring science.
Building a Bigger Purpose
Kerry Falwell, Explorations V Children’s Museum
New model: Forming new guiding principles and a new mission statement to serve as new institutional lighthouse.
Welcoming the Neighbors
Carol Tang, PhD, Children’s Creativity Museum
New model: Rebuilding strong foundations by returning the museum’s focus to local neighborhood audiences.
The Future of Membership Programs
Q&A with Jane Greenthal, Harvard Business School Association of Northern California Community Partners
New model: Exploring opportunities provided by non-traditional membership models in the years to come.
Cross-Institutional Study of Virtual Programming: What Do Parents Want Now?
Scott Burg & Claire Quimby, Rockman et al
New model: Supporting effective virtual programming with actionable audience data.
An Ongoing Journey of Healing
Julia Bland, Louisiana Children’s Museum
New model: Increasing focus on providing mental health support to children and families.
The Future of Work: Putting Pivots into Practice and Examining How We Support Staff
Kyrstin Hill, Creative Discovery Museum
New model: Offering equitable and flexible work options for staff with young children.
Museum Guild 2021
Tara MacDougall, Discovery Center at Murfree Spring
New model: Creating a Museum Guild 2021 to increase participation and diversity among visitors and donors.
Why Do We Need All This Office Space Now?
Collette Michaud, Children’s Museum of Sonoma County
New model: Reorganizing office space based on flexible new work patterns.
Hand to Hand is the quarterly publication of the Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM). ACM champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
By Natalie Bortoli, Tsivia Cohen, and Kim Koin, Chicago Children’s Museum; Catherine Haden, Loyola University Chicago; David Uttal, Northwestern University
When Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM) closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality of a prolonged closure soon hit home. Like all of our colleague museums, we needed to find a way to remain relevant to our community and carry out important aspects of our work.
One key initiative that needed to be sustained was our National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research-to-practice project: TALES (Tinkering and Learning Engineering Stories)1. A partnership between CCM, Loyola University Chicago, and Northwestern University, this project studies how narrative and storytelling during tinkering explorations impact families’ engineering learning. The project will result in empirically-based practices and resources that can be used to promote children’s learning about engineering in informal settings.
Central to our project is the exploration of different programmatic, facilitative, and environmental approaches in the museum’s Tinkering Lab. The Tinkering Lab is an open-ended workshop space where families use tools—such as drills, hammers, and saws; and materials—like wood, paper, and recyclables—to build, construct, and solve physical problems. With mounted cameras in the exhibit and microphones clipped to visitors who agree to be recorded, the researchers capture families’ actions and conversations and provide data about engagement in tinkering and engineering learning. Additionally, researchers interview families after tinkering to gain further insight into children’s learning.
The temporary closure of the museum presented a challenge to this project. How were we to continue this multi-layered research-to-practice work that depended on: 1) offering live, facilitated tinkering-based challenges, 2) conducting the work in an exhibit equipped with a variety of hands-on tools and materials, 3) observing and recording families’ actions and dialogue, and 4) listening to families’ narratives?
As the museum began to shift its overall programmatic work to virtual content, the TALES team saw an opportunity to also utilize this format to engage families in our research-to-practice work. The team embarked on developing a set of video invitations for families to engage in Tinkering-at-Home.
The Tinkering-at-Home programs, which will continue to be developed for the duration of the museum’s closure to the public, are presented by CCM’s Director of Tinkering Lab and other team members via pre-recorded videos. They are shared through social media, the museum’s website, and its YouTube channel. The videos invite families to develop creative solutions to problems using materials they have at home.
To capture and study the families’ actions, researchers make appointments with families who express interest in participating in our work to meet over Zoom. CCM works with several community partner organizations to promote the opportunity for families to participate in the research and to ensure a diverse sample. Working with one family at the time, the researcher plays the Tinkering-at-Home videofor the family, and then invites them to engage in the activity in front of the camera. Meanwhile, the researcher records the session so it can be used in subsequent analyses of families’ actions and conversations. When the family is done with the activity, the researcher asks key questions to capture the families’ narratives and to gain understanding of their process and thinking.
This method allows us continue our important research-to-practice work, while also providing ongoing ways to engage families in meaningful STEM learning at home. At the same time, the virtual research has allowed us to continue to test various prompts, questions, and methods that will inform our practices back in the Tinkering Lab once the museum is re-opened, in keeping with the original goals of the project. This will also ultimately allow us to compare Tinkering-at-Home explorations to in-person versions of the same activities in the Tinkering Lab exhibit: an added opportunity that has been made possible by the unique conditions.
A number of key findings have emerged from our transition to virtual practice, which may be useful for colleague organizations creating their own online programs or carrying out their own research projects using virtual platforms. Most significantly, we have found that transferring many of our existing best practices in facilitation and program design has been critical to our success. The following are some key tips and learnings other museums can use when creating virtual content:
Because our research project tests the impact of different interventions and approaches, we have also tested variables in our virtual programs as follows.
While the pandemic has placed new challenges before us and has required a different approach to engaging families in our research work, we have found that staying moored in our long-standing best practices for facilitation, program development, and research has enabled us to successfully transition our work. With this, we have been able to continue to both engage and learn from our participant families, and to collect data that will inform and strengthen our practices not only in the present, but in the post-COVID world as well.
1 This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF #1906940 (LUC) 190196839 (CCM) 1906808 (NU).
Natalie Bortoli is Vice President of Programming & Experience Development, Tsivia Cohen is Associate Vice President of Guest Connections and Family Learning, and Kim Koin is Director of Art & Tinkering Lab Studios at Chicago Children’s Museum. Catherine Haden is Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. David Uttal is Professor of Psychology and Education at Northwestern University.
By Kim Koin, Chicago Children’s Museum
Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM) closed its doors to the public in March 2020 to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Like many learning spaces, CCM needed to switch from in-person to online interactions to continue connecting with our community during the pandemic. Museum educators soon began making videos at home, building upon our best practices for interacting with guests at the museum. Here are some tips gained by staff that we hope other museum professionals can use and adapt for your online programming!
Setting up a shot to film on the floor, complete with a stack of books. A selfie stick angles the phone camera down, and a book is placed on top to keep it steady!
Prep: Give yourself LOTS of time to figure things out beforehand. Museum professionals already know the importance of planning your workshops and activities. This is especially important when there’s a digital component to your programming. For a five-minute video, consider that you’ll need to create a concept, gather and test materials and processes, write a script, set up the camera, and do numerous dry runs.
“Camera” & audio set up: Filming was new for many of us at the museum. We spent time experimenting with our smart phones, thinking about framing, background noise, and prototyping.
Framing the shot: In this photo, many of the items on the table are going to be obscured by the captions. All the materials should be moved up a few inches.
Action: Before we began creating content at home, we museum educators were used to being in front of a crowd—but not a camera! We had to learn how to do a few things differently. However, our core facilitation style stayed consistent.
Though there can be some shyness to overcome, try to focus on the way you would facilitate without a camera in front of you. What’s your teaching style? How do you like to engage your students and audience? Use the same tone, sense of humor, playfulness and “voice” that characterizes you when you are facilitating in-person at the museum. By being yourself, your virtual facilitation will be most natural and engaging.
Last tip: Take a deep breath and smile—you’re doing great!
Kim Koin is Director of Art & Tinkering Lab Studios at Chicago Children’s Museum.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.7, the seventh report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
Since spring 2020, the ACM Trends Reports team has studied the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s museums. The results illustrate the ways children’s museums have adapted to financial challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this Trends Report, the seventh in this volume, covers the variety of multifaceted approaches to finding funding sources that museums have adopted as the pandemic has continued, and their success with these methods.
Overall, 96 US-based children’s museums participated in the fall 2020 survey. The data showed that most institutions that applied for funding from federal financial relief programs were successful, and that these funds covered some portion of their expenses. Children’s museums also explored other avenues for raising funds, including from private sources – foundations, corporations, and individual donors. We found that private funders are key to bridging funding gaps in the field. Children’s museums also adopted entrepreneurial strategies, such as renting out facilities for community programming including public health events and voter registrations.
The financial impacts of the pandemic on the museum field are likely to persist for some time. However, the findings in this report show that children’s museums are increasingly resourceful as they seek stability in lean times.
In spring 2020, children’s museums were in the early stages of navigating the financial strain caused by the pandemic. At that time, the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), established by the CARES Act, was in the process of distributing funds to museums and other types of businesses. As we reported in ACM Trends Report #4.2, small museums were most likely to be able to use relief funds to cover the bulk of their expenses, while medium museums were the least likely to have enough relief funds to offset their expenses. A little less than half of large museums used relief funds to cover expenses.
A second round of stimulus funding, planned for spring 2021, brings potential opportunities for new funding from the federal government. The museum community is currently awaiting guidance on accessing these opportunities. Although government funding has helped support children’s museums during the pandemic, there are still gaps. Donations from corporations, private foundations, and individuals are helping to pick up the slack. Evidence from both surveys suggests that in 2020, children’s museums pursued these other funding avenues, with mixed results. By the fall, museums had gained more clarity about their financial picture, though the funding climate remains uncertain. Also, museums took a multifaceted approach to fundraising, with institutions reporting they pursued an average of four sources for pandemic relief funding (including federal funds). This report presents data from 96 museums that participated in the survey, representing all sizes unless noted otherwise.
Most institutions had success with government funding. The most reliable sources for support included PPP, state and local governments, Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), and State Councils. Some agencies and programs have remained less lucrative for museums. Relatively few museums applied to grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Of those that applied, less than a quarter received grants. Of the two museums that applied for the Federal Reserve’s Main Street Nonprofit Loans, only one received support.
Children’s museums reported receiving between a total of $17,500 and $3.7 million from government agencies. To date, the average total amount of government funds to museums participating in the survey was $205,000.
In spring 2020, museums reported having success with private funders, which increased through fall 2020. Out of 96 museums, 77 approached private funders since the beginning of the pandemic and all but two have received support of some kind. Museums approached different types of private funders – foundations, corporations, and individual donors (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. New and existing private funders approached by children’s museums.
They most often appealed to funders they had previously existing relationships with, and half approached new private funders as well. Seeking new private funders did not significantly increase the amount that children’s museums raised overall. Our survey did not specifically ask for breakdown of funding by new and existing private funders, nor how many appeals for funding each museum made within these categories.
All museums which sought private funding reached out to at least one category – corporate, foundation, or individual – of existing funders. Out of 77 museums, 56 also sought private funding from at least one new source.
These efforts have been worth it. Across the children’s museum field, private funders have provided 25% of reported COVID-19 financial relief. For individual institutions, funding amounts ranged widely, from $600 to $1.5 million. To date, the average amount museums reported receiving from private funders was $50,000, which may include support from multiple private sources for some institutions.
Museums tried a host of strategies to gain financial stability, in addition to securing funding from government and private sources. The field is still trying to understand what works, and we are gaining a clearer picture of the opportunities available for children’s museums.
Of the respondents, 80 museums described additional fundraising strategies, which included some typical efforts and re-imagined approaches to conventional museum fundraising. About half of these institutions hosted fundraisers or campaigns. These activities included online and email campaigns, a virtual gala, as well as campaigns focusing on raising capital and supporting relief. A third of museums revised existing funds.
The museum field has long reflected on the value of partnerships. In the pandemic, this topic continues to be important. As children’s museums have experimented with opening their doors to in-person visits or investing in virtual services for their communities, some have also offered their spaces for alternative purposes. These activities primarily consist of programs with community or service organizations, local governments, and schools. Community programs hosted in museum facilities covered range of local needs and services, such as blood drives, English classes for adults, meetings of service or volunteering clubs, local Boys & Girls Clubs, parent support groups, support activities for adults with dementia, health-focused activities, and voter registration. For schools, museums provided space and other resources for virtual schooling pods, learning assistance programs, camps, e-learning, tutoring, labs, and classrooms sites themselves. Out of 95 museums, 17 said they generated revenue through hosting activities in their facilities. All who obtained income reported partnerships with schools, and some also reported collaborations with other organizations or local governments.
Partnerships appear to be associated with funding. There is a moderate correlation between the number of partners that museums mentioned and the different types of new private funders they petitioned. Museums that did not approach new private funders had an average of two partners, whereas those making requests to new funders had double the number of partners. Although we do not know if partnerships made funders more likely to offer support, we know that private funders are an increasingly important source of financial support for the field.
Children’s museums continue to make strides in funding, but there are still challenges. Below, we summarized trends we observed in common financial measures.
Total Income – Based on data from 59 museums for the period of March through August 2020, three-quarters of institutions were operating at less than 59% of their 2019 income level.
Total Expenses – Based on information for 59 museums for the period of March through August 2020, three-quarters of institutions’ expenses were at least 65% of their 2019 expenses, or higher.
Income to Expense Ratio – Based on data from 60 institutions, three-quarters of museums had an income to expenses ratio lower than 87% from March to August 2020. So, for every dollar that these museums spent, they earned 86 cents or less in 2020. By comparison, three-quarters of museums made more than 92 cents for every dollar they spent in the same period of 2019. This means that additional expenditures in 2020 on items like Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) are even more of a stretch for many museums.
The American Alliance of Museums conducted a survey of the museum field in October 2020, which provides additional context. On average, responding museums lost $850,000 as a result of the pandemic. On average, they anticipated losing about 35% of their budgeted operating incomes in 2020, and 28% of their normal operating income in 2021 (AAM & Wilkening Consulting, 2020).
The pandemic and its resulting financial uncertainty have proven to be a challenge for museums everywhere. But data from the first nine months of this new climate shows that children’s museums are capable of adapting their fundraising to rise to the occasion. Museums have successfully gained financial relief from a variety of governmental sources. Where government grants and earned income have fallen short, institutions have increasingly filled the gaps with funding from private donors, corporations, and foundations.
It is clear that diversifying funding sources continues to be an important strategy. The more types of funders an institution approaches, the more likely they are to gain support from different sources, and the more financially stable the museum will be. This idea has long been a part of nonprofit financing, and the pandemic has underscored the importance of a diversified approach. But many museums lack the capacity to pursue a wider pool of funders. This is where partnerships can play an important role. Developing partnerships requires an ongoing investment of time. But they also help organizations pool resources including network connections, staff capacity, and fundraising skills.
When making funding appeals – whether independently or in partnership – children’s museums should consider the value they bring to their community. If a children’s museum were to disappear, what vital services would the community lose? Leaders can reflect on the services their institution uniquely provides. Equally important are the ways that children’s museums complement other community organizations.
Data for this report was collected by an online survey that ACM distributed through an email invitation to children’s museums in the US. The survey was open between September 24 and October 18, 2020. Overall, 96 museums responded to at least part of the survey, and not all museums answered every question in the survey. Researchers kept all responses that met a minimum threshold of questions answered. All participating museums are US-based ACM member institutions, representing 40% of membership. These museums represent all size categories, though only 7 Small museums participated.
Researchers conducted qualitative and quantitative analysis on the survey data. A researcher reviewed open-ended responses from the survey and coded themes in an iterative process to summarize information on partnerships with non-museum organizations. The initial coding process produced a large number of codes, and subsequent coding led to aggregated and more meaningful themes. Responses were consistent across size categories, unless otherwise noted.
AAM & Wilkening Consulting. (2020). National Snapshot of COVID-19 Impact on United States Museums: October 15-18. Retrieved from: https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/AAMCOVID-19SnapshotSurvey-1.pdf
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This post was originally published as ACM Trends Report 4.6, the sixth report in the fourth volume of ACM Trends Reports, produced in partnership between ACM and Knology. |
The ACM Trends Reports team has continued to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s museums. We have now conducted two surveys, with the first in May 2020. The second survey was offered to US museums from September 24 to October 18, 2020. The results illustrate the ways children’s museums have adapted to the evolving national and local situations surrounding the pandemic, and likely other current events. This report focuses on the new and modified ways museums are engaging with their audiences, whether in-person or virtual.
Overall, 96 US-based children’s museums participated in the survey. The data shows about half have opened their doors to in-person visitors, and many have continued to prioritize online exhibits, programming, and other virtual content. The financial costs of reopening have been complex, as institutions adopt increased safety practices and products, as well as maneuver through reduced occupancy rates and attendance. On the whole, the museum field is still in an upheaval, which makes trends difficult to identify. But there are also clear signs that museums are finding their footing, whether they are opening their doors for in-person visits or focusing on virtual experiences. This report is the sixth in an ACM Trends series exploring the early impacts of COVID-19 on the field. ACM Trends Report #4.5 provided a snapshot of results from the fall 2020 survey. Future reports will examine personnel, collaborations, and funding.
Many children’s museums reopened their doors to audiences for some type of in-person visit experience between mid-May and early fall of 2020. Of 83 museums that responded to the question Is your museum currently open to visitors?, 48 were open. Of those, most had reopened during the summer months. Four had to reclose for short periods ranging from three to fifteen days.
Reasons for reclosure were personnel or visitors testing positive for the virus, city-wide closures, and financial reasons. Of the 35 that have remained closed for in- person visits since the beginning of the pandemic, 14 have reopening dates scheduled for late 2020 or in 2021.
Children’s museums have always been dedicated to visitor safety. Institutions that reopened for in-person visits have continued to champion this priority. They have met this goal in a range of ways, guided by a mix of municipal mandates, public health protocols, and guidelines set by their own leadership. There were no differences according to museum size in safety practices. Of the 48 museums open to in-person visitors, 46 museums provided information about safety practices for visitors in the survey. Nearly all require or provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for in-person visits, including masks, face shields, and gloves. Nearly three- quarters of museums provide cleaning materials for visitors’ use, such as sanitization stations, as well as disinfectant wipes and floor mats. About half of museums undertake industrial cleaning, including closing off areas to do deep cleaning, using electrostatic cleaners and UV light cleaning wands, and taking extra precautions with high- touch exhibit materials like interactive features. Two- thirds of museums conduct health checks with visitors that feature temperature readings and questionnaires. Less than half have reduced cash transactions.
Museums that are open for in-person visits also limit contact among visitors to increase safety. Nearly all institutions are operating with reduced capacity. They have experimented with techniques that encourage or force social distancing, such as one-way throughput and allowing only one visiting group per exhibit at a time. Over half of participating institutions have installed physical barriers in places where people congregate for extended periods, such as ticket booths.
With all of these changes to the visit experience, communications are a critical area of safety practice. About a quarter of museums described their efforts to effectively present safety information in signage and guide visitors through new procedures. Many museums have posted this information on their websites. Several also published extensive details of reopening plans, such as Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, Florida. Museums have also paid attention to safety procedures for personnel, such as trainings and management updates. We will describe staff- focused safety practices in a later Trends Report.
In response to continuously evolving health regulations, museums, like other public institutions, have had to manage patrons within reduced maximum occupancy levels. At the time of this survey, museums that reported being open to visitors said they were permitted to have an average of one third of their standard indoor and outdoor occupancy levels. These levels may be influenced by size and geographic region, but we do not yet have enough data to understand these factors.
Before the pandemic, some museums used vendors and systems to manage visitor flow and ticket purchases. Since fewer people can visit at one time, these products might be more useful than ever. Two-thirds of institutions currently open to visitors have been relying on event management and point-of-sale products to manage ticket reservations and visitor flow. Museums most commonly use Altru by Blackbaud and Versai Museum Management, although a variety of other programs are in use too. Fees and pricing for these products vary, with some charging based on size and usage. Some charge several hundred dollars each month, while others require a one-time fee of several thousand dollars.
Members have long been an important part of museums’ audiences and operations. In the beginning of the pandemic, children’s museums reported making accommodations for their members. Membership extensions continued to be the most popular approach in fall 2020, with half of museums providing this option. A fifth of museums offered members free or reduced-price access to content or members-only hours.
Some museums reported that members are making requests as well. Of 45 museums that provided information on this topic, a third said audiences requested a refund of their memberships. A quarter reported audiences requested membership extensions. Less common audience requests include a membership freeze, renewal discounts, and free or reduced-price access to content or members-only hours.
Of the 48 museums with facilities open to visitors, 36 provided monthly attendance data for 2019 and 2020. For June, July, and August of 2020, three-quarters of those institutions were below 28% of their 2019 attendance. According to ACM and museum leaders, attendance fluctuated over these three months based on several factors, including regional variation in positive virus test rates, ongoing efforts to navigate regulations, and communities’ unique safety needs.
Museums have continued to ramp up their online presence through social media, websites, and online programming and exhibits. These efforts are helping institutions sustain and build their relationships with audiences. But understanding these relationships requires nuanced techniques that differ than those used for in-person visit measurements. Nearly two-thirds of children’s museums are tracking general website usage and social media engagement, using built-in or add-on analytical tools. Far fewer museums reported tracking attendance for online programming and virtual exhibits, whether free or fee-based. We will work with leaders to determine the best ways to measure online engagement so we can present comparable data in the future.
Museums’ investment in safety for visitors and personnel has a financial cost. As described above, museums have purchased a wide range of products or services. Spending appears to differ dramatically as a result, with museums reporting anywhere from $1,000 to $700,000 in re- opening expenses. Table 1 presents the average costs, as well as the proportion spent on reopening compared to overall expenses for March through August, 2020.
Table 1. Re-opening costs for March – August 2020, according to size.
| Size | Number of Museums | Average cost of reopening to date | Average proportion of overall expenses |
| Small | 3* | $6,432 | — |
| Medium | 18 | $11,733 | 3% |
| Large | 17 | $56,193 | 1.7% |
Note. n = 38 *
We cannot draw conclusions with data from only three museums, but we include this detail to inform early impressions and encourage ongoing participation in ACM Trends surveys.
There’s more to the story of reopening costs. Before the pandemic, more than a third of children’s museums’ income consisted of earned income, which included revenue from admissions, memberships, food service, gift shop, and special events (Fraser et al., 2018). While we have not yet collected financial data on every aspect of audiences’ experiences in 2020, we know that ticket purchases have decreased, memberships are shifting, and food service has likely changed. We’ll explore the details of the financial picture in a future Trends Report.
Children’s museums have started to experiment with reopening their doors and continue to produce virtual offerings. For those that are currently open for in-person visits or plan to open soon, investments in public health and safety procedures have reshaped play activities to limit social interaction. While these interactions are an important part of public learning, separation also illustrates the value of sharing, turn-taking, and public safety practices to protect others. All of these lessons can contribute to child development. Museums can emphasize these learning outcomes in communications to help families appreciate their potential value and learn ways to navigate this new normal.
At this writing, even with promising vaccines in the pipeline, it is fair to assume that museums may not return to former in-person attendance capacity until summer 2021 at the earliest. This reality – and the need to manage members’ expectations for extended membership renewal – suggest that investing in virtual or distant relationship development will be essential to maintaining goodwill and nurturing families both during and after the pandemic.
Families with children under five, who have lived with limited social contact for more than eight months, will arrive with distinct social skills and expectations as the country moves beyond the pandemic. Children’s museums can reinvent their services in ways that prioritize the needs of this group. In-person visitors will likely be thinking more about safety, security, and sanitation than they have in the past. Institutions can use these topics as access points to provide resources on caregiving and child development before, during, and after visits. This approach can also help maintain member and public support of museums through ongoing uncertainty and lockdowns.
Data for this report was collected by an online survey that ACM distributed through an email invitation to children’s museums in the US. The survey was open between September 24 and October 18, 2020. Overall, 96 museums responded to at least part of the survey, and not all museums answered every question in the survey. Researchers kept all responses that met a minimum threshold of questions answered. All participating museums are US-based ACM member institutions, representing 40% of membership. These museums represent all size categories, though only 7 Small museums participated.
Researchers conducted qualitative and quantitative analysis on the survey data. A researcher reviewed open- ended responses from the survey and coded themes in an iterative process to summarize information on safety activities and requests that museums have received from their members. The initial coding process produced a large number of codes, and subsequent coding led to aggregated and more meaningful themes. Researchers also calculated average (mean) occupancy levels and reopening costs, as well as proportions for other topics. Responses were consistent across size categories, unless otherwise noted.
ACM provided a sample of reopening plans and safety procedures that had been published on organizations’ websites. They also offered observations based on museum leaders’ input during ACM Leadership Calls.
Fraser, J., Flinner, K., Voiklis, J., & Rank, S. (2018). Where’s the Money Coming from? Children’s Museums’ Operating Budgets in 2016. ACM Trends 1(11). Knology & Association of Children’s Museums.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Knology produces practical social science for a better world. Follow Knology on Twitter.
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Alissa Rupp, FAIA, Frame | Integrative Design Strategies
When helping museum leaders lay the groundwork for good design, we talk about how to get a project off to a good start: finding the right team; preparing your internal team for the path ahead; understanding design as an iterative process; and acknowledging that the building and site will be the setting for reaching your strategic goals and realizing your vision. Project teams work together to address questions about what to design, how much to build, and how to move a project forward in a prudent way given the huge number of variables.
Prior to March 2020, these questions simply represented a typical design challenge: designers using their “crystal ball” to determine what will best serve the organization, at least in terms of the physical space. But in this incomprehensible and ever-changing year, the crystal ball is foggy. We’ve found our immediate way forward through a lot of observing, re-thinking, and learning by doing in the short-term. Long-term, big picture thinking has been harder. As national and international crises play out, project teams are asking: What now? And what’s next?
Some days, the pandemic pause seems long and drawn out, but really, it’s been five minutes in “design time.” Capital projects can only shift so quickly. In the meantime, museums are working hard to respond in real time. The first design responses have shown up in logistics, circulation patterns, new equipment, revised operations, and modified service models. A lot of great work has happened, but the bigger thinking has just begun: examining what makes museums essential in our uncertain future.
| In planning new museums and expansions, we are learning from existing ones.What is happening inside their facilities, and what is happening virtually? What is key to their survival? What have they changed?
DISCOVERY Children’s Museum in Las Vegas opened their empty temporary exhibit gallery as socially distanced remote schoolwork space for kids with limited internet access at home. KidsQuest Children’s Museum in Bellevue, Washington, doubled down on outreach, kits, toy libraries, and online resources for parents of preschool kids. Both museums acted quickly, finding funding for the programs only after they were underway. These museums are taking cues from their community, their elected and appointed officials, their members, and their boards. They are agile. They are reconfiguring and shifting strategies, learning as they go. Their responses go beyond stanchions, hand sanitizer, or thermometers at the doors, but include big moves that support their true work. |
The medical aspect of this pandemic will be managed, eventually. But while COVID-19 has been called a “once in a lifetime” event, subsequent pandemics are possible, because as a society we are not yet doing what it will take to prevent them. To think intelligently about the future of hands-on, immersive, interactive museum experiences, designers and museum staff must key in on fulfilling the museum mission. Is the organization prepared to be nimble, in its offerings and messages?
Being resilient must be more that a catch phrase. In designing for the future, resilience should be a core value, link directly to other core values, to sustainably guide everything the organization does. Whether you are open, emerging, or just beginning, your values likely include:
These key values cannot be addressed successfully by organizations that do not have a solid grip on their own financial, operational, and environmental sustainability. They require resilience.
The growing interest in outdoor space now holds even greater appeal.
Outdoor space is often the least expensive way to build usable program, exhibit, and visitor service spaces. Providing distance between people and groups may be easier outdoors. But even these spaces require organizational flexibility. Inclement weather of all types—now including air quality concerns that affected so much of the Western United States this summer—significantly affect the utility of the space. Design for resilience: instead of designing around rain or extreme heat or cold temperatures, these weather variables can become part of an outdoor exhibit when they occur.
The country—and specifically the experience economy—is experiencing a crisis within a crisis within a crisis involving social, political, economic, health, and environmental issues. What does this mean for museums in the future? No one knows for sure, but it could mean that, as communities emerge and recover from these crises, people will need what museums offer more than ever. Before launching—or even continuing—a new design project, ask:
Designing for resilience does not mean building “generic” spaces, or galleries that are so flexible they blur your identity. On the contrary, each museum’s solution must enhance its connection to its community and strengthen its relationship to its place. Design for spaces that allow you to highlight unique offerings and support essential services. Create a museum that belongs firmly in its geographical, historical, and cultural setting, so that it is easy for your audience to feel a sense of belonging there.
Design with a hard look at future audiences, both the near future and beyond. Will you serve tourists anytime soon, given the drastic reductions in family travel this year? Once things calm down, which visitors will return first, and who will come consistently? Has your core audience recovered financially, or are they still reeling from the shrinking service economy?
As we imagine the ways in which children’s museums will be needed going forward, we can respond by designing spaces that will add value in the future, and we can look at how to monetize them, either through operations income or targeted giving. The design task right now is to focus on what carries the field forward, instead of “waiting it out” until we can go back to where we were before. That return may not happen, and in many ways, we may not want it to.
As design professionals, it is hard to say “we don’t know yet” when asked about future of museums and what it means for our projects. Especially when we are laying the groundwork right now for a new or expanded museum. But we are learning, and we are hopeful that museums will fill an essential space in our communities going forward. Capital projects are intense and exhausting in the best of times. Optimism is an important tool in the toolbox for anyone thinking about a new exhibit, a new museum, or an expansion. But the work is important. Determine what makes you essential and design like your museum depends on it.
Alissa Rupp, FAIA, is the founder of FRAME | Integrative Design Strategies, which focuses on the design of places for community building, informal education, and lifelong learning.
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Cathlin Bradley, Kubik Maltbie, Inc.
These days, it seems like every conversation begins with, “during these uncertain times,” and for good reason. While many aspects of daily life are beginning to return to a pre-COVID state, things also continue to change every day. Museums, museum staff, and the firms that serve them are adapting to the “new normal”—another phrase we hear all too often. The reach of the COVID-19 pandemic extends beyond our personal lives, into the way our industry creates and maintains exhibits.
Historically, the exhibit planning process has involved a variety of stakeholders (museum staff, designers, fabricators, media producers) coming together, often in the same space, to brainstorm and collaborate. The social distancing protocols, travel restrictions, and concerns associated with COVID-19 have turned this on its head. Many museums are closed, with staff furloughed or working from home. Consultants are no longer traveling to job sites, even if they’re just down the street. Human contact has shifted from in-person to virtual interactions. In spite of these challenges, we’re enjoying some benefits of quarantine culture, such as reduced travel costs, increased flexibility, and acceptance of sweatpants as work attire. The importance of proximity of team members has also diminished, allowing museum teams to select the absolute best partners rather than those who happen to be closest. But, where there are pros, there are often cons, and some important aspects of the planning process have to be rethought.
Over the past six plus months, our industry has had to shift the way we plan, fabricate, and install museum exhibits… In many ways, exhibit planners like my organization have taken lemons and made lemonade. Instead of giving up, we’re become flexible and agile.
In the world of design and fabrication, accurate site dimensions create the foundation for an exhibit. The floor plan defines traffic flow through the space and anchors different experiences to the gallery’s key story or big idea. Design drawings that rely on architectural plans that have not been site-verified simply aren’t as accurate. Without access to museum galleries due to closures or travel restrictions, we have to get creative! Over the past few years, some very cool large format scanning technology has become available. These scanners are relatively easy to use and can capture entire rooms and even artifacts with a high degree of accuracy. And the added bonus? The data collected builds a 3D model that can be exported to CAD (computer-aided design software). So not only are dimensions more accurate, but teams can use this technology to save the step of creating the digital model, on which the design is based, ultimately saving time and money while providing a great result.
Once the planning is complete, we move on to fabrication. As we know, a key component of children’s museums is hands-on interactivity. When fabricating interactives in our shop, we conduct prototyping and testing to ensure exhibits are safe, durable, and function in the way they were designed. For our firm, these two critical steps have always been collaborative activities. The project team, including the museum staff, designer, and fabricators, come together in the shop (often with kids and families) to play. Prototypes are put through the ringer and tested to failure, while the project team takes notes and documents the experience with photos and videos. Based on these collective experiences, we specify modifications or make approvals.
With current travel restrictions and social distancing protocols, this hasn’t been possible, so we’ve shifted our process. Instead of hosting project teams in person, we’ve moved prototype testing and reviews into the virtual space. This allows us to collaborate in real-time while also recording the testing sessions for team members not able to join. We were concerned at first, but we’ve found that we often have more participants than we previously had in person. Museum staff who might not have traveled to our shop due to budget constraints or museum responsibilities are now able to join and contribute their insights. Participants can go back and review the video afterwards to collect their thoughts to provide better and more detailed feedback. The results have been fantastic. This has been so successful that we intend to add a virtual component to every shop review in the future.
Let’s dig into materials and their supply chains. Most fabricators and museums who build exhibits in-house rely on standard fabrication materials such as plywood, medium-density fiberboard (MDF), Sintra PVC board, and acrylic sheet goods. Before March, these materials were readily available. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were material shortages and longer lead times for many items, but our firm was very fortunate as we already had a stock of standard materials. Unfortunately, smaller organizations and in-house teams may have been (and continue to be) impacted. In order to overcome shortages, many organizations have begun considering alternative materials or making trade-offs.
If your organization is considering an alternative material, be sure to test it out. Any time a new material comes into our shop, we treat it as we would a prototype. We consider different use (and abuse) scenarios, constraints, and limitations. There are several key factors to keep in mind. Safety and durability are always first on the list. With hands-on or interactive exhibits, we have to ensure that materials will hold up to the inevitable wear and tear of little learners, always keeping in mind potential hazards such as pinch points and sharp corners. While it has always been important to clean exhibits, COVID-19 has made sanitizing a top priority. Materials must now withstand little hands and the chemicals used for disinfecting. Some material choices we would have made a year ago simply won’t hold up to disinfectants or scrubbing. A painted MDF surface may need to become solid surface, laminate, or boat board. Exhibits with soft surfaces and foam objects that are more difficult to clean may need to be redesigned or modified.
In addition to material shortages and delays, COVID-19 has created challenges with installation labor. When the pandemic began in March, our firm had installation crews onsite at several museums across the U.S. Some sites, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York, closed immediately and sent crews home. Others delayed installation starts by days or weeks, depending on local protocols. Eventually all job sites shut down for several months. This has created an opportunity to put our logistics skills to the test. Our project managers and site supervisors stay apprised of the different safety protocols for each state, some of which still include a fourteen-day quarantine before entering the job site. To overcome these and other challenges, every site installation is carefully planned with each task, including travel and quarantine, accounted for on a master schedule. This way, we are able to tackle uncertainties as they emerge. While the installation process may look different than it did before COVID-19, just like with planning and fabrication, flexibility is the name of the game.
In order to ensure that our team is always safe, we’ve instituted a corporate safety protocol, outlining our safety procedures that must be followed regardless of local regulations. This involves CDC-recommended social distancing as well as use of personal protective equipment (PPE) at all times. In addition to our internal protocols, each museum has different requirements, ranging from limitations on the number of people allowed to work in each room to additional PPE like “spoggles” (safety glasses that are goggles), face shields, and hand sanitizer stations.
An Industry Evolves
Over the past six-plus months, our industry has had to shift the way we plan, fabricate, and install museum exhibits. The current landscape remains uncertain, and will continue to be so until either effective treatments or a vaccine are developed. Children’s museums and the organizations that support them continue to move forward and develop new and better ways to serve children and families through informal learning experiences. To do so, we must be creative, proactively seeking new and different ways of doing things. In many ways, exhibit planners like my organization have taken lemons and made lemonade. Instead of giving up, we’re become flexible and agile. We’re digging into technology to meet our communication needs and even enhance the ways in which we collaborate. We’re finding new material solutions and optimizing site logistics. We’re still working together and doing our best to serve our clients. Someday, we will return to the world of in-person meetings and travel, but we’ll continue using this new toolkit of virtual skills to enhance our collaborations and produce optimal visitor experiences. It definitely hasn’t been easy, and we will continue to face challenges, but if we focus on what we’re learned and maintain our focus, the future will be bright.
Cathlin Bradley is director of business development at Kubik Maltbie, Inc., an exhibit fabrication firm that works with museums, visitor centers, and specialty environments.
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Langley Lease, National Children’s Museum
After nearly twenty years without a permanent home, National Children’s Museum finally reopened its doors to families on February 24, 2020. Located in downtown Washington, DC, this next-generation institution sparks curiosity and ignites creativity for children and their families through interactive STEAM-based exhibits that invite everyone to learn and discover together.
In its first few weeks, the museum welcomed nearly 10,000 visitors and delivered twenty-four free, hands-on field trips to local public schools. After only eighteen days, COVID-19 forced the museum to temporarily close. This closure was swift and necessary, as the virus spread quickly in the metropolitan area, but left us scrambling to maintain our momentum.
In order to continue to serve new members and families, we needed to find ways to support STEAM-based learning from home. From the jump, our small Climate Action Heroes exhibit was a natural fit to achieve this objective, while staying true to our mission “to inspire children to care about and change the world.”
Presenting exhibits and programs that are thought-provoking and relevant to children’s lived experiences and challenges is at the center of our design goal. The museum’s exhibits focus on inspiring children to become the next generation of thinkers, doers, and innovators, and present topics that most affect children today. Arguably, no topic is more relevant than climate change.
In 2018, the museum contracted with Design I/O, a creative studio specializing in the design and development of immersive, interactive installations and new forms of storytelling, to present Weather Worlds in our Innovation Sandbox rotating exhibit space, focused on emergent technologies and topical content. Weather Worlds invites visitors to use their bodies and gestural movements to create, manipulate, and control the weather through greenscreen technology and to explore the broader impact of human activity on the planet.
Early in the development process, we decided to engage children and families in climate activism by creating our Climate Action Heroes: Community Captain, Water Warrior, Pollinator Patrol, Mighty Meteorologist, and Arbor Avenger. These characters and the corresponding exhibit, adjacent to Weather Worlds, were developed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ensure that the content was solidly based in science.
Through a series of playful and thoughtful questions in the Climate Action Heroes exhibit, visitors identify their inner climate action superpower. The questions twist, turn, and jump throughout the space much like the classic hero’s journey. At the end, based on their answers, visitors are led to one of five large panels highlighting each character’s mission and superpowers. Water Warriors, for example, “protect our ocean and freshwater by keeping them clean. You focus on access to clean drinking water. You also help with drought preparation and response.” Each panel includes factual information about each hero and the rotating climate action challenges they face, encouraging repeat visitors to stay engaged in the fight.
Climate change can be a scary topic for children. Superheroes, however, are both hopeful and powerful figures. In Weather Worlds, children engage in imaginary play in ways that allow them to control the weather with superhero-like powers. By donning an imaginary (or real!) superhero’s cape, children have the courage to tackle any issue.
After closing our doors on Friday, March 13th, the entire team came together the following Monday to decide how to pivot. Our team is small, our member base is new, and we don’t have the sometimes burdensome historical expectations to navigate. Plus, we had newness on our side.
Before the museum opened in February, the team had begun to develop a website, climate-heroes.org, to house additional climate action content to engage children and families after their visit, as well as support field trips. Head in the Clouds, the museum’s in-person field trip for children grades PreK-2, used Weather Worlds and the Mighty Meteorologist superhero to support learning about weather and climate and the science of meteorology. Because Climate Action Heroes had a previously-established digital platform, these five characters and the small exhibit quickly became the focal point for our digital offerings during the museum’s initial closure.
In June, the team premiered our STEAM Daydream podcast on all available streaming platforms. The August episode focused on climate action and drove listeners to climate-heroes.org and the virtual exhibit superhero identity quiz. Through all of these digital offerings, we are able to tie our climate action content to our physical space, even though our doors remain closed. The generous support of donors and grants has allowed us to keep all of these resources free for families, educators, and partner institutions. As our physical closure has continued, we have garnered more and more attention for these virtual offerings, inspiring further expansion in that realm.
The new iteration of the National Children’s Museum has been a virtual museum ten times longer than a physical one. But this closure has taught us invaluable lessons in the power of digital expansion. We have reached nearly 650,000 people from all over the world through our digital offerings. As soon as we are able to safely re-open, we plan to maintain, and continue to expand, this virtual presence.
Children are already living in an increasingly digital world, and now one which has expanded exponentially due to COVID restrictions. But this world is also increasingly disrupted by climate change. Though this daunting challenge is currently eclipsed by immediate COVID-related and other crises, developing Climate Action Heroes helps inform and inspire children about this escalating planet-wide problem. A second virtual field trip will focus exclusively on the Climate Action Superheroes in a way that will extend its relevance beyond our COVID closure. Because the Climate Action Heroes exhibit is only a temporary installation, this virtual field trip will continue to use the content and brand in future applications.
The new iteration of the National Children’s Museum has been a virtual museum ten times longer than a physical one. But this closure has taught us invaluable lessons in the power of digital expansion… Through all of these digital offerings, we are able to tie our climate action content to our physical space, even though our doors remain closed.
In a time when children and families are spending more time online, it is important to create digital content that supports and promotes learning away from screens. The Climate Action Heroes website sparks the learning and discovery for families to help in their homes and communities in real time. The COVID closure process has also taught us an important lesson in designing physical exhibits with the digital experience in mind. The demand for online learning will continue into the future, by both families and educators, with or without a global pandemic. Expanding our reach outside of our local and tourist communities is will drive our work in the future. If we want to inspire children to care about and change the world, we need to be able to reach that world.
Langley Lease is the exhibits coordinator at the National Children’s Museum in Washington, DC.
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Sharon Vegh Williams, North Country Children’s Museum
Like museums across the U.S., attendance at North Country Children’s Museum trickled, then came to a halt when we closed our doors to visitors on March 16, 2020. The outlook was bleak. How long could our newly opened—and now newly shut—museum remain viable while continuing to plan for the future?
Facing a crisis no amount of planning could have predicted, a few things were in our favor. Namely, we had raised almost all of our building, construction, and exhibits costs before we opened in 2018. Our only debt is a modest mortgage, and our overhead is low: internet, phone, and electricity are donated by local utility providers. In addition, as a small startup, we have flexibility to shift staff roles and responsibilities quickly. During the closure, I worked to keep our talented education team on payroll. With exhibits unavailable, we leveraged grants and donations to pivot our focus to online, lending, and outdoor programming.
Two days after the closure, our education team started creating STEAM videos and challenges on the museum’s social media sites. We ran daily activities on a YouTube channel. In June and July, our science educator developed take-home kits, available for one week and free for members, with all materials provided. Each kit contained a few related projects on science themes ranging from bees, pollinator seeds, and homemade honey lollipops, to learning about radiation by making UV reactive bracelets, to extracting your own DNA. The kits were booked throughout the summer. Since reopening to visitors, we have refashioned the kits for use as STEAM table activities.
We created a Community Coloring Book Mural on a large exterior wall of Potsdam Tire & Auto, a building adjacent to our parking lot. Our arts educator designed a paint-by-number outline and twenty families signed up online to complete a specific section, one family at a time. A local college lent support, and the tire shop and other donors contributed as well. The project was joyful, active, and collaborative while still adhering to social distancing guidelines. The “I Love New York” campaign got wind of it, and our mural was one of ten featured on the New York state tourism site. Ultimately, families completed a quarter of the 120-by-fifteen-foot wall. We had such a tremendous response to the project that we plan to finish it, one quarter at a time, over the next three summers.
Like many other closed museums, we spent some time reviewing and refurbishing our still fairly new exhibits in addition to continuing to plan new ones. We had already raised the money, contractors were less than busy, so we took advantage of the visitor-free building. In our Construction Zone exhibit, we decided to replace a balance beam and bridge building activity that had never worked well with a crane to lift blocks. In our Kids’ Co-op Natural Grocery Store, we added a “refrigerated” section and “baking table.” A local art teacher with time on his hands helped us make other small repairs and improvements. These exhibit tune-ups also contributed to a marketing message to our waiting visitors: look at the cool stuff we will have for you when you return.
Reopening with limited capacity began in August, with four weeks of nearly full themed camps. These camps gave us a chance to test out our new health and safety protocols, including daily health and temperature checks. Kids enrolled in our videography camp created our reopening video. Kids can often deliver serious messages (“If you are sick, please stay home!”) in ways that adults can’t.
On September 2, we reopened to the general public. We follow New York State indoor museum mandates, which, at this writing, limit capacity to 25 percent and require masks for all visitors two years and older. At the now-shielded front desk, families are asked health-screening questions per CDC guidance; anyone who has been in a high-risk state within the last two weeks is not permitted to enter. Visitors must sign the log with their name, phone number, and time and date of entry should we be notified by public health contact tracers.
While some COVID-based modifications have been made, the 3,500-square-foot museum’s original exhibits remain intact. In addition to our own increased cleaning, we give visitors a baggie of sanitized wipes and ask them to wipe down toys and manipulatives after use. We’ve added wall-mounted hand sanitizing dispensers and social distancing signage throughout the museum. A “reopening” tab on our website recommends online sign-ups for weekend hours to ensure a spot, just in case we are full. In September, we only filled to the current capacity twice. In general, attendance has been about 15 percent of our pre-COVID numbers, but that number is increasing weekly. Fee-based, drop-off STEAM class sessions for school age children have been added to fill the gaps in childcare, as schools in our district are partially online.
As we maintain and adapt our current exhibits, for our own sense of joy and agency, we decided to move forward with planned exhibits. With Clarkson University Digital Arts faculty and students, we’re finishing our History of a North Country Childhood digital interactive exhibit. A portion of my salary while working on this exhibit and other cultural programs is covered by an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities CARES Act. The exhibit’s stories, already recorded pre-COVID, will be presented in shadow boxes, the sound activated by pressing a button. We are also moving forward with expansion plans for our undeveloped second floor. Still in the early planning stages, this is projected to open in early 2023.
Have we adjusted these new exhibit designs based on COVID-19 experiences? Not in any direct way. Perhaps we will factor in new considerations as we work with an exhibit design firm on the second-floor expansion. We are hopeful, like everyone, that the scientific and medical community will have answers by that time and people will be eager to reenter the public sphere for play and connection.
Sharon Vegh Williams is the executive director of the North Country Children’s Museum in Potsdam, New York.
| This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue. |
By Beth Whisman, Children’s Discovery Museum
Walking through an empty children’s museum, it’s easy to spot the exhibits that need work. Finding the time and space to fix everything without interrupting guests too much is another story. In July, the team at Children’s Discovery Museum in Normal, Illinois, suddenly had plenty of time.
After first closing our doors to visitors in March 2020, we planned to reopen during the summer. We spent weeks planning and investing in new sanitation equipment, adding air filters, and changing operations protocols. Then, Illinois officials surprised everyone with a last-minute rule change that forced all hands-on exhibits to remain closed. We went from a 60-day shutdown to a 200+ day closure … and counting.
Despite present limitations, fortunately we are able to repair and upgrade exhibits and plan for the future even as peer institutions are fighting to survive. Fifteen years ago, the museum’s founders strategically partnered with the Town of Normal to become a catalyst project for its downtown revitalization project. The town supports the museum’s overhead and owns the building. After laying off forty part-time workers and cutting spending, this partnership allows remaining staff to keep planning and working.
Before the pandemic hit, the museum’s nonprofit foundation had announced plans to fund a new medical exhibit. In fall 2019, local health experts gathered to help us decide the exhibit’s learning objectives. Each of them had their own goals that included social-emotional health, specialty areas of medicine, and disease prevention. But even with their broad range of health expertise, they all agreed on the No. 1 health lesson they wanted visitors to learn: “Wash your hands.”
It seemed almost simplistic at the time, but a year later it has become a centerpiece of the exhibit. We changed a digital handwashing game into an actual working sink to allow visitors to wash their hands while they play. Additional plumbing expenses were considerable, but we felt the upgrade was necessary.
The shelter-at-home order delayed fabrication and our fundraiser to raise money for the exhibit turned into a virtual event. Still, the project had community support. The creative challenge of updating content and working with a remote team to engineer complicated pieces kept our staff and board focused, and we did our best work in years. Healthy Me is a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. It provides a new experience for our museum members and visitors to look forward to as they wait for the museum to reopen.
Healthy Me also includes a tele-health interactive with two cameras and screens that encourage role playing. We targeted this topic because remote technology is becoming vital for pediatric mental health in our region. Before COVID, we often had to explain the importance of helping kids become familiar with using screens to talk with healthcare providers. That isn’t a problem anymore.
Other features include an ambulance, a lab with microscopes, a digestion maze that ends with a wall of Whoopee cushions and facts about bodily noises. The exhibit is now complete. Until we are able to reopen to the public, our foundation board is using the space to develop existing and prospective donors. Small groups in masks can take tours and learn about our future exhibit plans.
Several of our “original” exhibits and our Luckey Climber are showing their age and need to be replaced. During Zoom design sessions with Spencer Luckey in April and May during the travel moratorium, he and our skeleton crew talked with local architects and engineering firms to establish our vision and budget. The redesign includes important COVID-revealed upgrades, such as selecting materials that are easier to clean and improving access for staff to reach the nooks and crannies.
The silver lining of this experience is that our staff has much stronger ties now. We discovered hidden skills: our education manager showed a critical eye for construction drawings and our membership director redesigned traffic flow. Our exhibits manager helped build STEAM activity kits for remote learning. Our whole team had to trouble-shoot design and budget gaps to get exactly what we wanted for Healthy Me and the Luckey Climber.
The Children’s Discovery Museum will reopen when this crisis ends. We will welcome back visitors and members with our usual high standards. Just as important, we will reemerge with a stronger vision, a better sense of our value, and exciting exhibits that will inspire the love of learning through the power of play!
Beth Whisman is the executive director of Children’s Discovery Museum in Normal, Illinois.
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Developed by Kate Marciniec, Boston Children’s Museum
In early 2020, as COVID-19 made its way across the globe, children’s museums closed their doors not knowing what the future had in store. Under challenging circumstances, they learned how to adapt and identify new ways to serve audiences while their facilities were closed, such as through virtual programming and activity kits to support at-home play. Eventually for some institutions, efforts again shifted back to building operations and re-opening safely for visitors. Across the field colleagues shared resources on cleaning, ticketing, and exhibit modifications.
Now, having entered a new phase of living with the pandemic, museums are exploring long term implications of COVID on our operations, programmatic offerings, and new exhibit projects. In the exhibits world, it is not uncommon to be looking to the future, working on projects that won’t see the light of day for several years. COVID brought many of these projects to a screeching halt. But, as museums tentatively begin planning for the future, what impact has the pandemic had on development and design projects? What new challenges are present, and what strategies and criteria have emerged?
We consulted three museum colleagues on how the pandemic has influenced their design and development practices.
Karima Grant (KG), Founder and Executive Director, ImagiNation Afrika, Dakar, Senegal
With over twenty-five years’ experience working in the field of human development and education on three continents, Karima now “seeks to change the ecosystem of learning for over one million young changemakers in Africa.” She leads a diverse team, designing and developing innovative educational programming that integrates local culture, play, and experiential learning to develop creative and critical thinking in children ages six months to nineteen years. ImagiNation Afrika implements an ecosystem approach to support young African changemakers across West Africa.
Maeryta Medrano (MM), AIA, Founder and President, Gyroscope Inc., Oakland, CA
A licensed architect, Maeryta leads her staff of imaginative, creative designers with holistic design strategies integrating learning environments with buildings and sites. Place-based family learning, equity, and inclusion for all abilities are values she instills in every project. Maeryta believes all children are full of potential and listens with a Reggio Emilia inspired ear. She is Principal-in-Charge of the new Louisiana Children’s Museum in City Park, Explore & More at Canalside, the Thinkery, MOXI, Minnesota Children’s Museum, and the emerging El Paso Children’s Museum.
Stephen Wisniewski (SW), Visual and Exhibits Director, Flint Children’s Museum, Flint, MI.
Stephen has a long history at the museum: he played there as a child in 1985, began working there in 2001, and became Exhibits Director in 2014. With a PhD in American Culture, he has taught and worked in visual art and DIY design projects in independent art and education spaces. He has also worked in other museums on exhibit design and installation, artifact conservation, and selling admission tickets. But mostly, he likes to build stuff for kids to play with.
Is your institution—or are your clients’ institutions—open to visitors? If so, have you invested in or recommended any major changes—long-term or short-term—to respond to shifting design criteria related to mitigating transmission?
KG: Senegal was not as severely hit by COVID-19 as other countries around the world have been, but ImagiNation Afrika is not open now. We are planning to open in January, but are waiting to hear from government officials when it’s safe. The museum is moving from a traditional building in a seaside community location to a new, more centrally located site in the city with lots of indoor and outdoor space. Our exhibits—installation pieces created jointly by children, artists, and designers—were already planned. We are using this unexpected extra time to do more careful planning for our outdoor spaces and for new programming.
In the short term, at the end of October/beginning of November, the museum will participate for the third year in Partcours, a city-wide art initiative that involves lots of museums, galleries, and cultural spaces. This year, ImagiNation Afrika will create outdoor, public art installations.
MM: Depending on our clients’ geographic region, responses have been very different: “open” for essential workers’ children; “open” with limited capacity; “open” with staggered time slots with cleaning between each set of new visitors; “open” one day a week; and some have completely closed to visitors. At this writing, a few more clients are opening up with limited capacity.
We might be going out on a limb here, but suggestions to eliminate or reduce hands-on, interactive, and sensory experiences in children’s museums seem short-sighted. More than ever, museum-going families will likely seek out social interactions, sensory experiences with real objects, and physical environments without being surrounded by digital projections and glowing screens. We are Zoomed out!
With that said, obviously, technology is a valuable tool right now. Pre-pandemic, some of our clients did not have capability for video conference calling, high-speed internet, or newer computers. This has all shifted over the last six months as museums have re-evaluated operational and communication solutions best supported by technology.
Strategies we have been recommending over the years, but now even more, are to invest in robust, networked, museum-wide technology platforms, software, and capacity to connect, communicate, collect, and analyze information to allow museums to quickly update exhibits, programming, and operations. Children’s museums can be a welcome escape from screens. However, technology in support of interactive, learning environments, such as embedded RFID tags, can make the experience even more engaging.
SW: Flint Children’s Museum is not currently open to visitors, and at this writing we have no projected opening date.
How are you balancing responding to immediate needs while also looking to the future?
KG: We’ve always been a community-focused museum. Now, with social distancing and no-touching, we are focusing on a major campaign among schools, teachers, parents, and children to provide information about the social emotional impact of COVID on children. Future planning revolves around opening the museum in its new location.
MM: The most important skill right now is to be able to think outside of the box—the museum box. For example, could your parking lot become a drive-in school, like the old drive-in movie theaters but instead with museum staff facilitating fun activities in the car? Or could you use the same parking lot for a car wash—children wash their family cars, parents take selfies, upload to social media, and celebrate at the end with a giant bubble fest! Creative problem-solving is always needed and now, all museums are being forced to try something new. The unknown is an opportunity for change.
To leverage design strategies into effective potential future pandemic responses, we encourage our clients to carefully consider architectural schemes that allow for a flexible structural system and museum layouts that accommodate reconfiguration. This includes efficient adjacencies for staff operations (quick access to cleaning areas and equipment), nimble ticketing systems (adjusted prices and schedules to support fluctuating capacity), smart building systems that can be managed remotely, and communicating to visitors in real time.
SW: In the first several months of the pandemic, we spent most of our time creating and revising a reopening plan. We didn’t know when the plan would be put in place, but we knew we needed to be prepared. With no reopening date yet, we’re still in that liminal space, but constantly thinking of new ways to stay active and present in our community.
The circumstances are obviously unique, but this is familiar territory for small museums with limited staff and resources—your immediate needs and your vision of the future always coexist as interrelated concerns equally clamoring for your attention.
What new design and development projects are you now working on?
KG: As a result of COVID, we are rethinking classically built indoor museum spaces and focusing on how we can do more outside in natural spaces, all continuing with our basic philosophy of hands-on learning. In Dakar, a lot of new housing construction is being built with no yards or not much outdoor space.
In our previous location, we had six to seven exhibit spaces, including a makerspace, art lab, early childhood space, gallery, and cafeteria, all in 1,200 square meters. The new museum will have the same basic plan, but the design emphasizes a greater fluidity between outdoor and indoor spaces.
COVID-19 slowed down our fundraising and with no income almost completely decimated our operating funds. We are starting again, slowly. We’ll build and reopen with three of the six to seven planned exhibits. New exhibit designs are in a circular format with a center hub and smaller activity stations built around it. For example, our new makerspace will continue with our customary woodworking activities indoors, but with added gardening activities in built garden spaces outside.
MM: The entire museum world has been hit hard and we are all still trying to figure it out. But it’s a great time to ask, “What do we do best?” By partnering more with schools, libraries, hospitals, can we affect those learning environments to be as engaging as our children’s museums? In what ways might our children learn better in museums than in typical public classrooms? Would an National Science Foundation (NSF) or Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant investigate those situations to learn what works best?
Gyroscope has been fortunate enough to be part of a very inspiring NSF research project to design activities for critically ill children in hospital settings. We will share what we learn over the next few years.
The types of projects in design and development right now have one thing in common: they are all hybrids.
SW: I am working on redesigning and transitioning our small satellite location at the local farmer’s market into a retail space, since local capacity restrictions prohibit the hands-on activities we normally run there.
We recently restarted a longer-term project begun two years ago: a partnership with our local dental association to create a large-scale interactive dental health exhibit. Design and fabrication will hopefully begin in the next few months.
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced when designing and developing a new exhibition during a pandemic?
KG: Money and access to the workforce. Usually a team of local craftspeople builds our exhibits. They very much want the work now, but we must assure their safety and follow COVID guidelines. If they need new materials, for example, we don’t want them traveling to new communities to get them (increasing their risk of acquiring or spreading COVID). There have also been curfews in Senegal, which limit workers’ ability to travel.
Our exhibit development process involves highly guided workshops to elicit kids’ contributions to the designs. As we plan for new exhibits, such as our upcoming Partcours installation, we are working with well-known designers, including Bibi Seck, whose exhibit will imagine the future of transportation with a new type of vehicle. Normally, we would involve children in designing this outdoor event installation, the only space in the whole festival dedicated to children, but this process is more complicated this year.
Our communities include children living with many levels of care; some are basically taking care of themselves. Although Senegal is on the downside of COVID, a big religious event is coming up and we worry about a spike. Dakar is a densely populated city. The new museum is in a much bigger public space and more accessible to a cross-section of children. We have been working with the mayor to choose the best temporary space for our Partcours exhibit installations. But, there is not much open, green space. How much is available? Should/can we fence it off to limit access for health reasons?
MM: Museums are implementing far-reaching changes to their operational and business models, and yet the bases for these changes are constantly evolving. In response to the skyrocketing stakes, many museums will go all-in on transforming into the institutions they need to be for their communities. Some see this as a great time to reflect and reinvent/reimagine themselves. This era will give rise to museums that are educational powerhouses, agile to the core, and radically community-serving.
SW: Primarily working remotely, without daily access to my workshop or any actual materials, has been a challenge. My design approach involves trying things out and experimenting. Everything now just takes way more time and way more steps, since we can’t work in groups or with volunteers, or even with each other in the usual ways.
The biggest challenges about planning future exhibit design and development are all the unknowns. Returning to pre-COVID conditions completely is unlikely, so what kinds of “hands-on” experiences can we think about building?
Can you share some strategies you’ve implemented during this time to respond to the challenges that have surfaced?
KG: For the future car project described above, instead of working together to build a full-size version, our team has been holding mini-workshops for kids where each child can produce a mini-replica of a future car. Since only a limited number of kids is allowed in a workshop, we have divided it into two groups: 1) a dedicated school group and 2) kids who are homeless or from low income communities, identified by social services. We want to be sure exhibits are designed/prototyped with a broad representation of kids. It costs more: we have to add a budget line for masks, since we can’t be sure kids from schools or other community groups will come with masks on.
SW: As a small museum, the staff here have always worn lots of hats and worked in a collaborative ways to get things done. The pandemic has only intensified that dynamic. Like other museum staff, we’ve been thrown into the deep end and are learning how to do things that we never anticipated. Maintaining good communication with the rest of the team has become a conscious strategy; it’s easy to become isolated.
How has the pandemic shaped/changed your approach to creating new experiences for your visitors?
KG: We’re now thinking of the museum as something beyond just physical space. Yes, a building or location is still important, especially since kids know the museum as a place they always come to.
Physical places are important—we can’t abandon them. But like U.S. children’s museums, our museum is also a critical organization to deal with many other needs, such as social justice and food issues. We need a physical space identity to support all these activities. We were one of the first organizations in Dakar to have a dedicated preschool space. In our new location, we will continue to have one, but will add an open-air preschool garden.
We are focusing more on programs, including ones available through social media. 60 percent of our annual budget comes from vacation or summer programming.
MM: The antidote to the strain and stress of Zoom Fatigue may be getting back outside into nature. The growth of forest schools in Europe and nature-based play curricula during this pandemic have been good reminders for how successful adventure playgrounds are. Real materials and tools inspire children to affect their own environments, find interesting things to investigate (bugs, worms, snails), build their own structures, and create their own experiences. We have always been a Reggio-inspired design studio, and this approach still holds true now. As always, we are designing experiences that support change, creating flexible platforms for visitor discovery, exploration, and creativity.
SW: Like a lot of museums, we’ve tried to pivot to an increased online presence through virtual programming, take-home activities, and other remote strategies to help us stay in the lives of the families that normally visit the museum. Although we’ve gotten a great response so far, it’s been tough for our small staff to constantly create new kinds of content, while juggling the other parts of our jobs.
If you look at an exhibit design project in the works right now, and ask yourself, “what if another pandemic happens after this is installed?” would you be satisfied the project would remain viable as is, or are there any changes you would make to it right now?
KG: For us now, it’s all about the physical space: we will be able to serve more kids in an open, outside space. July-September is our rainy season, but this past year there was a greater amount of rain. Like everyone else, we are being affected by climate change. Our new location is farther inland, so it will be drier than the former coastal one and better for outdoor play year-round.
COVID definitely was a backslap. But it has encouraged more conversations about who we are. What is our core function? Before everything was linked to the physical space, but we are rethinking that. Of course, we’re rethinking our budget too. But this is an exciting opportunity for leaders to include children’s museums in conversations where they never thought to include them before.
MM: For those clients in the process of choosing a new project site as part of strategic master planning and feasibility studies, we recommend looking for a location with ample square footage for outdoor experiences, both at grade level and on rooftops. These types of spaces will provide facility rental opportunities as well as outdoor programming in the future.
For our projects that are in the early stages of design, we are recommending spaces with even more natural light (collections permitting, of course).
For our projects in final design and/or under construction, there have been some initial investigations into UV cleaning systems, special antiviral coatings on all surfaces, and touchless “touch screens,” but none so far have been fully incorporated. We continue to research options and evaluate efficacy, cost, and long-term operations. While some strategies may be more short-term, overall, museums will see a long-term need to communicate cleaning and safety protocols into the foreseeable future.
SW: Looking back eight months ago, when I was actively designing a special exhibit right before the pandemic hit, I now realize just how much of it will be impossible to do whenever we reopen. A folder full of notes and exhibit component sketches will have to be scrapped and revised for whatever the world will look like in six months or a year. Will there be permanent changes in capacity, proximity, or even the kinds of activities we can do? Even the fundamentals of how I think about our building and use that space will need to be completely reimagined. So, as a designer at a museum that hasn’t reopened, I’m still thinking one day at a time and trying to be ready for whatever might happen.
