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.

Climate Action Heroes

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.

Five Characters and an Exhibit Lead the Way

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.

What We Learned

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.

This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue.

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.

This article is part of the “Exhibit Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue.

An Interview with Paul Orselli, POW!

Mary Maher, Editor/Interviewer

For nearly forty years, Paul Orselli has worked to create inventive and playful museums and exhibits.  He is now the President and Chief Instigator at POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.), an exhibit design and development corporation he founded.

Paul has consulted on museum projects in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  His clients include the New York Hall of Science, the Exploratorium, the National Science Foundation, and Science Projects in London.  He has taught and lectured at numerous universities on museum topics and has presented at professional conferences around the world.  He is also a grant recipient of the Fulbright Specialist program.

Paul has also been the editor and originator of the four best-selling Exhibit Cheapbooks, published by Association of Science and Technology Centers, and has served on the board of NAME (National Association for Museum Exhibition).

MAHER: What was your first museum experience, and what led you to a museum career?

ORSELLI: When I was a little kid, my father took me on a visit to the Cultural Center in downtown Detroit, which housed the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit Historical Museum was nearby. At least that’s the story I tell myself. I used to kid my father when he was alive, that if he had brought me to a courtroom or a hospital that day he would’ve gotten a lawyer or a doctor. But instead he got a museum person. I think in the end he was quite happy with that.

On a later visit with my family to the Ontario Science Center in Toronto, we spent the whole day there. Afterwards I wrote them a fan letter saying how much I enjoyed the museum—especially the chemistry demonstrations—and asked if they could send me some of the “recipes.” They send me a letter back with a photocopy of their floor chemistry demonstrations that included stuff like sulfuric acid. I remember riding my purple banana seat Sears bicycle back from school with a big bottle of sulfuric acid that my seventh grade science teacher gave me. And I did the experiments (with some near catastrophes!) from their booklet of floor chemistry demonstrations. I wish I had saved that letter!

M: Growing up in Cleveland, my family never went to museums, and Catholic schools didn’t take field trips. But my dad had a boat and we used to sail around Lake Erie. On one trip with him and my two friends when I was about eleven, we docked in a little marina in Vermilion, Ohio. He handed me $10 and told us to go find some dinner. So, we walked downtown, found a hot dog stand and then a museum, the Vermilion Nautical Museum. It was in an old Victorian house. The front door was wide open, no one there. We walked in, wandered around, and saw a display of jars of an invasive species, lamprey eels, with those big sucker mouths, all sizes. These looked like green beans in a jar, grey green beans by then. My friends dared me to steal one, so I grabbed one, and we ran out, I took it back to the boat. I carried it around for years. Later, I majored in art history major, spending a lot of time in the Cleveland Museum of Art. But I didn’t lift anything.

O: I just learned something about you! Great Lakes lamprey eel stealer! Holy Mackerel! No, Holy Lamprey!

M: On to exhibits. Basic question: What is an exhibit anymore?

O: Like that old question of what is a museum anymore, an exhibit can be anything. I’m averse to coming up with a dogmatic definition because the boundaries keep shifting, which is good.

Olafur Eliasson, one of my favorite living artists, does a lot of phenomenological art, playing with light, art, and motion. Some of his pieces look like high-end, very aesthetically-pleasing science center exhibits. Someone described the experience of seeing his work as a “wow” followed by an “aha.” There is my definition of the exhibit.

Eliasson had a show called Look Again at the Museum of Modern Art. Riding the escalator, making this stately museum ascendancy to the second floor, you noticed something weird. Everybody moving where you were headed looked like a black and white movie. It was like a reverse Wizard of Oz. That was the “wow”: what’s going on? Then the “aha” when you realized a set of yellow sodium lights, perfectly aligned to the floor landing, took out the color and made everything look monochromatic. A lot of the best exhibit experiences—and they don’t have to be interactive—are wows and then ahas. Seeing the Diego Rivera frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Art is a very transcendent experience. I’ve probably been in that space dozens of times. But it’s still very, very impressive.

M: You’ve taught exhibit design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Bank Street, the University of the Arts, and in places around the world.  How do you begin to teach people to initiate a design process that leads to a wow-aha exhibit?

O: That’s easy. It’s the same process I use for myself: fall in love with what you’re working on. I have to get so excited that I am just bursting to share what I’ve learned with other people. For example, recently, I’ve been working on the D&H Canal Museum in Upstate New York. I didn’t know a thing about canals, much less the Delaware & Hudson Canal, which opened in 1828 and stretched from the Hudson River to Upstate New York. The exhibit development process started with a very fundamental question: why would anyone go to the trouble of digging something like this? There were no steam shovels, bulldozers, or dynamite at the time. It was all done with picks and shovels by Irish and German immigrants. They essentially created a huge watery highway, a gigantic trench, with locks—for what? Coal!

A canal was the most efficient way to move coal from Pennsylvania mines to east coast shipping ports! Basically, what I think about and what I tell students, is if you can’t be genuinely excited about an exhibit, why in the world do you think a visitor would?

When I see what I consider a “bad” exhibit, it’s not the idea that was bad, but the implementation. You could do a cool exhibit about anything if you can find something in the idea that is legitimately exciting for you. I once met the president of the International Sand Collectors Society. He had samples of sand from every country in the world, from locations like the Great Pyramids to Gettysburg. He even had some trinitite, a fused glass radioactive sand from the White Sands nuclear testing grounds, which was technically, probably dangerous or illegal to obtain. But nevertheless, his knowledge and enthusiasm were so contagious, that interaction got me excited about sand.

M: What important changes have you seen in exhibits in the last five years, and why do you think they are happening?

O: One of the biggest changes is the increased interaction with our audience. Museums are no longer “Moses coming down from the mount” with tablets of wisdom for visitors, who are merely the vessels to receive it. That sort of curator über alles approach has shifted, and I think for the better. Because if we really want to make our experiences as accessible to as many people as possible, we have to meet them where they are and treat them with respect, engage them to think about a topic and make them part of the process.

M: Do you know if this shift has increased attendance at museums that now work this way?

O: Speaking with Randi Korn recently on this subject, it turns out that even though the United States population is growing, museum attendance relative to that population and also across demographic strata is not growing. How do you crack that? It’s a challenge to balance audience interests and needs with what a museum can offer. If a museum decided to hold a pie-eating contest and give everyone free ice cream, a lot of people would come. But is that what a museum wants to do? Would visitors attracted to this kind of activity come back? Museums are rightly saying they want to be responsive to the communities and audiences they serve, but where is the line? How do you stay true to your institution at the same time you stay true to the people you want to engage with?

That word “true” leads into a related word, which is “trust.” Because if somebody feels like they are a token or you’re just engaging with them to check a box or get a grant, you’ve broken trust. That’s not how you continue any relationship, let alone a relationship between an institution and its communities. It’s a tricky. But you know it when you see it. How do museums measure success? The blunt force instrument of admissions numbers are relatively easy number to come by. But what do they really mean? If your admissions numbers went up 5 percent from last year, does that mean you’re a 5 percent better museum?

M: Well, admissions numbers are a measure, but they aren’t the sole measure. You can’t totally throw them out.

O: Well, I’ll accept that you can’t throw them out completely, but we over rely on them. How can we measure not just quantity but also quality of visits?

Another way to measure a museum’s value relates to the stories we told each other at the beginning of this call. Some museum visits are not just one-time experiences but inspire life-changing stories. Kids visit a natural history museum, see the dinosaurs and become paleontologists. Or go to the Air & Space Museum and became an astronaut or a pilot.  There are plenty of these stories, but how do you harvest them? I’m not minimizing the difficulty of this endeavor, but I am saying that what you measure and how you measure it matters. As a visitor, you can tell when a museum clicks. You go there and it feels welcoming and interesting. You’re not thinking about yourself as the one millionth visitor there that day. You’re just thinking, “This is an awesome place.”

M: How does a museum get this way? How is this “awesome” experience created?

O: That goes back to the authentic feelings and efforts of the people who created the museum experiences. In one of my museum FAQ video interviews with museum educator Leslie Bedford, she talks about an experience she had in a Japanese museum connected with Zen Buddhism. Sitting quietly near a placid lake on the museum grounds, she heard a plop in the lake. She didn’t know if this was a natural plop or a water drop that was programmed to fall. Nevertheless, it was a very impactful moment that made her think of a haiku related to that kind of experience.

There are plenty of experiences in museums and other places where people have really sweated the details because they want to frame the possibility for something awesome to happen.

M: Children are very good at sensing a flat exhibit. They’re less inhibited by social expectations, “Oh, I’m in a museum, I’m supposed to like this.” They vote with their feet, or their attention span.

O: “This is boring. Let’s leave.”

M: In your work with museums and other exhibit designers, are you seeing any COVID-inspired changes in either the process or the product in terms of exhibit design? Are people adjusting their plans? Or, are they just waiting it out until things return to “normal”?

O: The negative, knee-jerk response is the notion of a touchless museum. I understand the motivation: we need to be mindful of our visitors’ reasonable concerns about their health and safety. But simply covering up all the touchscreens, warehousing all the interactive exhibits, and making sure you have more hand sanitizer stations and floor stickers for physical distancing may look safer, but it’s not a better experience. Why should I come to your museum if basically you’re taking away everything that makes it a great experience?

So what’s a positive response? I wrote a blog post, sort of tongue-in-check, but I suggested instead of hands-on museums we should have “feets on museums.”

Bad grammar, but my point was that there are other ways to allow for physical engagement and actually increase universal design and accessibility for visitors with all kinds of cognitive capacities. A high-tech example might be a projection experience where people could use their feet— or even wheelchairs or canes—to spark a process. Even if 500 people had stepped on that floor projection thing, the 501st visitor isn’t going to wig out by touching a spot with their feet. A low-tech example could involve installing a mat switch instead of a push button in an interactive exhibit. This is an opportunity to be more creative.

M: Some of the initial responses to remove the touchables came from museums trying to safely reopen as soon as they could, both to serve their audiences and for financial reasons.

O: The notion of the touchless museum hasn’t gone away. You can say, “Well, we can’t go back to how things were before March 2020.” But a lot of people haven’t internalized that verbiage. They really want to go back to how things were exactly before March 2020.

Most museums don’t have a large endowment to ride out COVID-19 with no changes. They should be thinking about what they can do to provide a better museum experience for more people. Forget COVID even happened.

M: Well, that’s impossible.

O: Okay, but let’s just say you acknowledge we are still in the midst of COVID, but your decisions going forward are still the same whether COVID happened or not. How can we provide the best, most interesting, entertaining, fun, engaging experience and still be mindful of people’s legitimate concerns—access, financial, physical, societal? That’s still going to be the move five weeks, five months or five years from now if you are a great museum.

M: Some children’s museums have decided not to re-open until they can offer the experience they want to, so they’re going to wait until the environment is safer.

O: I applaud those museums. New York Hall of Science, a large museum in a major metropolitan area, announced that, unlike a lot of other New York museums, they’re not re-opening until after 2021. That was a really tough decision. But difficult situations show you who people and institutions really are. Who are the people, the institutions, the directors, the boards, the museum workers, who made these tough decisions? Those are the museums and the leaders in the field who I want to pay attention to. Some museums are looking for creative ways to respond to immediate needs, such as a UK museum selling grocery items through its gift shop, because the local community needs them and they aren’t easily accessible otherwise. Other museums are using their parking lots for deployment of COVID testing. Some museums have stepped up in ways that don’t neatly fit into a pre COVID understanding of what their mission is, but they still felt compelled to respond in the ways they could.

M: But many children’s museums are reopening, fully or in some capacity, for good reasons. They provide important services to children and families in their communities.

O: The question of whether—or when—to reopen relates to the question of what happens after you reopen. Anybody making predictions further out than two weeks or so is just full of beans. Too many things are changing too quickly. The reopening decision requires you to acknowledge and internalize the notion that you have to be flexible with how you’re implementing any of these decisions. You can’t use January 2020 benchmarks.

M: When you’re working on exhibit plans in the situation we’re in now, it sounds like your approach really doesn’t change. You’re still interested in the long goal.

O: I’m interested in both long and short goals. I have made shifts in exhibit designs that don’t detract from the overall experience but clearly signify we are mindful of people’s short-term concerns. For example, the D&H Canal Museum project includes a visitors’ center with a big screen display. Initially, before COVID, we planned to use a standard touchscreen. But now we’re looking at how we could change that interface. Over the summer months, a comfort level with some sort of hybrid interface has developed.

Recently, I was talking with a developer of a traveling exhibit that included a tactile sea animal component made from a composite material. They changed the material to bronze because of its antimicrobial qualities, which met the standards of the organizations with whom they were engaged to create this exhibit. Sum total: they kept a tactile experience but made it accessible and safe. This is how I want to be thinking. I’m not losing things, but I’m scaffolding the design so that if reality or perceptions—and perceptions might as well be reality—change, exhibit aspects can easily shift in terms of their implementation. That’s just good design: creating exhibits that have various levels of implementation built into them. Like an A/B switch: things can be in this mode or that mode, but the experience is still a rich one.

If you care enough about your design, your museum, and your communities—the people you’re trying to engage with — you’re going to figure out how to do this within current constraints, whatever they may be, as well as can be done. Not everything can be designed that way, but the answer to the problem of designing powerful exhibit elements with enough flexibility to remain viable during a pandemic—or beyond—is NOT the touchless museum.

M: What are the key factors you see in place every time an exhibit design project is going really well?

O: Number one: robust conversations. Not everybody agrees all the time, but we can have passionate conversations conducted in a respectful way. With this “creative friction,” the project ends up in a better place than if everybody was wishy-washy in mealy-mouthed agreement just to get along. Too many projects are derailed by a starchitect or a top-down management situation, which can prevent the team from building the level of trust needed for everyone to feel comfortable enough to disagree with something that just doesn’t feel right or espouse ideas that aren’t fully formed. If everyone always agrees or looks to one person for The Right Answer, you don’t end up with the best possible product. Sometimes there are uncomfortable parts of this process, and human beings like to avoid uncomfortable situations. Sometimes one person simply speaks up and says, “this is just not good enough. I think we can do better.” And oftentimes, if you listen, the exhibit actually does turn out better because of that.

M: There’s a lot of talk about the learning value of failure. Many people right now are faced with situations that are not going at all the way they had planned. Have you ever worked on an exhibit that wasn’t going well? How do you respond or adjust?

O: I’ve been in a few of these situations. If you have too much of a predetermined endpoint in mind, you are bound to fail. Because inevitably things happen. Let’s say visitors are not engaging in an exhibit in ways you planned. Is that a fail, or are you going to be open enough to look at the original concept and figure out why they are doing X instead of Y? Maybe there’s something you can do with that information. A seasoned designer understands that initial concepts may have to change. It only becomes failure if you don’t let go of it. Unexpected turns of events can be positive.

I’ve spoken with a few people in my Museum FAQ interviews about management practices, including Christian Greer from the Michigan Science Center and Anne Ackerson. A common thread was the recognition that there are two types of people in every organization, including museums. The first group always wants to be on solid ground and know everything that’s happening. They need that institutional memory foundation and security, which is important for one part of the organizational structure. The second group, the yin to that yang, are the pioneers, always looking for the next thing, looking to move beyond a level of certainty. During COVID times, the latter group is now saying, “The world has pushed the pause button and we can really explore new possibilities now.” Meanwhile, the first group is saying, “Yeah, the world has pushed a pause button, and that means we need to pause. We need to gather our wits, retrench, and build on a strong foundation.” A really good organization needs to acknowledge and work with both groups. You can’t constantly be changing, you need a certain level of stability. But you also need to look at evolving and rethinking what you’re doing. Otherwise you just ossify. It’s instructive to think about and not just during COVID.

M: How do museums keep moving forward, and who do they need right now in the balance to keep going?

O: The pandemic has made a number of simmering issues more apparent. On top of the COVID-19-based health crisis is the concurrent economic crisis and a social justice and racial equality crisis. I don’t envy any director because these are very difficult times with lots of complicating factors.

And we haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room: the significant loss of museum jobs has fallen disproportionately on people of color and younger and emerging museum professionals. What does that mean for the future of the field?

Despite all the current difficulties and challenges, I am excited and optimistic about the future of museums and museum exhibits. Acknowledging two types of museum people, the yin-yang combo, trusting each other as they conduct robust conversations as they build enthusiasm for an exhibit—falling in love with the subjects—and engaging with their communities—jumping off from that base point is tremendously exciting to me. We have to change, the way we’ve been doing things, not just in exhibits but in the entire museum field, for all kinds of reasons that we’ve discussed.

If there’s one thing that museum people often complain about, it’s that they don’t have enough time to fully consider where to go next. This massive cosmic pause button is an opportunity that we can’t escape. One thing we have now is time. How do you want to use it?

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 Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

We want to be candid: this article may not be what you anticipated. We are not going to talk about cleaning practices, antiviral surface materials, or air purification systems. However, if you are interested in a story about a design team grappling with the messy, confusing implications of how the novel coronavirus could affect the future of interactives in exhibits, you have come to the right place. This story takes place at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and features a dedicated team of exhibit creators. Our mission: save exhibit interactives from a COVID-19-instigated extinction. But be warned, the story ends with a big “To Be Continued.”

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (TCMI) serves a core audience of children and families to fulfill its mission of creating extraordinary experiences across the arts, sciences, and humanities that have the power to transform the lives of children and learning families. Our facility sits on thirty acres and houses thirteen permanent exhibitions and four temporary galleries that draw on a collection of more than 130,000 artifacts. We also have a 7.5-acre outdoor experience called Riley Children’s Health Sports Legends Experience®. Permanent galleries are updated every five to twenty years, and temporary galleries change constantly, so the museum’s exhibit department includes teams of developers, designers, and fabricators who conceptualize and produce multiple experiences per year.

Enter the Novel Coronavirus

On March 13, 2020, most of us were sent home. Museum leadership, facilities, and production staff immediately began planning and implementing strategies to prepare our galleries for reopening. The focus of these changes was to create the safest environment possible for our staff and visitors by removing high-touch interactives, creating policies and infrastructure to encourage social distancing, and providing materials that empowered families to sanitize their hands and touchable surfaces.

By mid-April we had acclimated to the work-from-home life, and understood that COVID-19 was going to keep us there for some time. Exhibit development did not stop, but we became acutely aware that we were designing pre-COVID exhibits that would be launched in a world with the virus. The hope was that everything would return to normal by the time our newest exhibitions opened in a year or two. But there was, and still is, a nagging uncertainty. What if things never return to normal?

Coronavirus: An Overwhelming Challenge for Children’s Museums?

Anyone who works in a children’s museum knows that the sense of touch is our friend. Time and time again research has shown that children learn by hands-on, active exploration of their environment. Children’s museums have embraced this knowledge and created environments where touch is one of the primary ways to engage and learn. So in March when the world changed and touch suddenly became an undesired activity, we were left with an existential question: how do we continue to provide extraordinary learning experiences for children and families when the ability to touch is off the table?

While touchable interactives are the go-to method for our design teams, we know there is value in delivering content via other senses through which visitors perceive the world. For decades, exhibit creators have been enhancing learning environments by experimenting with techniques that encourage visitors to manipulate and immerse themselves in sounds, sights, and smells.

For example, people make meaning through gross motor, large body movement. The Move2Learn project, an international collaboration between informal science educators and learning scientists, focuses on “embodied learning,” in which children use representational hand gestures and body movement to better understand scientific concepts. The best part—they can do this without touching anything! An example of this type of learning interactive can be found in The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis’ Corteva Agriscience ScienceWorks, an exhibit that encourages children to explore careers in the sciences. Participants are prompted to imagine themselves as an entomologist by taking a sample of insects from a field of crops to study helpful and harmful insects. Children and families see the field projected on a screen in front of them, and Kinect technology allows them to sweep their arms back and forth to move a bug-catching net over the crops—completely touch free.

By reframing our thinking, we realized the coronavirus actually presented us with an opportunity to create exhibits in new ways. Interactivity is still possible if we challenge ourselves to innovate. Of course, we hope that one day soon we will be able to return to our tried-and-true hands-on learning methods, but no matter what the future holds, there is value in exploring alternatives.

How Are We Approaching the Problem?

When our exhibit team began thinking about creating low-touch interactive exhibits that still preserved the quality of the visitor experience, we knew we needed to bring order and clarity to a challenge that still felt nebulous. We convened a workgroup of exhibit developers, designers, and creative media staff to discuss and define our problem so we could begin to plan potential solutions. We mulled over questions including: What is it about high-touch interactives that makes them so effective? Are all touch interactives the same, or are there varieties that promote interactivity for unique reasons? Can we develop engaging interactives with low- or no-touch components? Had we already developed low-touch interactives for previous exhibits that could inspire interactives for new exhibits?

We started by creating a list of touchable interactives in the museum building and categorizing them into types. We articulated how each type delivered exhibit messaging or achieved learning goals and what made it appealing to visitors. We then brainstormed low- or no-touch alternatives with similar appeal and capacity to achieve learning goals.

TOUCHABLE INTERACTIVE TYPES AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES

Touchable objects or casts

Any item that is mounted within an exhibit component with the express purpose of providing the visitor the opportunity to touch an instructive object.

Before: Visitors touched items like fossil casts or accessible pieces of art.

Looking Ahead: Museum floor staff could exclusively facilitate opportunities to touch an object. 3D printing technology could create multiple copies of object casts, with each visitor receiving their own object to touch. Museum staff would immediately sanitize objects afterward.

TOUCHSCREENS

Digital interfaces that can be touched to reveal information, move through a process, create art, or participate in a game-like activity.

Before: Visitors touched a screen with their fingers to move through the interactive.

Looking Ahead: The exhibit workgroup proposed three alternatives to this touch interactive type. First, in lieu of touching screens with fingers, the museum could provide a stylus to each visitor to use with the touchscreen. Alternatively, this type of interactive could be designed with motion sensors that allow visitors to use movements like gestures to navigate through the activity. Finally, touchscreen interactives could be transferred to tablets, and only a staff member would touch the screen as they facilitate the activity with a visitor.

FLIP LABELS OR REVEALS

Visitors manipulate parts of the exhibit component that swing or slide away to reveal additional information.

Before: Visitors touched a hinged flap or similar device to reveal exhibit information like an image, fun fact, or answer to a question.

Looking Ahead: Instead of touching the component, visitors could be directed to wave their hand over a beam break sensor. When the sensor is triggered by movement, it could activate magic glass, LED glass, or scrim technology that disappears to reveal hidden information.

COSTUME DRESS UP

Special exhibit-related clothing and accessories that can be worn by visitors.

Before: Visitors were invited to wear costumes that fit an exhibit’s immersive environment or supported learning goals.

Looking Ahead: Visitors could see themselves in unique clothing pieces with the aid of technology. The interactive would capture an image of the visitor’s face and apply it to digital clothing. Interactives with Kinect or similar technology would map the visitor’s body, providing the illusion of control over the costume’s movement. A low-tech alternative could include photo opportunities such as graphic cutouts. Images of unique costumes could be applied to a life-size cutout of a person, and the area around the face could be replaced with a mirror so that visitors would see their own face on the graphic of the costume.

FEEDBACK WALLS

Visitors provide their personal thoughts and feedback on a question or topic.

Before: Visitors used shared pencils to write on sticky notes that were then placed on a large wall display. A shared keyboard was also used to type a response that then became a part of a digital display.

Looking Ahead: What if we capitalized on the overwhelming influence of social media? Visitors could share their thoughts using a particular hashtag and those responses would be gathered and curated by a museum staff member and posted in the exhibit on a monitor. The feedback prompt could be paired with a photo op to encourage further engagement.

PUZZLES AND CREATIVE BUILDING MATERIALS

Visitors manipulate pieces to complete a puzzle or build something.

Before: Visitors manipulated physical pieces while building or completing a puzzle. Usually these interactives involved numerous loose parts.

Looking Ahead: A high tech alternative would be to utilize technology like Kinect, a motion-tracking technology, or interactive projection where visitors would use large-body movements to manipulate pieces on a screen to complete the activity. Alternatively, a low-tech solution would involve using metal pieces housed in a case while visitors moved the pieces from outside the case using a magnetic stylus (much like magnetic maze board games). Each visitor could be given their own stylus or the stylus could be wiped between uses (much easier then cleaning a large number of loose pieces).

BUTTON-DRIVEN CAUSE AND EFFECT

Visitors press a button to make something happen.

Before: Visitors pressed physical buttons with their hand.

Looking Ahead: Visitors could activate feedback (turn on audio or video, make selections, trigger a reveal, etc.) using a piece of radio frequency identification or RFID-enabled technology. Visitors could pick up an item at the beginning of their visit containing this embedded RFID chip that would communicate with other sensors throughout the exhibit. Who doesn’t love the magic wands at Universal’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter? A low-tech solution would be to change hand press buttons to foot buttons or foot pressure sensors. Bonus points if you activate feedback by jumping!

PLAY TABLES AND IMMERSIVE PLAY ENVIRONMENTS WITH MANIPULATIVES

Visitors engage in pretend play in an immersive environment.

Before: Visitors utilized props (like toy trains, plastic dinosaurs, etc.) on a themed play table or engaged in dress up for pretend play in a larger immersive environment.

Looking Ahead: The museum could create large-scale immersive environments that engage all of the senses. Ambient light, audio, and even scent could be utilized to help paint the picture. Visitors could take on a role in this environment that encouraged them to use body movements to play a part within the environment. Adding technology such as interactive projection could tie those body movements to specific outcomes.

So…What Now?

The museum reopened at 25 percent capacity in July 2020. As Indiana moved to Stage 5 of reopening in September, our capacity increased to 50 percent. Prior to reopening, we removed interactives with lots of loose parts or pieces like puzzles and play tables, pretend play food, and dress up costumes. Our early childhood gallery (ages zero to five) has remained closed. We have slowly added some touchable items back on the floor in limited numbers, and we rotate out sets multiple times per day. Due to budget restraints, we are not retrofitting any existing interactives, just pulling high-touch items and augmenting these exhibits with more objects from our collection.

The only thing that is clear to us is that no one knows what the future holds, but this exercise helped us begin to embrace the unknown. We also know that each museum brings with them their own strengths and challenges, and what works for us might not work for all. If anything, we hope we have inspired you to be agile, think creatively, and not be afraid to try something new. As we forge ahead and continue to plan for new experiences, we know all of our thinking is still a work in progress and, as promised, is to be continued…

Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman are exhibit developers at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

This article is part of the “Exhibits Planning in 2020” issue of Hand to Hand. Click here to read other articles in the issue.

By Megan Dickerson, with Panca, The New Children’s Museum

Sometimes, after a year like we’ve all had, you need to take a chunk of time to reflect.

On September 24, I did that with Panca, the artist creating a new installation at The New Children’s Museum in San Diego, California. In an alternate, COVID-less universe, on the day of this interview Panca would have been the 107th artist to open an art installation at The New Children’s Museum. Panca will also be the first artist commissioned by the museum who visited the museum as a child, having been brought by a neighbor in the mid-1990s for one memorable visit where she wore provided coveralls, painted an actual truck, and left thinking, hey, art might be something I can do.

Panca’s project, now called El Más Allá, will open in 2021. In keeping with the museum’s practice of commissioning artists to create each exhibit, it will be a space unlike most children’s museum exhibits. Vibrantly colored, twenty-foot-tall murals will cover the walls. Kids will explore inside and around fifteen-foot-diameter sculptures representing characters Panca developed in collaboration with families in the community (think: a unicorn who roller skates, followed by her pet balloon, or a constantly shape-changing creature named Pinky). And to enter the installation, visitors can choose to swoop down a forty-foot-long slide, or, alternatively, take the elevator to a beautifully lit corridor, both entries acting as portals into a world that—like the English translation of the title, El Más Allá—is “beyond” this one.

In what follows, Panca and I reflect on creative work as medicine, great ideas as a digestive process, and whether a giant slide can transform the way we view our ever-changing world.

Megan: We began developing your art installation in 2019. We had planned to prototype your project at seven community centers starting in spring 2020. But then COVID hit. Suddenly, we were doing Zoom drawing classes where you could work with families to develop characters and other ideas for your project. Today is the day that we had originally planned to open your project. How has the pandemic changed how you think about this installation? About the world?

Panca: I can only say that I’m glad that it’s being pushed back because, mentally and emotionally, I am not there. From Breonna Taylor to George Floyd to the wildfires here on the West Coast, it’s overwhelming. And in the middle of all that, you have to think: CHILDREN’S MUSEUM and… COVID! How can we teach kids to be good humans through art, but at the same time, how can we protect them from this virus? During our Zoom meetings, I see our faces and sometimes we are just like, “Uh, are we okay?”

M: We have spent a lot of time over the past seven months debriefing about whether we are okay.

P: The hardest thing for me, to be honest, were those [online] drawing classes with the kids, which we did right as the pandemic started. Those hit me hard. I’m used to being alone, living a hermit life. But the kids reminded me that I have to be strong, not only for myself, but because I have a job I need to do. Although I’m depressed—half the world is. But I’m the artist-in-residence in the freaking museum! After a drawing class, I would hear all these heartfelt thank yous from the kids and parents. It was like medicine for me. I would think, “Okay, everything sucks. The world is on fire, literally, but you have a job to do, and in the end, just think about the good influence that this can have on children.”

When you use art to process what is happening in the world, it comes out in a different way. It comes out as empathy. I didn’t want any of my bad vibes to go into this project. The museum project is a beautiful escape, but without ignoring what’s going on. Meditation and creativity can be an escape, but they’re also constructive for your mind.

M: So, the role of the artist, and maybe children’s museums too, is to help us digest everything that’s happening?

P: Yeah. It almost sounds like I’m going to say yep, chew it up, swallow it, and poop out something great, but it is!

M: [Laughing] How did working with the community in the spring change the art installation you had planned as of February 2020?

P: First, I thought about eliminating the slide because of COVID. But I started thinking, the whole museum is about touch. At some point, we will figure out safety measures that aren’t that difficult so you can use the slide. So, no, the slide stays because we all miss and need that safe adrenaline rush that flips you fast into thinking you’re in a new world. Leave everything else behind. You’re here, have fun. Explore and move around.

M: Tell me about the characters you developed for the imaginary world of El Más Allá.

P: There are these characters in the world—Maslow, Pinky, Mimo, Chelo—that are expressions of everything that we’ve all felt during this time—a little bit of fear, anxiety. Normally, kids would experience these emotions at very low levels. But now they’re fairly high for kids and for adults. I started out wanting this to be a kick-a** exhibition for kids. And now I want it to be a soothing escape for adults AND kids that have been in the same boat—confined and stressed.

M: The character name “Maslow” is an homage to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a model for thinking about how our needs (physiological, safety, love, self-actualization, etc.) interact with each other. You were talking about the hierarchy of needs even pre-COVID.

P: The hierarchy of needs is the backbone of this whole project. That hasn’t changed, but with the pandemic, and what has been happening socially, it has been enhanced. It has been difficult but constructive to emphasize security, home, and love and try to represent it through Maslow’s system.

M: The installation is called El Más Allá.  What does the title mean to you?

P: In my family, when we say, “whoa, El Más Allá,” it’s like saying “we’re in The Twilight Zone.” How was that described on the TV show—“…that middle ground between light and shadow?” The phrase can also mean death, like, “No, ya se fue al más allá,” or, “he’s gone.” Or it can mean “in another time,” like way over yonder. For me it’s the same feeling as the movie The Neverending Story, you know? I always liked the basis of that movie, that creativity was ending and their world was dying, and in order for the world to stay alive, kids had to keep believing and using their imagination. El Más Allá has a lot of that.

M: It’s like saying “We don’t know,” and it’s okay to not know.

P: Yes, it feels like we are in this weird limbo, from the project to life. El Más Allá is a place in between all of that.

M: There are some children’s museums that focus on emotions, and how the way you are feeling when you are creating something affects the thing you are creating. And then there are others who might say, “Maslow’s great, but what exactly are kids going to learn from that? Can you make a list of what they are going to learn?” Sure, we can, but the main point is we don’t know. We can only say this is how we hope they will feel.

P: All this emotion, all of this processing of what has happened over the past year, is going to be represented through visual language. I don’t want to go all the way and say, “this is therapy art.” No, it’s not therapy art.

M: You’re very emphatic about that. Why?

P: I’m not qualified to give therapy!

M: Ha, you’ve been my therapist over the past months!

P: [Laughs] Yeah, inadvertently! But you know what I mean… I think a lot of it will rely on the visual language. I want to split up the areas and the art is going to give you a feeling. All of that is going to happen with the paintbrush. I can’t explain it. It happens with my hands. [She holds out her hands to the camera].

M: I put myself in your hands, and you put yourself in my hands! Trust. I would say that’s what children’s museums can learn from working with artists. I don’t need you to create an exact diagram of what the painting is going to be on this wall, and this wall and this wall. There are walls, and there is paint, and there’s you. I trust it’s going to be fine. It always works out. And it gives you and us the ability to be flexible if a new idea comes up. Or, for example, if… A GLOBAL PANDEMIC EMERGES in the middle of developing the project. With trust and flexibility, we can do what needs to be done. Not just stick to the original script because that makes us feel more in control.

P: Yeah, someone might wonder, “What is she going to do? Draw a giant police car on fire?” No, context people, context! That’s what’s in my brain, but not what I am going to show the children who visit. I’m using shapes and color. There’s no hidden message except to be free. And if that’s a problem, then I don’t know, that’s your problem!

M: That brings me to my final thoughts. I know we have also talked about how you came to this museum as a kid, and you have often wondered: if I came back here as a kid now, what would I need from it, especially after what we have experienced and continue to experience?

P: I go back to my first visit at the museum. I remember wearing my little suit, and painting, and feeling really free, and just thinking, “I can’t believe I can do this! I can do this! And they’re actually giving me paper, and they’re giving me a car to paint…” And when I came home, I realized that drawing wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t exactly told it was stupid, but my parents were immigrants and they told me, “you’re going to die if you don’t get a normal job.” Well, I knew what they meant, but visits to museums were very helpful because I was able to see like, whoa, there are some wacky people out there making some cool stuff for kids. It just blew my mind, to the point that I can still describe that realization and I’m thirty-five years old and obviously this is what I do now.

I’m super excited about creating this world for kids. I think at first, when everything was happening with COVID, I got really depressed thinking, “man, am I up for this?” But now, even though everything is still happening, and often seems even worse, I feel like almost more of a sense of responsibility to make my work even better. There was a point where I was like, “Oh, maybe I should pull back, maybe I should just minimalize all of it, the structure.” But then you think, “No, this is going to work out, and it needs to be 100% great.” Whoever does see the final installation, it needs to be great for them. It’s motivating. In the time I’ve already spent at the museum, and everyone who I’ve seen work there, and the kids, and I’ve seen how it affects them. And it’s really needed right now.

The latest issue of ACM’s quarterly journal, Hand to Hand, “Exhibit Planning in 2020: Thinking Now about Where We Hope to Be in the Future” is now available! Read each article on the ACM blog. ACM members can find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.

Every aspect of children’s museum operations has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue takes a closer look at how leaders and innovators in the field are planning for an uncertain future as they develop joyful, playful, and interactive museum exhibits.

Read the issue!

Exhibit Planning in 2020: Thinking Now about Where We Hope to Be in the Future

Creating a World beyond This One
Megan Dickerson, with Panca, The New Children’s Museum
In conversation with Megan Dickerson, the visual artist Panca talks about her upcoming exhibit at The New Children’s Museum, El Más Allá, touching on everything from creative work as medicine to whether a giant slide can transform how we see the world.

A Novel Approach to Exhibit Interactives amid the Pandemic
Melissa Pederson and Stephanie Eddleman, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Exhibit developers at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis examine how the museum is approaching the challenge of adapting exhibit interactives for a post-COVID world.

Creating the ‘Wow-Aha!’ Exhibit: An Interview with Paul Orselli, POW!
Interviewer: Mary Maher, Hand to Hand
Paul Orselli shares what led him to a career in museums, how exhibits have changed in the past five years, and why falling in love with what you’re working on is key to creating a great exhibit.

Two Museums and a Design Firm: Thinking about How We Design Exhibits Now
Developed by Kate Marciniec, Boston Children’s Museum, with Karima Grant, ImagiNation Afrika; Maeryta Medrano, AIA, Gyroscope Inc.; Stephen Wisniewski, PhD, Flint Children’s Museum
Three museum colleagues assess how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced their design and development practices, including new challenges and strategies that have emerged.

Back to Basics: Shutdown Offers Time for Exhibit Upgrades and Reaffirmation
Beth Whisman, Children’s Discovery Museum
With their doors still closed to visitors due to state-level restrictions, Children’s Discovery Museum is working behind-the-scenes to repair and update exhibits as well as plan for the future.

Staying Out Front (While Behind-the-Scenes Exhibit Work Goes on)
Sharon Vegh Williams, North Country Children’s Museum
During the museum’s closure to visitors, North Country Children’s Museum pivoted their focus to online, lending, and outdoor programming to continue serving their audiences.

Climate Action Heroes: New Museum Uses Small Exhibit to Create Broad Digital Experiences
Langley Lease, National Children’s Museum
Open for just eighteen days before the museum was forced to close to the public due to COVID-19, National Children’s Museum leveraged their Climate Action Heroes exhibit to generate online programming that helps fulfill their mission.

Exhibit Fabrication and Installation Challenges during COVID
Cathlin Bradley, Kubik Maltbie, Inc.
This piece takes a look at how the COVID-19 pandemic affects exhibit planning, prototyping and testing, available materials, installation labor, and more.

What’s Different about This Picture: Laying the (New) Groundwork for Design
Alissa Rupp, FAIA, Frame | Integrative Design Strategies
By designing for the future, museums can hold resilience as a core value that sustainably guides everything the organization does.

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 latest issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field” is now available! You can read individual articles here on the ACM blog. ACM members can also find the full issue PDF in the Hand to Hand Community on ACM Groupsite.

With articles written primarily in June and July of this year, this issue of Hand to Hand captures a critical moment in time as the children’s museum field began adjusting to a post-COVID reality. It shares perspectives from all levels of children’s museum staff as well as museums of all sizes and emerging museums. Read “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

Read the issue!

COVID-19: Stories from the Field

Children’s Museums Surviving the Pandemic: Insights from Three Leaders
Interviewer: Peter Olson, Region 5 Children’s Museum
Peter Olson interviewed Stephanie Hill Wilchfort of Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Tanya Durand of Greentrike, and Tammie Kahn of Children’s Museum Houston, about their museums’ strategies for surviving closure, preparing to reopen, and reimagining missions and adapted operations.

After I Hung Up…
What are your thoughts after the Zoom call ends and the virtual hangout disperses? Read short reflections on the first few months of the pandemic from Suzanne LeBlanc, Long Island Children’s Museum; Traci Buckner, Akron Children’s Museum; Sunnee O’Rork, i.d.e.a. Museum; Carol Scott, Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert; Charlie Walter, Mayborn Museum Complex; Roxane Hill, Wonderscope Children’s Museum; Deb Gilpin, Madison Children’s Museum; Beth Ann Balalaos, Long Island Children’s Museum; and Hannah Hausman, Santa Fe Children’s Museum.

Nothing Yet to Close: Emerging Museums Pause and Regroup
Tres Ross, Children’s Museum of the Mid-Ohio Valley; Audie Dennis, Creative Learning Alliance; Corrie Holloway, Glacier Children’s Museum; Dr. Kirsti Abbott, The University of New England Boilerhouse Discovery Space; Michael Shanklin, kidSTREAM, Ventura County’s Children’s Museum
Leaders from five emerging museums discuss how their organizations are responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, from altering timelines and fundraising sources, to planning with new best practices in mind.

Building Relationships through a Pandemic
Alix Tonsgard and Laura Diaz, DuPage Children’s Museum
DuPage Children’s Museum staff share how they adapted their Partners in Play program serving caregivers with young children in the wake of COVID-19. While originally planned as a series of monthly in-person sessions at the museum, the program pivoted to physically-distanced support, using texting as an accessible entry point.

The National Struggle with Unknowingness: Thoughts from a Facilities Director on Reopening
Luke Schultz, Madison Children’s Museum
The facilities director of Madison Children’s Museum shares insights into the museum’s decision to not yet pursue reopening, with a focus on practices related to the physical plants, operations, and facilities side of museums.

Working from Home for a Museum with No Visitors: Front-Line Staff Stories
Mary Maher, Hand to Hand
This piece shares the perspective of front-line and visitor-facing staff at DISCOVERY Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, NV, after the museum closed its doors to visitors.

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”
Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Peter Olson

“How are we going to survive?” was the first question many children’s museums faced in March.  While many strategies have been developed, it remains an open question. The coronavirus pandemic is still affecting all aspects of society, and children are experiencing upended lives. With many museums’ doors still closed, children’s museums are innovating safe ways to be of service to their audience while protecting staff and fighting for institutional survival. It’s not an overstatement to say we are living through an unprecedented juncture, one at which every children’s museum in the U.S. initially closed to visitors in mid-March, the duration of the pandemic is unknown, and it remains unclear how post-virus attitudes will affect hands-on museums. 

In this context, in March, I spoke with three children’s museum leaders to learn about their real-time efforts to keep their museums sustainable through the pandemic. Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, president and CEO, Brooklyn Children’s Museum; Tanya Durand, executive director, Greentrike (Children’s Museum of Tacoma); and Tammie Kahn, executive director, Children’s Museum Houston, all shared strategies and tactics for surviving closure, preparing to reopen, and re-imagining missions and adapted operations. 

In late June, I checked in again with all three regarding specific aspects of their reopening progress. These conversations often spoke to the dire realities of these tough times, but they all shared the hope that the children’s museums field will reemerge as relevant, vital resources for children, families, and communities after the pandemic.

When did you first start grappling with the effects of pandemic?

WILCHFORT: Even though New York was not in lockdown yet, we started seeing an unexpected decline in visitation the first weekend in March. The following week we started grappling with closing. This wasn’t our first emergency health situation. We dealt with similar issues during a measles outbreak earlier in 2019, so we had developed some messaging and protocols on how to communicate. But this time we had to invent a framework for helping determine when we should close. To start, we created a basic four-point guideline. We would close: 

1. If the governments ask us to close;
2. If fewer than five staff members are able to report to duty to run the museum;
3. If an employee reports serious and contagious illness; or
4. If a visitor reports serious and contagious illness. 

We did not originally anticipate two other considerations. The first was that public health experts were clear that closure of spaces like ours could help mitigate the potential crisis, and that public sentiment shifted to feeling like museums should close. On March 12, both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History closed. We closed on Saturday, March 14. Second, at some point, with very few visitors and almost no revenue, staffing the museum was costing substantially more than we were earning. Does it make financial sense to run the museum when no one is coming? We later amended our closure framework to take public health experts into account, and to include an additional decision point related to non-attendance.

To determine when to reopen, we take our cues from New York City and New York State. We’ve been looking at how museums in other countries have handled this, and it seems like there is likely to be a twelve-week timeline for sheltering in place. Based on that, we initially assumed a July 1 reopening date. (That date was later moved to October 1.) Even if the world returns halfway to normal by then, our institutions may still be unable to reopen, either because large crowds will still be discouraged, or because we have had to contract so substantially that ramping up will take some time. We also know that, even when we do reopen, there will likely be a period of lower attendance and revenue.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: New York City was initially one of the hardest hit COVID-19 areas in the country.  What’s the mood in your city today?  What do people want from a children’s museum now? WILCHFORT: The mood is cautiously optimistic as the impact of the disease seems to be waning locally. Recently, we were heartened by the return of 600 survey responses from our visitors in two days. People seem to be willing to imagine coming back in the fall with safety measures in place.

DURAND: Our Pacific Northwest CEO group had been talking about the possibility of closure since mid-February. Examining models and various scenarios, we had been working on how to stay open as long as possible, right up to the day before everyone closed. What we thought was right one day, wasn’t right the next day. In a twelve-hour span, the conversation transitioned from “let’s be that place for families that is safe, clean, and has resources” into “it’s not socially responsible to be a place to gather.” On March 12 we closed our outreach program and on Friday, March 13, we closed the museum. Our childcare center stayed open until March 17, when a parent called us to report their child had symptoms. She never was tested, but we decided to close anyway for at least two weeks. Then another family called to inform us that their child also had symptoms. We’ll reopen the museum when it’s safe to do it. We’re not in a red-hot hurry.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: In response to overwhelming community need, the museum reopened some day camps and its childcare center.  What has been community response to these shifts? Have other needs emerged that you’re dealing with or planning to? DURAND: We are now coordinating an extension of the day camps into the summer months, and are poised to lean into the needs that fall may bring. The community’s response is one of gratitude and encouragement.

KAHN: We closed the museum to the public on March 16 and initially hoped to reopen in July. (The museum reopened at limited capacity in June). When visitors walk through our doors again, we know they’ll have much higher expectations than previously. With children out of school for so long, parents will be looking for educational, enriching resources. Our educators will be working in the galleries providing more personalized, content-rich experiences. We’re still going to have fun, but we’re going to provide value where and when it’s most needed.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: Children’s Museum Houston (CMH) jumped out early in the production and dissemination of video and online learning programs. How have these digital offerings been received? What have you learned that may shape future work in this area? KAHN: Our videos have had 2.8 million views. Our eblast initially had 70,000 subscribers; it’s now down to about 68,000. As far as content, we know that reading programs are oversaturated. Keeping at least digital connections with children is good for their mental health, but are they learning their ABCs? We just don’t know yet. Our videos have produced some museum “stars”—kids come in and ask for educators by name. Millennial audiences approach life differently. They are harder to reach and less interested in the physical interactions with the museum. To continue to reach them, be ready to go digital. That said, we also know there are still digital deserts in Houston’s lower income communities. We have learned from local educators that only 42 percent of students logged on 1x/week to all the online learning programs the schools have been pumping out. School administrators figure they have lost contact with about 50 percent of students. Social justice needs to shape mission-directed museum work: if we can’t reach them, how can we serve them?

How are you remaining vital to your audience and your community while closed?

DURAND: As our community called upon us to spread the mission to honor children and champion play in diverse ways, last fall, our organization made an identity shift and changed its name to “Greentrike.” We’ll always operate a great children’s museum and, in fact, we’re opening a satellite. But we will also be an advocate, a disrupter, an educator, and a partner in ways that go far beyond typical museum operations. In addition to the museum and our emerging satellite, we operate a childcare center and a school. We’re leading a community-wide effort to explicitly brand our community as child-centered. Partnering with schools, the Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA, and the parks department, Greentrike has been tasked with coordinating the effort to provide childcare for children of emergency personnel, healthcare professionals, and others on the frontlines.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: Based on your experiences in the past four months, do you see the mission of Greentrike evolving in any specific ways? DURAND: Yes. For example, Greentrike is partnering with another agency to lead a conversation about ending the childcare crisis in our community. Our nimbleness and our lack of bureaucratic structure enable us to advocate pretty strongly for important issues as they come up. We can “go to bat” for partners who lack the resources or the capacity to do so on their own.

WILCHFORT: We are all about in-person, sensory, physical programming and object-based learning. We do not have a robust digital team nor many resources in this area. So we have convened a cross-department team with staff from marketing, programming, exhibits, and live animal care, and started to create units of digital outreach programming in three big areas: Amazing Animals, which will showcase some of the museum’s animals in a digital format; Earth Science, based on content we’ve developed for a new earth science garden to be opened in a few years; and Cultural Festivals, creating content that brings in our partners, with activities, recipes, and dancing that normally happen at our in-person festivals. We hope that through this process we will build competencies around digital resources and new ways of presenting content that will continue after the immediate pressing need is over.

KAHN: We transformed our website to offer fun and engaging at-home learning opportunities for families. We provide both livestream broadcasting along with a database of school-related, curriculum-based activities and videos created by our staff. We launched this while we still had access to the museum, but then educators began “broadcasting” from their homes. Their children and pets starred in some of the programs. It’s all about connecting our audience with our stars—our educators—now that classrooms are closed.

What are the top issues you’re struggling with because of the pandemic? 

WILCHFORT: We realized right away that there would be no work for most of our part-time floor staff in a closed museum. We had to make the heartbreaking decision to lay them off. We called two staff meetings, both of which I led, on two separate days, and all staff completed a Google form indicating which meeting they could attend to ensure that no more than thirty-five people were in the room for each meeting. When staff arrived at the museum, we kept everyone at least six feet apart. We tried to make it as safe as possible while recognizing that a level of respect needs to be afforded to them. We also reduced hours and salaries by 20 percent for all full-time staff, but have made a commitment to retain as many people as possible, protecting their healthcare benefits throughout this process.

Our board engaged in conversations about our annual fundraiser benefit scheduled for May 27. The initial idea was to do something like a Zoom party as an engagement and cultivation event as much as a fundraiser. The reality is that in this moment, children’s museums are not at the forefront of people’s needs. When emergency workers are on the frontlines, often working without proper PPE, it does not seem like the right time for us to fundraise aggressively. It’s so hard to say this might not be our time, when we love our organizations so much. However, it is important we advocate with donors and public funders in ways that aren’t tone deaf to what is happening around our city and country. Because we have amazing city support, wonderful trustees, a robust foundation community in New York, as well as local support for a future arts and culture stimulus, I am cautiously optimistic about our future.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: Has your temporarily restrained approach to fundraising changed in the past few months?  Where are you now with regards to raising money for core operations or special projects? WILCHFORT: We elected not to do the May 27 event, but instead held a virtual board gathering and unveiled designs for our science garden exhibit that’s in development. Board members still gave money. We have reengaged in fundraising. Now that we’re reopening, donors are coming back. Two months ago, none of us understood how long this would last. Now we have a better sense of defining our response and a more refined understanding of where our organization falls: cultural organizations are more relevant than ever in providing safe ways to gather for learning experiences. Parents and children are fraying at the edges. We’re all asked to play roles we never expected to play, working full-time, and limiting outside contact. It’s a real crisis, and parents are anxious. Our fundraising aligns with meeting the needs in our community today.

DURAND: I worry about people’s livelihoods. We reduced our team from sixty-nine to twenty-two. On average, the furloughed team members received two weeks paid leave, and it’s our intention to continue to pay for their healthcare benefits during the furlough. Our board cares deeply about our staff and is looking at the long game.

Like all of my colleagues I’m worried about money. We’ll probably have to dip into our line of credit. Our museum admission is by donation, so we don’t rely on the gate income that other museums do—a blessing in disguise in times like these. We actually save money by being closed. Our financial forecast is that we’ll end our fiscal year with a $150,000 shortfall for the first two and a half months (mid-March through May). This is not great news, but it certainly could be worse, and I feel for colleagues facing deeper deficits.

KAHN: We’re in the middle of complex financial modeling, including significantly dampening predictions for the coming eighteen months. For years we’ve studied worst case scenarios, but this crisis rivals our worst nightmare. We initially laid off 150 part-time staff and gave them two weeks’ severance to help bridge them to unemployment benefits. Many of this team live in families all dependent on part-time employment. Locally, massive layoffs due to required business closures have been devastating. For decades, Texas has attracted people who came here willing to work two or three jobs to give their kids a chance at the American Dream. We are proud to hire people from the demographics we serve. But we never planned on extended, universal unemployment for our entire region. And our biggest economic engine is still the energy business, which has hit several lowest-ever markers in the past few weeks. There’s a sea change taking hold in that industry as well.

Federal payroll assistance does not cover part-time employees. Normally we have plenty of cash on hand, even a cash reserve in our endowment. However, our shut down eliminated spring break and the start of our summer peak attendance. We are predicting an overall loss of $500,000 at the end of our 2020 fiscal year (June 30), even with short term federal relief for full-time staff. Our endowment value is at its lowest in ten years. We were fortunate to be running a surplus before the crisis, and we have been authorized to consider spending up to $1 million from our reserve fund including cash held in our endowment.     

But our museum is people-dependent. Our mission model is about transforming communities through innovative, child-centered learning. Our level of community engagement requires a lot of fully engaged talented people. Our efforts to have collective impact and work collaboratively are taking a major hit. Most of our community-based partners are shut down, libraries are closed, schools may not open until fall, and people are isolated. Our digital efforts are producing high contact numbers, but we are just beginning to learn how to build robust digital relationships. We are already evaluating learning outcomes from these efforts, but the evidence will require we rethink the new nature of the value that we bring.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: As staff were gradually brought back to work in the museum, what new trainings did they need to meet today’s audience needs (safety standards, audience expectations, etc.)? KAHN: Our staff training is not much different than before. The museum visit was re-structured as an “Epic Adventure” with a clearly mapped entrance/exit that paces the visit and allows social distancing. Each visitor receives an Epic Adventure bag that contains 80 percent of the materials need for the adventure, and which they can take home. Normally, the museum is full of frontline staff, but now, only our full-time educators are working in the galleries.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: What are you working on now that you are most excited about? WILCHFORT: Our 20,000-square-foot, outdoor Earth Science Garden, a big capital project in partnership with the Children’s Museum of Denver at Marsico Campus, and by far our most exciting large-scale project. While it won’t come to fruition for a couple of years, it’s going to change the organization. The narrative for the eight exhibit areas is rooted in the history of Brooklyn and how it got its slopes and heights.

How do you see your organization coming out of the shutdown? Are you expecting and planning for any fundamental changes to your audience and how you serve them?

WILCHFORT:  If there’s one thing I’d say to other children’s museums in this moment, you may think you should put the brakes on big capital projects, but don’t. One, it’s good for the institution. When we do come out of this, people will need these new projects and programs. Two, content development, construction, and fabrication can be part of a stimulus program. If we keep the capital projects going, we’re creating jobs. If we stop these big projects, we won’t have that ability. It’s essential that everyone keep their capital and major exhibit work moving.

KAHN: We’ll be reducing our hours and days of operation, further cutting personnel expenses. However, we will increase the depth of educational experiences for visitors. Even before the pandemic, this generation of caregivers tend to display a heightened level of control over all aspects of their child’s safety, as well as the selection of environments and experiences to which their child is exposed. As a public venue designed for young children, we will be subjected to higher cleanliness and safety expectations than ever in the coming “post-COVID” era. As a nation, we have spent spring 2020 retraining our citizenry to assume new behaviors that are not in sync with our pre-pandemic missions or business models.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: Since you have reopened, what are some of the biggest changes and challenges related to health/safety standards compliance? KAHN: Visitors’ temperatures are scanned at the door. Masks are required for everyone age two and older–no mask, no admission. (Masks are sold in the museum store for $3.95!) Ever since Sandy Hook, the museum has posted a guard at the door. A typical compliance issue is visitors pulling their masks off their nose once they’re inside. Visitors who do so are reminded by staff, and if they still don’t comply, the guard will ask them to leave. Only one family so far has requested a membership refund over the masks rule. Like most reopened museums, we have initiated an aggressive cleaning program, and have spent $400,000 on upgrades and cleaning supplies (HEPA filters, UV lights, cleaning products, etc.). Our lobby’s former Yogurt Snack Bar is now a Hand Sanitizer Bar. A separate but related issue involves staff. Their temperatures are taken daily, and masks must be worn in the museum at all times. To date, one staff member tested experienced COVID-19 symptoms after returning from New York; five of the remaining hundred employees were believed to have been exposed to the virus so were sent home out of caution. Each of these employees required individual fourteen-day quarantines. It has been difficult to lose staff due to exposure from families and friends, while still paying full-time salaries for people who are in quarantine.

JUNE FOLLOWUP: Do you think adjustments to the children’s museum experience are temporary or permanent? What is your level of optimism for children’s museums to continue to be relevant with hands-on, in-person learning? DURAND: Children need to play to learn, and they need to play with others to gain social skills. That won’t change. We are waiting longer to reopen because I don’t think it’s right to ask a child to come back to a beloved familiar environment that we designed specifically to engage them in play, and now ask them to engage in different and difficult-to-explain ways. It does not set the child, or the family, up for success. Our field needs to advocate even more strongly that play is the right of children. We need to keep them and their families safe, but we need to push for a return to the rights of childhood as soon as we can.

DURAND: This is a basic operational and philosophical question that the entire museum field is considering. Greentrike will advocate for what families need. Childcare and access to the fundamentals will be important. The museum, I think, will experience a slow ramp back up to “business as usual,” whatever “usual” will mean at that time. We are working with our colleague museums to do a combined launch with consistent messaging. This obviously impacts budget: we are losing most earned income for almost five months. We are applying for CARES support and will continue to raise funds. 

As far as changes to the children’s museum audience, everyone will be enhancing their cleaning and safety protocols and thinking about social distancing. But, since our gallery experiences are hands-on, interactive, and often involve close contact with other visitors, these changes will certainly impact the way we serve our audience and it will certainly feel different.

For children’s museums in general, I don’t think it’s a terminal situation, but a hibernation. My hope is that there won’t be a decreased demand for children’s museums. I don’t anticipate a time when we say we shouldn’t have safe, rewarding, enriching places for children to go. The wake up, however, is going to be fascinating. I don’t know how extensive the hangover will be for families who do not want to return to public places. We need to watch our friends across the ocean, where there is a chance for a second wave, and how they handle it. This edition of Hand to Hand is almost like a time capsule, but one you’re not sure what to put in, because everything is changing on a daily basis.

Peter Olson is currently the owner of Peter Olson Museum Planning, LLC, and is the museum project director of the emerging Region 5 Children’s Museum in North Central Minnesota. Peter has served as the founding executive director at Knock Knock Children’s Museum and the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota, and as the director of exhibits at Minnesota Children’s Museum.

Read other articles in the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

The Zoom call ends, the hangout disperses.  You sign off, then what?  What are the first thoughts that come to mind as you return to solo work in a home office, living room, kitchen, silent museum office? In this collection of short pieces, museum staff talk about what they thought about, privately, during those many, many shelter-in-place days. How did they summon the energy to keep going?  What worries them the most?  These writers share what they have learned about their museum and themselves during the pandemic pause as they continue to fight for their museums’ future.

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I Had Been Planning, But Instead….

Suzanne LeBlanc | Executive Director
Long Island Children’s Museum (Garden City, NY)
June 16, 2020

I get off the Zoom calls and I think: this wasn’t what I had planned at all for the spring of 2020. I was so sure we would be planning our expansion and capital campaign, a creative and fitting way to end my career. But instead: a pandemic, closing the museum, stay-at-home orders, economic freefall, and then worldwide demonstrations in response to the killing of George Floyd.

I find myself struggling to pivot, to prioritize, to make sense, to give myself a little time when I am not working and worrying, and all the while I’m missing my museum, my staff, and being in the company of others. Internally, I find strength in my relationships with colleagues, my decades of weathering other crises, my ability to stay calm and focused, and in all I have learned from my mentors who have helped shape my career. Externally, I find strength in what the LICM staff, board, and I have built over the years—a museum that always strives to do better, to do good, to stretch itself and face challenges together and head on. More broadly, the support of the full museum community provides the collegial support necessary to navigate the current crises in our field and in our nation.

I am honored and proud of staff members who have stayed the course, worked so hard and with so much passion for what we do. Questioning, debating, moving forward together. Facing our challenges with the certainty that, although this is not what we had planned, we will be steadfast in meeting the challenges and be a better organization in the future for it. New learning of a different kind. But the biggest challenge really—beyond the financial, of course—is trying to figure out what role a children’s museum plays in a non-touch world. How do we now communicate our value? How can we turn some of these challenges into opportunities?

In the end, in spite of a delayed expansion project that I was very much looking forward to, I made my peace with this: my strengths as a leader are needed and well matched for this kind of challenge, for this moment.

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Racers, Start Your Engines

Traci Buckner | Executive Director
Akron Children’s Museum (OH)
July 15, 2020

After I hung up, my mind wandered back to the time some of my Leadership Akron group colleagues convinced me to run a leg of a marathon with them. After some friendly cajoling about how I had what it took and could easily do it since I would be on a team, I agreed to run the shortest leg in the race. On race day, my husband and two sons came out to cheer me on. Once they saw me on route, they’d drive up ahead to catch me somewhere along my next mile point. Once they were out of sight, I slowed down to walk a bit. Just as I slowed my pace, they reappeared, driving up beside me. Naturally, I picked up the pace and kept running while they cheered me on and gave me several air high fives.

I have been in need of similar air high fives since museum life came to a sudden halt on that eerie Friday the 13th last March. I often feel like I’m in a Grand Prix race and the announcer has just said “racers start your engines.” He counts down 3-2-1 as I’m revving up to make my best start only to suddenly and unexpectedly be slowed down by multiple surprise twists and turns newly added to the track. The constant engine “revving” is my ongoing brainstorming of new ways to generate revenue while the physical doors to the museum are closed.

Although I long for more riveting reasons—like a sudden influx of revenue—to receive high fives, the ongoing support of my board of directors and other museum supporters motivates me. Seeing the mayor wearing one of our museum face masks and collaborating with volunteers who are committed to seeing the museum weather the storm keeps me going. The support of fellow arts organization colleagues, ACM Leadership Call discussions, and state museum association meetings help me feel connected and inspired to keep up a steady pace in the race to preserve, protect, and reopen the museum.

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The “New Normal” Is Not Normal

Sunnee O’Rork | Executive Director
i.d.e.a. Museum (Mesa, AZ)
June 22, 2020

Paradigm shifts for organizations often come planned and over a period of time, but the pandemic paradigm switch arrived swiftly like a thief in the night.

Prior to St. Patrick’s Day, when the i.d.e.a. Museum closed, we were thriving. Attendance and revenues had increased, and we had received $5 million in city bond funds to support Phase I of our Site Master Plan. The i.d.e.a. Museum Foundation was conducting a philanthropic feasibility study while the City of Mesa’s Engineering Department conducted a facility feasibility study. Our long-anticipated vision for growth was nearing reality… and then COVID-19 hit.

We immediately shifted gears, immersing ourselves in quickly making multiple decisions even with incomplete information. How long would we be closed? Should we cancel our annual fundraiser? How could we realign our city and our museum foundation’s budgets? Could we quickly create virtual programs to stay connected to our audience? How could we revise our interactive exhibits to meet new sanitation protocols? These questions and more occupied my thoughts 24/7.

After stakeholder discussions and over the short course of a few weeks, the annual fundraiser was cancelled, thirteen part-time and two full-time staff were laid off, we lost $260,000 in combined revenues, social media and web content increased, a one-way route was devised throughout the museum with a revision of fifteen interactives, and an outdoor space was planned for activation.

I have distaste for the “new normal.” There’s nothing normal about this. We are a resilient team that has been through four paradigm shifts in fourteen years. We use Susan Kenny Stevens’ book Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-Based Wisdom for Nonprofit Capacity to gauge our approaches and progress. We share with each other ways to stay healthy, and despite the sudden and pervasive upheaval, we know that “this too shall pass.”

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Recalibrating

Carol Scott | CEO & Executive Director
Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert (Rancho Mirage, CA)
June 15, 2020

When we closed our doors on March 13 to protect the safety and wellbeing of our community, we thought it would be short lived. As the days passed and the shelter-in-place orders became mandated, it was evident we were headed for unprecedented times. The world was changing fast. No industries had planned for serious environmental disruption, and our “high-touch” children’s museum was no different. We were grappling with issues we couldn’t have predicted, and the only certainty was uncertainty. Public, private, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors all faced the same problems.

Questions were endless: How long will this last? What do we do with staff? What can we continue to provide? How will all this affect children and their families? What does this do to our value proposition to the social capital we have developed through our programs? How will the museum survive? (Just to name a few.) What plagued my middle-of-the-night sleep were thoughts of limited cash reserves and no endowment. Our budget is based on 85 percent earned revenue. To close even temporarily was tantamount to a possible and permanent end. Without guests, school tours, outreach, events, memberships, and more, our daily earned income dried up overnight. And even though we had contingency plans for “normal” disasters, our current situation was worse than 9/11 and the 2008 recession combined. The road ahead looked impossible. As someone who usually thrives in crisis and can usually handle the curveballs thrown my way, I felt overwhelmed and a little scared. Would this thirty-year-old organization end under my leadership?

Enter the Zooms, the webinars, and the PPP money to keep my chief operating and program officers employed. Overwhelmed by what needed to happen, working with these two staff members and listening to my peers on our invaluable weekly calls, I realized this was not something I alone had to “fix.”

COVID-19 has asked humans to do something that the rest of nature does nearly every day—adapt. I focused on accepting that this was a pivotal time to not let what we couldn’t do interfere with what we could do. Present circumstances didn’t determine where we could go, they merely determined where we needed to start.

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Buffering the Loss

Charlie Walter | Director
Mayborn Museum Complex (Waco, TX)
June 1, 2020

Some of my happiest moments in life are when I find a way to squeeze in an extra activity between commitments. If I fly into a city for a meeting, I try to arrive a little early, so I can explore the city before the meeting starts. If I go to a conference, I may stay an extra few days in the area to explore a nearby National Park before I head back home and to work. Sometimes when I am at the museum and one meeting ends early, I’ll take a walk along the river before the next meeting begins.

Now that life has been upended by COVID-19, I’ve found new hours to use in similar ways. With stay-at-home orders, instead of commuting to work in the morning, I now take a long walk in those early hours with my two Labradors, Abby and Arlo. Instead of commuting home in the evenings, I now grab my camera or flyrod and walk down to the river near my house.

I am thankful to have not lost a friend or loved one due to the pandemic. But I have lost the momentum my museum team has built over the past five years. Projects are on hold. Open staff positions are frozen. Budgets have been cut. Previous operations and revenues numbers—including those from the recent first quarter of 2020—are now meaningless as predictors of the future. 

But my morning and afternoon walks with my dogs have helped to buffer the professional loss I feel because of COVID-19, and I feel more ready to face another uncertain day.

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A Ride with Friends on the Corona-Coaster

Roxane Hill | Executive Director
Wonderscope Children’s Museum (Shawnee, KS)
July 10, 2020

Recently, ACM Executive Director Laura Huerta Migus referred to us all being on the Corona-coaster! I, for one, want off this roller coaster.

In January, at Wonderscope, I deemed this year was “our” year. We had worked hard for many years preparing for and launching a capital campaign and starting construction on a new building. Construction was nearing completion; we would soon close our campaign and prepare to move into a bigger and better Wonderscope. We were due this good year.

January started well, February started to slide, then came March. This was not what we had scripted. We are now hoping we can open our new doors in October.

Despite this dire time, I’m finding pockets of joy, friendship, and solidarity. The team at Wonderscope has rallied; we have found joy and success in little things. Our board has rallied to support furloughed staff, and most importantly, I have found true friendship, collegiality, and solidarity with other museum CEOs, particularly those in the middle of the country. We call ourselves the Central U.S. Museums. We Zoom every other week. We share resources and ideas. We sympathize, and listen. The combined wisdom is extraordinary and so openly and bravely shared.  

The weekly Leadership Calls hosted by ACM have been a lifeline too. We may be spread throughout the country and the world, but we are all in this together. These new friendships and support have sustained me. If you haven’t yet found a group of like-minded roller coaster riders, I urge you to do it. These conversations will be some of the best hours you will spend in the COVID-19 theme park.

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This Is It

Deb Gilpin | President & CEO
Madison Children’s Museum (WI)
July 7, 2020

THIS is it. This IS it. This is IT. This I sit. Every way you place the emphasis is a chuckle. Try it.  Each moment is the only one that matters—my approach to life. Opportunities to practice equanimity knock at my door every day, as they always have.

On 3/12/20 my journal says …“And the world tilts.” But that wasn’t my first note about something stirring. Turns out on 2/7/20 I began logging symptoms. I’d just spent time in China, consulting for a children’s museum project. Touring an international school, I saw staff checking kids’ temperatures, tongues, and hands before they entered the building. “That’s normal here.” LOL. On the third day of exciting progress making plans, Debbie hit the Downer button to talk with the Chinese project team about risks. Government closures? Sure. Pandemic? Naaahhh. A week later I was sick as a dog.

We closed the museum on 3/14/20, and by 3/20/20 I terminated employment for twenty-nine people, and cut hours of thirty-one more, all done safely distanced by email, no less. By 4/11/20 we’d secured a PPP, and renewed forty jobs. Great news. But Joy was working from someone else’s home and had taken her toys with her.

As a long-time CEO, I generally bear the weight of my entire museum. I try to do right by its people—staff and visitors who bring it to life—its resources, and its many exposures (economic, legal, market, etc.). I accept that weight, and try to bring stability, curiosity, and patience to whatever comes up in a day, giving space to discover the gift every person or situation offers. That’s where the joy comes for me.

After five weeks I’d had no days off, no exercise, no nature, little sleep, and I’d cut my own hair (badly). I had ignored all the mental health advice—“Be kind to yourself,” “Who do you want to be through this?” So, I slept on that question, because 2:30 a.m. is a CEO’s golden hour.

By sunrise I had a plan to better nurture myself, and my sense of humor showed up. I thanked Anxiety for doing its job pointing out that there was a problem to be solved. I remembered that every moment of this whole thing IS what it is, and has within it all the gifts and possibilities, just as every kid who comes through the museum’s front door has within themselves. Be the kid. This is it.

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FOMO: Missing the Joy of Engagement

Beth Ann Balalaos | Access and Inclusion Manager
Long Island Children’s Museum (Garden City, NY)
June 1, 2020

I manage a program that broadly focuses on making our institution more accessible for visitors with various disabilities. I see this goal come to fruition when families first visit the museum for an event designed for visitors with disabilities, and most of them keep coming back. There is no better experience than seeing a child laughing, comfortable enough to just be who they are. For a lot of these families, just playing and enjoying themselves is not something they always get to do. It’s a big deal to have the opportunity to be a family without looks or judgment from others. Not being able to provide these opportunities is one of the major reasons I have been struggling during this pandemic.

I have a distinct childhood memory: sitting in the cafeteria at a table smaller than all the others and wishing to be “over there.” For two years, with two neurodiversities, I was in a self-contained class for second and third graders whose disabilities included learning disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and blindness or low vision. These two years were by far the two most influential of my life. Despite my teachers’ efforts to make us feel like everyone else, we lived in another world—one that always felt like it wasn’t quite made for us. Not much changed for me in middle school or high school. I was not fully mainstreamed until the last semester of my senior year in high school. To this day I feel like I never quite left behind that label of “otherness.”

Even though I had completed an internship and worked as floor staff at the children’s museum during my college years, I never intended to work in one. I wanted to be a teacher. But in 2016, a month before graduating with a master’s degree in elementary and special education, I realized teaching wasn’t for me. But how could I serve the kids I wanted to serve, and help them break the cycle of that familiar feeling of being “other”? Then, I got a call from my museum supervisor inviting me to interview for this job.

Like many cultural institutions now, we have altered our content to be delivered virtually. Through online programming, we are probably reaching even more families who may not have been able to access our museum in the past. But I am struggling, folks. Millennials often talk about FOMO (fear of missing out) when it comes to seeing what their peers are up to on social media. But for me, quarantine has evoked an intense feeling of FOMO…for my museum.

Engagement is a large part of what I do at the museum, and virtual engagement is not scratching that itch for me. As educators, we help visitors connect through conversations and sometimes just smiles. As I write this, those conversations and smiles aren’t happening. I now try to spark that engagement and connection in videos. I enjoy making videos in my new role as a museum vlogger, but I am used to “live” gleaming friendly little faces looking up at me. Now I just stare at a screen, hoping for a comment or a like—a completely new form of “engagement.”

I miss my kids. I miss the laughs. I miss the joy. I miss the smiles. I often think about the kids we serve and wonder if they are struggling too. My feeling of not being able to do enough for them is crushing. But I remind myself that we are doing the best we can, and many people in this nation feel similarly frustrated during these odd times. I have no doubt that many our museum families are feeling this way too. I just hope that everyone is being kind to themselves, and I’ll try to remember the same for me. I look forward to seeing my kids again. It is hard to say when that will be, but I am counting the days.

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My Kitchen Table

Hannah Hausman | Senior Director, Development and Communications
Santa Fe Children’s Museum (NM)
June 15, 2020

I finish my last digital task of the day…maybe. It is 7:00 p.m. I am sitting at my kitchen table, which has now become my pseudo-command-post-desk-family-gathering space. My eyes burn and blur. I have always had less than stellar eyesight, but over the past few short months my vision has become somewhat hazy. The house is quiet, for now. With my five-year-old out of school for close to three months, working from home has been a juggle and a struggle. My guilt is immense. Will this pandemic damage us—our children—forever?

I am surprised though at how much I have accomplished work-wise in the past few months. Dozens and dozens of grants written and submitted in hopes of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting to be distributed. Donors grateful to see our organization’s response to ensure the learning doesn’t stop. Social media and virtual programming ramped up. Staff pivoting in all sorts of directions. We are an amazing, hardworking team with an incredible leader and supportive board. All that being said, sometimes I feel like I am treading through COVID-19 quicksand.

I am and have always been grateful to work in this industry. Instead of shrinking from the pandemic, we reevaluated, took action, and kept our focus. Here in Santa Fe, our donors, our executive director, and our board are immensely strong and caring. During this period of uncertainty, the culture of our institution and our industry shines through. There’s a lot to be said for the steady, often behind-the-scenes work of building strong foundations.

At the end of each day, I say thanks because I know that no matter what happens, I will always feel proud of my work, whether it is in an office, or straight from a coffee-stained kitchen table. I am working to make a difference for our kids and families. As I close my computer and look out at the southwestern skies—a particularly beautiful sunset amidst all of this chaos—I reflect upon one of my favorite quotes from John Lennon: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” And he was right. It’s the end of a day, but it’s not the end.

Read other articles in the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

Emerging museums at all stages are now dealing with a host of interrelated problems based on the pandemic. Funding:  Those in capital campaigns face compelling and highly competitive funding priorities.  Exhibit/program design: revised design and safety standards for “hands-on” exhibits and interactive programming are being developed, but are still incomplete.  Their communities, still unfamiliar with a children’s museum and its role as a key learning partner, are reeling from health concerns and economic shutdowns.  How do you feel the loss of something you don’t yet have? Founding board members, directors, and other stakeholders are asking questions to determine strategies for forging ahead, revising but keeping the plan alive perhaps on an altered timeline, or pulling the plug.

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Children’s Museum of the Mid-Ohio Valley (Parkersburg, WV)

Tres Ross, Executive Director, The Ross Foundation

Parkersburg, the central city in Wood County, West Virginia, is a relatively large city in a mostly rural state. It is located in the Mid-Ohio Valley, along the Ohio River which forms the Ohio-West Virginia border. Initially built on chemical and plastics manufacturing, the major industry now centers on extracting natural gas from shale.

The total population for Parkersburg-Vienna, West Virginia MSA, is 91,353, based on 2018 census data. The museum target demographics count 5,157 children under age five and 5,047 children between the ages of five and nine.

Other cultural venues include the Parkersburg Art Center, a community theater, another theater for plays and musical shows, and a waterfront music program.

COVID-19 Impact

Both Parkersburg and the state of West Virginia initially had a relatively small number of cases compared to the rest of the country. We have since seen an uptick as businesses began opening again. Beginning July 9, masks were required indoors.

The impact is still uncertain for businesses. West Virginia’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research is optimistic that a V-shaped (quicker) rebound will happen, but this will depend on the number of new cases, possibly requiring business activity to roll back again. Some local funders are focusing exclusively on health and basic needs, but others report they are not seeing many requests for funds from other organizations so far. A decent number of nonprofits in our community received PPP or EIDL loans, but their survival now depends on their reserves. 

The Ross Foundation will help with the restart of businesses and nonprofits. A big area of concern is how to operate and sustain entities in the arts community, especially if they do not have reserves. Two local theater groups in particular, even with PPP or EIDL loans, will not be able to host shows at full capacity for a while, possibly not until next spring, and they have no reserves.

The big questions we’re facing in the next two years are the following:

• Are businesses stable enough to sponsor large exhibits?
• When will families with young children feel comfortable attending large facilities?
• Does opening up make sense when capacity may be limited?

The children’s museum is not open yet and can watch how other groups are faring. The art center is now open at a limited capacity, but their summer camp was well attended.    

We’re listening what other arts organizations, hospitality groups, and school systems are doing. As of mid-July, Wood County Schools will begin the 2020-21 school year on a staggered schedule, with some students coming to school on specific days. Otherwise, the reentry plan works on a stoplight system: Green is school as normal, yellow is a hybrid of in-person and online instruction, and red is fully online. The community college will open virtually this fall. Hotels report some increases in reservations, and some planned events remain on the books.

Funding

Funding an $8 million project in this very hard-hit economy remains a big challenge. The foundation’s board chair recently decided to accelerate the museum opening timeline. The Ross Foundation and the Ross family will now provide at least 80 percent of the funding for the project, and the completed museum will now open in two years. It was decided that the original plan to raise money from sponsors in the community would face too many challenges in the current economic climate and delay the museum’s opening an unacceptable length of time. 

Renovations to the building, a former Masonic Temple in downtown Parkersburg, will begin soon. The museum’s six floors will house exhibit space, office space, conference rooms, a café, and a 450-seat theater. 

Because we will be renovating an historic building, we are eligible to receive a little over $1 million in historic tax credits over the twenty-four month project period. The estimated cost for the renovations, architectural drawings, accounting, and legal fees is $3.9 million. (Accounting and legal fees can be higher when historic tax credits are involved, but costs can be included in the tax credits calculation.) Exhibits are projected to cost approximately $4 million. We will continue to look for sponsors for our newly-defined exhibit topics, and we anticipate some local response. However, the Ross Foundation and family will cover what cannot be raised in order to open the museum on time.

Our exhibits are not designed or built yet, providing an opportunity to learn more about the best materials and cleaning supplies to help maintain heightened quality and safety standards that will be now acceptable to families. Working with Roto Design, we are now in the process of developing master planning documents. Exhibit planning and development begins in October; exhibits will be developed by June 2022 and installed by late August 2022.

How do we demonstrate our future relevance with no track record? The community knows our foundation would not invest in a project it does not see as relevant. This confidence will help position the children’s museum as a key community asset. Furthermore, Parkersburg needs more entities that serve children and families. The art center offers family programs but not on a regular basis; the children’s museum will offer programs and exhibits continuously. In short, the children’s museum will be a cornerstone downtown development project that will create an anchor institution for area families.

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Creative Learning Alliance (Joplin, MO)

Audie Dennis, Board Chair

In 2017, community leaders in Joplin, Missouri, embarked on a grassroots effort to identify goals for community growth and improvement. The resulting Vision 2022 report spanned an array of approaches, from economic development to quality of life. One concept that was well received and supported by Joplin City Council officials was the creation of a children’s museum.

Encouraged, a group of professionals, citizens, and educators began paving the way for a hands-on, STEAM-based destination. The focus on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math was driven by an education gap in those areas and employer demand for a better prepared workforce in those fields. Further, our community has a shared experience of severe weather events, notably an EF-5 tornado in 2011 that destroyed a wide swath of the city center.

The nonprofit Creative Learning Alliance (CLA) was formed with a vision to engage people of all ages in hands-on learning, driven by curiosity and play. The board of directors developed a five-year timeline, to culminate in 2025 with the grand opening of a new science center. A feasibility study indicated that it would attract partners and visitors from a fifty-mile radius in southwestern Missouri as well as Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. 

After securing funding for its first project coordinator, scheduled to begin in July 2020, CLA had ambitious plans to participate in large regional events. These appearances would kick-start a volunteer cadre, build community support for the science center concept, excite the public with portable, hands-on exhibits, and engage stakeholders to pave the way for a capital campaign.

However, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic quashed these plans and brought the terrific momentum of the group to an abrupt halt. Although southwest Missouri was not initially hit hard by the pandemic, stay-at-home orders forced the cancellation of large public events in the region. The team explored several alternative community outreach strategies, including video exhibit demonstrations, learning modules to engage kids and parents, and increasing social media engagement to build support.

Through thoughtful, honest conversations, the outreach committee ultimately decided that with one chance to make a first impression, none of the alternatives were a good fit. Schools, as well as established organizations and children’s museums in the U.S. and abroad, are already offering online access to STEAM classes and activities, filling that niche.

Regrouping, the board decided to hold affinity events, where one to two community leaders would host small peer groups, to continue to raise awareness and funds. Aligned with local COVID-19 prevention guidelines, these events feature colorful exhibits that ignite conversations and introduce supporters to our vision. With the help of CLA’s new project coordinator, affinity events this summer and fall will propel the project forward, as the organization continues its search for its first location.

In the meantime, the outreach committee will continue to evolve materials that highlight the science behind the exhibits, developing a website and social media presence that will fully support community outreach when these uncertain times have passed.

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Glacier Children’s Museum (Flathead County, MT)

Corrie Holloway, Board Chair

Glacier Children’s Museum is a 501(c)(3) with a founding board and a small mobile outreach program, but no paid staff or permanent location. We are in the process of planning a series of exhibits to build support and attract donors to fund the creation of a permanent museum.

Without an exact location, we had not yet established a projected opening date. We had considered opening smaller, simpler “starter” spaces in 2021. However, we have decided to use the pandemic pause to recruit more board members, do more research, and plan more thoroughly. Opening dates for even starter spaces have been pushed back. Recently, two board members decided to leave the project, reinforcing our current priority to find new ones.

We are located in northwestern Montana in a county of about 102,000 residents spread among three small cities and several rural towns. The county is within an hour’s drive of Whitefish Mountain Ski Resort, Glacier National Park, Flathead Lake, as well as the Salish Kootenai and Blackfeet Reservations. More than three million people visit the area each year, and that number is rising. Many local businesses rely on tourism. Ours would be the first museum in the area geared toward interactive children’s learning.

COVID-19 Impact

As of early June, Montana has had a very low rate of COVID-19-attributed cases and deaths. At the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S., our governor was quick to shut down most of the state. With schools changing to online learning and businesses closed since March 13, along with a non-essential travel ban and a quarantine order for anyone coming in from out of state, our infection numbers remained low.

However, many people and businesses are suffering financially because of the shutdown. Our community foundation raised more than $500,000 for local nonprofits during the Day of Giving, showing donors’ high level of support and commitment to this valley. On June 1, Montana began Phase 2 of reopening. We expect to see a large increase of the number of people traveling here due to outdoor recreation opportunities and our relatively low COVID-19 numbers.

In deciding how and when to proceed, these are our top questions:

• Will we be able to raise the money needed to open a permanent location when there are so many essential resources the community needs in the immediate future? Will donors still see the museum as a feasible endeavor?
• Will people still want to go to a children’s museum based on fear of contagion?
• How can we provide a safe and clean experience for our visitors?
• What types of exhibits can be more easily cleaned or require less contact for interaction?
• Can we continue to find people to volunteer their time and energy to move the project forward during these uncertain times—especially if the project goes into a holding pattern?

We are closely following recommendations and guidelines from our local school systems, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and our local health department. We are staying in contact with the Association of Children’s Museums  and other museums, observing how established museums are adapting as they reopen and what solutions the museum community is devising to support each other and the industry as a whole.

Since we are in the earliest startup stages and have enough money to sustain baseline costs, we could stay in this holding pattern for quite a while. It all depends on how we spend what we have. If we continue to get free storage for outreach supplies, hold off on hiring staff, and only spend money on administrative costs (website, post office, taxes, etc.), this extended planning period could last up to five years.

Some of our funds come from grants that need to be spent within the next year. We are wondering how long we can realistically complete our museum dreams without any paid staff and relying solely on board members’ volunteer hours, especially when the board turns over every two years.

We are already rethinking what our space and exhibits will look like, and discussing which interactive exhibits require less hands-on contact and are easier to clean. We are considering replacing the phrase “hands-on” with “interactive” in our mission statement.

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The University of New England, Boilerhouse Discovery Space (Armidale, NSW, Australia)

Dr. Kirsti Abbott, Program Leader

The Boilerhouse Discovery Space is an integral part of the University of New England’s future campus plans. The project was initiated in 2016 by a philanthropist who supports children’s play-based discovery.

Over the past four years, we have raised more than AUD$10 million. We are in the process of identifying a principal design consultant, who we hope to onboard by the end of August 2020, to work collaboratively to design the building. During this time, we have run mobile programs. We also cleaned up the space, an old, disused industrial boilerhouse, contaminated with every bad thing you can think of! Remediation and demolition, covered by the university, took eighteen months and cost an additional AUD$2 million.

With a population of 30,000, Armidale, a regional university town in New South Wales, Australia, founded on agriculture and goldmining, is now a key educational hub. The university is the biggest employer, and the town is home to four private schools, a major state high school, thirteen primary schools, and many early childhood education centers. We are approximately six hours from Sydney to the south and Brisbane to the north.

COVID-19 has impacted our community in several ways. After simmering differences related to vision and management, COVID-19 exacerbated a few conflicts. Our town council disbanded and the CEO resigned. An outside government administrator is temporarily running the town without local councilors. The university has lost its on-campus students, and many residents have lost jobs due to slow business or shutdowns. There has been significant economic downturn.

Despite these challenging circumstances, the Boilerhouse project remains viable. We have secured sufficient funding to get this far (with only $5 million more needed to complete the project). The processes required to progress to this stage are all suited to online, remote work.

Our COVID-revised opening date is now mid-2023. The top three issues for the project over the next three years are:

• Ownership by the university and incorporation into its core business. Typically, Australian universities have not invested directly in child development projects such as science centers.
• General budget issues. The budget for our small regional university, although the largest employer in our region, is typically insufficient to allow for innovative projects like the Boilerhouse.
• Our nascent culture of philanthropy. So far, the private donations and government funds we have raised are tagged for the project and cannot be diverted to other university uses. Even still, if the Boilerhouse Discovery Space is going to be a sustainable venture, it requires a significant shift in investment, expertise, and engagement in the overall philanthropic advancement of our campus. We are competing among scholarships, research, and teaching needs. 

We are largely dependent on university planning decisions for overall progress on the building itself. However, our team is somewhat autonomous in generating mobile programs and partnerships. We listen closely to our regional and state departments of education and government guidelines for planning future investment in children’s discovery programs and infrastructure.

With our opening date still two years away, we are lucky to have not yet done much exhibit or program planning. Once we have a design consultant on board, we anticipate moving forward, keeping in mind health advice and potential future social and physical distancing regulation.

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kidSTREAM, Ventura County’s Children’s Museum (Camarillo, CA)

Michael Shanklin, Executive Director

Ventura County is a beautiful coastal community with an ideal climate for growing an array of agricultural crops. Home to several universities and a network of community colleges and with both beaches and mountains nearby, it is an amazing place to live and play. But it does not have a children’s museum within an hour’s drive to serve its 850,000 residents.

The kidSTREAM board determined early on to start small and prove ourselves to the community. Since incorporating in 2016, kidSTREAM has served more than 33,000 guests through Phase I museum without walls programming. Ultimately, the board planned to open a $15 million museum within a former city library in 2021. In 2018, a “Vision Room,” approximately 1,500 square feet of mostly indoor and some outdoor space, opened in the library to demonstrate what an interactive children’s museum experience entailed. In January 2020, the board decided to proceed to the next level. I joined the team in mid-February and began work on Phase II, the exhibit plan. We had hoped to open something by the summer of this year, however COVID-19 has pushed our plans back to 2021. 

As kidSTREAM’s first paid team member, my first day on the job was February 20, a month before community leaders issued the “Safer at Home” order. 

COVID-19 Impact

The pandemic has caused many donors to channel funding to direct service organizations, which has made fundraising for an emerging museum more challenging. However, the pandemic pause has given kidSTREAM the opportunity to reevaluate our plans for exhibit design and the guest experience. 

COVID-19 has significantly increased the amount of screen time children experience as schools have adapted from the traditional in-person instructional model. As we think about designing exhibit experiences for the new museum, how does this shift affect what our audience might want in a future museum visit? Current circumstances have prompted us to develop our outdoor space first. These spaces will be safer for guests, making them more comfortable coming to the new museum. We are also considering how we might make exhibits interactive but not necessarily hands-on. In hands-on exhibits, children literally touch everything; in interactive exhibits, such as light and shadow walls, children can actively engage without touching anything. Hands-on play is still incredibly compelling and here to stay, but it is getting a partial time out while the world recovers. 

Another silver lining is that we are able to rethink our cleaning protocols as we learn from other museums that are opening before us. 

Throughout these uncertain past few months, we never considered backing away from our plans. We are using this additional time to plan, fundraise, and solicit feedback from the community. Moving forward, however, the top issues that concern us are:

• How can we fundraise during a pandemic?
• How will the pandemic impact our project timeline?
• When will families comfortable coming back to a hands-on learning environment (if at all)?

The ACM Leadership Calls have been tremendously helpful in tracking issues facing the field in general. We learn from each other’s success and challenges, and find some support in the process. This unanticipated pause has also given me the opportunity to work closely with our founder and board members to be more closely aligned.

Our field is an innovative nexus of learning, fun, kindness, and sharing. We will emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic stronger, more guest friendly, and better suited for future challenges. If we model this behavior well, we might help future generations to become more resilient.

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Alix Tonsgard and Laura Diaz

Building and maintaining trusting relationships is at the core of early education and care programs, whether part of a preschool, a social service agency, or a children’s museum. As DuPage Children’s Museum has continued our community outreach programming to vulnerable families in a pandemic, we have expanded and ultimately deepened our approach to building relationships. In the face of a global crisis, with normal communications patterns disrupted, our Partners in Play (PIP) program is still able to meaningfully impact the lives of children and caregivers through a previously underutilized path: texting.

The caregivers we serve often need support in recognizing the growth and development that takes place during open-ended play for young children (ages birth to three). Through a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), we created a program to take place in our Young Explorers exhibit gallery, originally designed for families with children under two, and intentionally redesigned to make child development information and milestones more visible.

We began with two cohorts of twelve families each, the first group selected by a social service agency and the second consisting of teen parents recruited from a support group. PIP was scheduled to take place over the course of one year, during which all families would attend monthly sessions at the museum.

The first few PIP sessions were designed to establish trusting relationships between museum staff and caregivers. Once families—some first-time museum visitors—became comfortable, sessions became more content-focused on specific aspects of young children’s development, such as memory, communication, and fine motor skills.

Two months into the program, COVID-19 hit and the museum closed. How could we keep these families engaged in meaningful and accessible ways ? We started group-texting families twice a week with a friendly greeting (“Hi, how are you doing?”) and a simple activity that could be done at home. We also called them individually from time to time just to connect and hear about what life during COVID-19 was like for them. We enlisted the help of a particularly outgoing PIP mother who helped spark replies and conversations among the families. Initially it was difficult to stay connected with teen parents. However, we learned that by postponing the text drop from mid-afternoon to around 7-8 p.m., when bedtime was near and they might finally be able to pick up their phones and relax on the couch, our messages got greater response.

The more we learned from texts and phone calls, the more we were able to tailor PIP activities, developed to take place in a carefully designed museum environment, to new realities—a home, often with other family members, including children of all ages, milling around. One text from a PIP staff member showed a picture of her own two-year-old who had decided to dump every single toy on the floor while Mom was on a Zoom work call. Not only was everyone able to share a laugh about what life is like “working from home,” but PIP staff suggested parents turn messes like this into   clean-up and sorting activities, perfectly appropriate for young children.

The response has been incredible. During the first few weeks of the pandemic, social service home visits paused and other organizations scrambled to come up with a plan for how to work with families from home (both the provider’s home and the caregiver’s home). At this time, the PIP program was the only support some families had. Many PIP caregivers are frontline workers who do not have the privilege of working from home. Throughout the shelter-in-place period, they continued to do what they could to meet the basic needs of their families. Regular texts and calls from DCM staff gave them something to look forward to and focus on beyond their daily struggles.

“The upbringing of ages zero to three is beautiful but very difficult and… very tiring because they need full time care. Programs like PIP help us with our stress and are great and fun dynamics for our babies.

 For families who have low resources it is a huge support because we know that there are an infinite number of organizations…but sometimes they are unreachable for us. Now more than ever with the pandemic, we need to gather and share ideas with one another to help with the upbringing of our children from home.”

Almost every family has a phone, but some families don’t have access to computers or reliable internet connections, making Zoom-delivered programs not fully accessible. Many social service agencies already use texts to stay connected with families. We talk a lot about access, but the pandemic has presented us with a unique opportunity to take a harder look at the realities and needs of the families we serve—in the extended stay-at-home COVID-19 environment and after. We are grateful for how supportive IMLS has been as we tweak this program to meet families where they are in a time when they need us the most

At this writing, there are ten sessions left in our program. We are packing up all the PIP materials and in two scheduled pick-ups at the museum, will give five kits each time to program families. Each kit contains instructions, materials, and child development information for an activity. Later we will text them short videos of how to use these kits. We are looking forward to seeing our families again at pick-up time, but are also excited about the expanded possibilities for keeping these connections strong under any circumstances.

Alix Tonsgard is an early learning specialist and Laura Diaz is a community & family access specialist at the DuPage Children’s Museum in Naperville, Illinois.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Read other articles in the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Luke Schultz

After closing on March 13, Madison Children’s Museum (MCM) staff decided there were still too many pandemic unknowns to even project a reopening date. Policies and plans were created to reduce the overall risk of exposure to our visitors and staff. But at this writing, barring any miraculous medical treatment or prevention breakthroughs, we will most likely remain closed until at least March of 2021.

Early discussions about reopening ultimately remained consistent with the museum’s mission and philosophy. We determined we could not provide children with the same freedom of open-ended play and discovery learning without an extensive—and in our view, experience-limiting—set of rules. The Madison audience is well informed, conscientious, and expects high standards. Even if we felt we could prevent or significantly reduce the spread of COVID-19 while serving young children and their families, the costs of doing so would be prohibitive, especially with the reduced numbers of visitors expected.

I have been the director of facilities at the museum for the past ten years. Before that, I worked in the field of building management. I am also married with two young children. But in a field focused on creating exhibits, programs, and social gathering places, I write from the perspective of someone charged with keeping the building clean, safe, operational, and all on budget.

Coming from the business world, I have seen a need for greater understanding of and focus on simple practices related to the physical plants, operations, and facilities side of museums. Among both existing and emerging museums, there is a field-wide focus on the museum experience, but not enough emphasis on the essential underlying facilities that deliver it. New safety requirements that have emerged as a result COVID-19 are bringing this issue to the forefront. In 2011, the museum was very lucky to have received a seven-year matching grant from the Kresge Foundation to help support upkeep and replacement of fixed assets like mechanicals, windows, the roof, etc. 

There are building and maintenance issues, large and small, with all museums.  But two primary areas of concern in my role for the museum’s pandemic response planning involve cleaning products and equipment and building air quality.

Cleaning Methods & Products

Just to have all the right equipment and sanitizers on hand is a daunting prospect. Even at the time of this writing (July), our museum has found that sanitizing products remain inconsistently available. Distributors sometimes aim products at “essential business,” and withhold them from “nonessential.” In some cases, distributors have been directed not to sell at all to nonessential businesses. Meanwhile, the same products can be available directly to consumers through Amazon or other retailers, but at a prohibitively high price for businesses buying in sufficient quantities to take care of large buildings.

U.S. Communities, a national cooperative procurement organization for the public sector that has been helpful in the past, reports that many of the products formerly made in the U.S. are now made in China and can be more difficult to obtain.

How clean is clean enough? There is “visual” clean. Traditional cleaning methods have done a good job. Everything looks clean, but how effective is that level of cleaning in this new COVID-19 environment? Our museum reached the conclusion: not good enough. We explored stronger cleaning methods and products, including a “biodome” probiotic spray-on surface coater. This statically charged sprayer encases surfaces, and protection supposedly lasts for ninety days. It is advertised to “work on mud [and other natural] surfaces.” It costs seventeen cents/square foot. It was also deemed safe for children, but when we looked at it, was still in lab studies to see if it works on COVID-19.

Cleaners that work on natural surfaces is a key selling point for us. MCM’s exhibits are known for their creative use of and commitment to natural materials. While green and environmentally friendly—and some people think less hospitable to viruses than hard surfaces—they are now harder to clean than plastic or laminate products. And many exhibit components are not COVID-cleanable at all, as many museums are now finding out, and must be removed from public access.

Building Air Quality

MCM’s HVAC system includes a “variable refrigerant volume” (VRV) system, an energy recovery unit, and boilers. Overall it is a ductless building with individual smaller cooling units in specific spaces. If the building is closed in the summer, and systems are off, humidity levels build and have a corrosive effect on materials and surfaces. Even a closed building requires maintenance and energy costs to stay ahead of the game. MCM has been running the fresh air system at night, when energy costs are lower, to keep air circulating/cooler.

What new levels of HVAC filtration will be needed to protect people from air-circulating particulates, e.g. coronavirus? We are continually checking with ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) for new COVID-19 standards. It has been suggested that some parts of the HVAC system can be enhanced with additional filters (e.g. MAVR-13 filters), but our other smaller units are not designed to accommodate additional, individually attached filters.

At one point, rough estimates for some of these add-ons would cost the museum, at a minimum, an additional $6,000/quarter. 

While We Wait

Like all children’s museums, MCM is very protective of the health and safety of children, their caregivers, our staff, and everyone in our community. We want to open, but knowing that we’re not essential and still feeling too much uncertainty about the pandemic, we remain closed. An initial PPP loan covered salaries through June. Through two difficult rounds of staff layoffs and conversion to a part-time work/share plan, some remaining staff like me have stayed employed, with health insurance.

Meanwhile, while we remain closed, the maintenance/upkeep needs of the building don’t stop. I frequently go to the museum to check on overlooked facility details common in closed or under-utilized buildings. Plumbing, for example. When toilets and sinks aren’t used, hard water buildup affects the fixtures. They will need to be replaced much sooner than they would in an actively used building. So, I go around and flush the toilets to circulate the water, waiting for the day when the museum will again be humming with activity.

Luke Schultz is director of facilities at Madison Children’s Museum in Madison, Wisconsin.

Read other articles in the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

This article is part of the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Mary Maher

On March 16, due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus, DISCOVERY Children’s Museum (DCM) in Las Vegas, Nevada, closed. Some staff, who had been tracking local response to the pandemic wave, were not surprised; others were caught off-guard by the museum’s swift decision. At first, most staff, like most people in the U.S., thought their regional shutdown would be short—two weeks. At the time, even that seemed drastic, but no one was prepared for the lengthy unknown that has followed.

When the announcement came, all staff felt supported by a “heartfelt email” from museum CEO Melissa Kaiser assuring them that their jobs were safe, and that those who were able to work from home would be able to do so. Many of front-line staff’s extended families fortunately were able to keep their jobs as well, and even though other aspects of the quarantine, including juggling work and family responsibilities at home, were challenging, financial hardships did not immediately emerge.

This article shares the stories of the many DCM staff who deal daily and directly with museum visitors. From interns to learning educators to visitor services staff, how did they handle the quarantine. What did they learn about themselves, both personally and professionally, in this mandatory timeout? And how will they take this new knowledge back to their work with visitors since the museum reopened on July 2? 

Visitor Services Staff with No Visitors

Visitor services staff Ayesha Inayat: “Visitors make our job!” While most staff were grateful to able to work from home and regularly connect with coworkers through video team meetings and emails, all agreed it felt odd.

Lisa Esterkamp, assistant director of visitor services: “It was very weird. I deal primarily with the visitors, and I spend the majority of my time in very close physical contact with my team. It was a big adjustment to move to online/phone meetings and communication.”

Sales Coordinator Connor Tetter: “I didn’t realize how much I missed my coworkers until we were finally able to start returning to the building.”

But perhaps Marketing Content Specialist Jessica Duffin summed it up best: “The museum felt so lifeless without hundreds of kids running around. In a way, this has been a good reminder that, beyond exhibits and programs, kids give the museum its magic.”

Preparing for Reopening

Shortly after closing, however, museum staff began planning for the reopening, adhering to evolving state and local guidelines. Every aspect of the facility was cleaned and scrutinized for health and safety precautions related to COVID-19. Staff worked to close or adapt exhibits, make museum admissions reservation-only and establish capacity limits, and create new signage to (playfully) keep visitors informed about new rules.

Floor staff, key in ensuring returning visitors stay safe while enjoying a much-needed return to fun, were involved from the beginning in reopening plans. Discovery Children’s Museum’s floor staff, known as the Learning Education Team, and members of the museum’s internship program, YouthWorks, worked along with other staff to create a plan. Before determining how to best support returning visitors, all staff were asked to think about what situations might arise and what new mindsets they might encounter among once familiar audiences, many venturing out for the first time.

Staff at all levels agreed that many families need a break and are eager to get out of the house and enjoy a relaxing and fun museum visit. Kids especially, cooped up for months, might be ready to really cut loose. Staff thought they would be dealing with a range of mindsets—from anxious parents needing reassurance about their and their children’s safety to those who seem unconcerned or resistant to following safety guidelines. It was agreed that every visitor would be treated with the same patience and empathy to ensure a great experience.

To that end, the museum created an Empathy Policy, guidelines created to assist staff in engaging with visitors in today’s sensitive climate. During its creation, following the popular notion that people will support what they help to create, all staff were encouraged to think about putting themselves in the shoes of the person with whom they’re engaging, and trying to understand their situation. For example, prior to closure, most interactions with visitors were brief. Coming out of lockdown, people might be eager to start talking again—to anyone—which could lead to them to confide their quarantine trials and tribulations to staff unprepared to deal with that level of personal information.

Lisa Esterkamp: “The guidelines document is more of an addendum to our current visitor engagement training. It takes a deeper dive into four topics we felt were the most important for today’s ‘new normal’: Empathy, Active Listening, Transparency, and Patience. Not only will we be interacting with visitors, who will all have different thoughts and feelings about current events, but our employees are also going through this as well and may need additional support to help navigate their own experience. It was important to create a training that prepares them for both visitor and team member interactions.

“The new document shows the team how to slow down and spend time with the visitors. Pre-pandemic, we were high traffic, often with a line out the door. Quick, friendly, and efficient engagement was a focus, because visitors waiting in long lines can have a negative experience. Now, with physical distancing and attendance caps, wait times are inevitable. We hope to use them as opportunities to spend quality time with our visitors, getting to know them, seeing how they’re doing, and asking how we can help. The greater, more personalized engagement we can deliver today will keep them coming back in the future.”

YouthWorks intern Nayeli Lara: “… during their visit, I want them to have the best day of their life for however long they stay. I’ll refrain from heavy conversations or topics and let them immerse themselves in whatever gallery I am in that day. So at least they can rest easy that night knowing they had an awesome day at the museum.”

Learning Education Team member Kurt True: “I’ve been concerned since the beginning of the shutdown that children, especially the younger ones, will think that they are responsible for the sudden radical changes that they’ve experienced in their lives since the middle of March. It’s not unusual for small children to engage in this kind of self-blame when they experience an unexpected loss, for instance when parents divorce, or a pet dies, or a family moves to a new neighborhood.

“Children experiencing that kind of self-blame can become socially withdrawn and often lose ground developmentally. All of us on the floor are going to have to give a lot of extra encouragement to children who’ve been emotionally impacted by enforced social distancing over the past few months, but also we need to remember that children who are having emotional or developmental difficulties are going to need time to find their way back to their respective baselines. We can’t force or coerce them back. The best we can do sometimes is be a calming presence.”

What We Learned about Ourselves

Prior to pandemic closure, most museum staff who dealt directly with visitors agreed that working with visitors—especially kids—was the most rewarding part of their jobs. They loved helping a child learn a new skill or work through a knotty problem. They enjoyed helping parents and caregivers feel comfortable in the museum, ready to engage in learning activities with their kids or just have a fun, relaxing time. Even the occasional hard-to-please visitors, though sometimes challenging, inspired professional growth. For a few intern staff, it was sometimes nerve-wracking but ultimately gratifying to successfully deal with “codes” (direct radio messages to staff about serious problems in the museum, such as a missing child).

So, what was it like for people staff to suddenly be disconnected from their people? Again, although everyone was grateful to still be employed, it varied. Some staff were surprised at how much they enjoyed working from home; some felt even more productive working alone. But through technology, they were able to stay connected with and supported by their team members and leadership staff.

Ania Lopez: “I am most surprised at how I am still able to interact with guests through the museum’s website and social media pages. Personally, I am surprised at how creative I’ve become with my work-from-home assignments.” Many staff were also grateful to have work assignments that helped focus their day.

Alondra Rocha: “Six people, including me and my two older sisters plus two dogs sharing a two-bedroom house has taken a toll. My weekly museum assignments were fun and kept me feeling it would all go back to normal soon.”

Ayesha Inayat: “Working from home isn’t as fun as it was in the beginning. Staying home every day has been trying. But our team has come together in an astounding way. Our CEO continued to boost morale, letting us know that she valued all of our work. It definitely helped me feel good about the work that I was doing even though at home.”

For some, especially YouthWorks interns—high school students used to busy, but structured schedules—the change caused them to suddenly dig deep for personal motivations. Some were surprised and buoyed by discovering a continued interest in pursuing their goals; others experienced a mix of motivational levels, but relied on friends and family (and pets!) to get them back on track. A few enjoyed the lack of structure and social engagement that freed them up to pursue dormant interests.

But the majority were eager for the museum to reopen, for visitors to return, and for them to get back to what they love.

Akira Tate: “Fourteen weeks working from home has made me realize how much I miss being at the museum.”

Some staff have learned that working from home is probably not a future option they would willingly choose.

Nicholas Coffey: “I have learned that I will never voluntarily work from home. Turns out I need to leave the house to feel fulfilled.”

Otila Prive: “I realized how much of a positive mental impact work has on me. Being out and interacting with other people is something I didn’t know I would need so much. Staying in my house all day—and every day in the beginning—started to take a toll on me.”

Everyone expressed complete trust in the museum’s new cleaning, safety, and operational procedures.

Marina Chavez: “The museum is taking lots of precautions to make sure staff and visitors are safe, following the guidelines like checking everyone’s temperatures and making sure visitors and staff are using hand sanitizers. The museum is probably the safest place to go compared to other places.”

Kurt True: “Who or what has been most helpful to me during the quarantine? That’s easy. The Facilities staff. Without them, I wouldn’t have a job to go back to tomorrow.”

All staff are looking forward to reconnecting with visitors and with their coworkers. The silver lining, if there is one, of this sudden and extended personal and professional retreat is that floor staff and all staff who deal daily with visitors are eager to return to what they feel they excel at: helping children and their families have fun learning experiences at the museum. They feel prepared to deal with the new museum environment and supported by their directors and managers. The future is still uncertain. We are not back to “normal,” but for this group of Discovery Children’s Museum floor staff the pause has given them time to think about their roles on their teams and what they can now bring back to the museum and its visitors.

Ashten Davis: “…having just been at the museum for five days before we closed, the quarantine has been difficult in some aspects but I am excited to go back, and I am leaving quarantine a better person.”

Jessica Duffin: “These past few months have opened my eyes to just how lucky I am to work for the museum. Our higher ups, especially our CEO, have handled this shutdown with more compassion and grace than any of us could have wished for. From the very beginning, they made us feel important and that they were going to do whatever it took to protect our jobs and our pay during these difficult times. I love my job and what I do, but even more, I love the people I work for.”

Mary Maher is the editor and designer of Hand to Hand.

Thanks to Jodi Gutstein, director of marketing and communications at Discovery Children’s Museum, for collecting thoughts from the following staff members included in this article:

Ayesha Inayat, assistant manager of sales and visitor services and data specialist; Conner Tetter, sales coordinator; Daniela Flores-Bello, visitor services coordinator; Jessica Duffin, marketing content specialist; and Lisa Esterkamp, assistant director of visitor services.

Learning Education Team members: Ania Lopez, Ashten Davis, Emma Agundez, Joselyn Gurrola, Kurt True, Lexi Keaton, Lidia Macario, Mahaleah Murdock, Marina Chavez, Nicholas Coffey, Otila Prive, Samantha Sleigher, Serio Lopez

YouthWorks Interns: Akira Tate, Alondra Rocha, Angela January, Christian Manriquez, Clarisa Del Toro, Kahleia Corpuz, Nayeli Lara, Nigel Simon.

Read other articles in the August 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “COVID-19: Stories from the Field.”

In light of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations,” will be published online rather than printed. You can read the issue in full here on the ACM blog, and also find the PDF in ACM’s Online Member Resources Library.

When this issue was originally scheduled last year, it was planned to focus on how children’s museums could maximize core operations, examine existing structures and practices, and fine-tune operations to be prepared to withstand “economic fluctuations and other curveballs.”

No one could have predicted the curveball of COVID-19. While most articles in this issue were written in early 2020, before the pandemic reached its peak, all have been updated to acknowledge our current challenges. The next issue of Hand to Hand, scheduled for August 2020, will focus entirely on the children’s museum field’s response to COVID-19.

We are currently evaluating future topics beyond this summer, as well as distribution models to ensure all ACM members have access to Hand to Hand. 

Read the issue!

Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations

A Note from the Editor
An introduction to the issue from Mary Maher, editor of Hand to Hand.

Thriving (in a Downturn)
Charlie Trautmann, Sciencenter
Consider three keys to success for museums looking to increase their strength and capacity: building community value, managing finances wisely, and practicing appropriate governance.

From Protests to Virus: Operational Changes with an Eye on Survival
Serena Fan, Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Museum
Learn how the Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Museum has adapted to the back-to-back challenges of ongoing protests and COVID-19 across staffing, scheduling, cleaning, and more.

Navigating with Knowledge: Using Data Strategically to Maximize Impacts and Benefits
John W. Jacobsen with Laura Roberts, David Ellis, George Hein, and Lynn Baum
The authors of the recently-completed Assessing Museum Impact (AMI) Research Project discuss the importance of using data to get where you want to go.

AMI: What We Learned about Data—Collecting It, Analyzing It, Using It
Q&A with Jane Bard, Children’s Museum of New Hampshire
Hear from the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, one of six museums that participated in the Assessing Museum Impact Research Project, about how their lessons learned to build a more sustainable operation.

Positioning for Growth: Thanksgiving Point Restructures to Ensure Long-Term Sustainability
Stephen Ashton, PhD, Gary Hyatt, Lorie Millward, and Mike Washburn, Thanksgiving Point
Since opening in 1996, Thanksgiving Point, a museum complex in Lehi, Utah, has restructured for sustainability, unifying its different venues under a united leadership structure.

What We Learned from 2008:
Reflections from two museums that weathered the 2008 recession

Operating in Five Locations Since Opening in 2006 Has Taught Us Flexibility
Lisa Van Deman and Melanie Hatz Levinson, Kidzu Children’s Museum
Museum leaders reflect on the many changes Kidzu Children’s Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina has undergone since first opening in 2006.

Contingency Planning, Multiple Budget Scenarios, and Creative Operating Models: Then, Now, and Always
Patty Belmonte, Hands On Children’s Museum
Hear how Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia, Washington, leveraged in-kind donations to move to a new location in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. 

The Associations of Children’s Museums (ACM) champions children’s museums worldwide. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Mary Maher, Editor, Hand to Hand

In June 2019, I met with ACM staff to plan topics for the coming year.  At the time, blips were showing up on ACM Executive Director Laura Huerta Migus’s broader nonprofit radar indicating an economic downturn coming soon. Exactly when or how bad, no one could say, but many people were certain that it would occur.

In that light, this issue, themed Tighten Up: Streamlining Museum Operations, was planned to focus on how children’s museums could maximize core operations, examine existing structures and practices, and fine-tune operations to be prepared to withstand “economic fluctuations and other curveballs.”

In the fall of that year, with the stock market booming and other economic indicators trending up, concerns about a downturn receded a bit. Nevertheless, with many museums working toward strengthening their financial positions for an always uncertain future, a focus on economic flexibility still seemed apt.

In late February 2020, as first drafts appeared, two of them mentioned operational issues related to current and anticipated problems with the emerging Coronavirus. The Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Center was actively dealing with that city’s full-blown health crisis. Ending the original version of her piece about financial planning lessons learned in the 2008 recession, Patty Belmonte, CEO of Hands On Children’s Museum (Olympia, Washington), said, “Right now I’m thinking…what if coronavirus spirals in the U.S.? We are making contingency plans for that scary possibility.”

Within two weeks, the “other curveballs” slammed home. Countries went from watching COVID-19 unfold in other places to an unprecedented nearly country-wide shut downs. In the U.S., all children’s museums closed within a week. Many staff were furloughed or let go. Remaining staff worked from home, revising budgets to keep their museums alive and creating new or packaging existing museum programs to stay connected to quarantined children whose educations were now being directed by their parents. With no “all-clear” date in sight, museums around the world monitored health-related developments while beginning the monumental task of preparing to safely reopen.

Amidst the field’s currently triaged efforts at survival, would the information gathered for this museum operations issue still be relevant, and would museum staff be in a mindset to find it useful? After much discussion and a thorough review and update of articles to respond to today’s priorities, a decision was made to proceed.  As museums continue to plan both long- and short-term throughout this crisis, we are hopeful that readers will find the information helpful in reopening even stronger museums that will continue to serve the many children and families who sorely miss us.

—ED

By Charlie Trautmann, Sciencenter

As with all of the contributions to this issue of Hand to Hand, the text of this article was written before the current outbreak of the novel coronavirus that caused all children’s museums to temporarily close their doors in March 2020. To preserve relevance, the editor and I have made a few minor modifications to the original article, but because I believe that leadership at all levels involves short-term management decisions made in the context of long-term thinking, I hesitated to make major changes. While the details of how children’s museums will operate after re-opening is still unclear, what is clear to me is that the key points made in the article will likely remain relevant—and become perhaps even more so—in the future.   

How can a children’s museum withstand short-term fluctuations of the economy and also thrive in the long term? Although many factors are involved, three areas that stand out as keys to success include:

• Building community value
• Managing finances wisely
• Practicing appropriate governance

In this article, we’ll examine each of these broad topics and show a few examples of how children’s museums can use them to increase their strength and capacity to succeed.

Building Community Value

Successful museums are, first and foremost, essential to their community—not just nice, but necessary. During downturns, communities rally to the aid of their most essential assets—and this is where children’s museums should strive to position themselves. There are several ways to build this sense of being “necessary” in a community.

Recognize that the more a museum gives away, the greater the return of community support. It might seem counterintuitive that giving away admissions, programs, and other benefits can lead to greater income. However, when a museum provides free or low-cost services that a community wants, it is more likely the community will value the museum as necessary and worthy of philanthropic support, especially in tough times.

For example, several years ago the Sciencenter held informal meetings over coffee with our county’s Head Start coordinators. We found that early STEM learning was a high priority for them, but was an area in which they had no expertise. A natural partnership evolved over the next several years, starting with the museum providing free programming. This led to a modest budget for regular events for caregivers and children at the Sciencenter. Head Start supplied hot dinners, coordinated the schedule, and publicized the events, while the museum provided space, activities, and staff educators. Members of the local government, donors, and educators now consider this partnership an important asset and a key part of the educational infrastructure in our community. More than one million dollars of new program support has followed, much of it from private donors who became inspired with serving those families with the fewest opportunities.

Create exhibits, programs, and events your community is passionate about. How can a museum do this? It’s simple, just ask! Talk with museum members, guests, and others in the community to learn about their interests and aspirations. Advisory groups, parent groups, and teachers are all happy to share their ideas. The Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum, while listening to its audience, found that food security was a top issue. As a result, they initiated a weekly farmers market in a pavilion on their site and rapidly won the praise of their community. Food turned out to be a versatile topic for education about nutrition, STEM, and culture.

At the Sciencenter, staff and volunteers were losing enthusiasm for a long-running offsite Egg Drop event, in which participants designed a device to protect an egg from breaking when dropped from three floors. But our community readily provided a solution by suggesting an onsite Halloween event. The new event drew twice the attendance of the former event and attracted people to the museum instead of to an offsite location; sponsorship for the new event increased five-fold over the old event.

Actively work for diversity. When developing activities for new audiences, it is important to remember that removing barriers to participation is necessary, but not sufficient to ensure that the activity will be truly embraced by a new audience. For example, free entrance admission and transportation alone won’t cause families from traditionally underrepresented communities to flock to a museum. Many museums incorrectly believe that if they promote their programs broadly enough, everyone will respond by participating. However, making new audiences feel welcome requires hard work: to demonstrate a sincere commitment to inclusivity and cement a true sense of welcome, you must reach out over the long haul and develop new relationships. Consider inviting members of the new audience to serve on the staff or board or as volunteers. (Trautmann et al. 2018; Dawes 2017).

The Sciencenter became aware of a need for families with children with sensory processing disorders to have a safe space to take their children. Rather than just offering free admission, the museum partnered with a local nonprofit serving families with disabilities and learned about the specific needs of this audience. The resulting pay-as-you-can Sensory Hours program—held on Sunday mornings when the museum was otherwise closed—became highly used by families and their children, and within several years received generous multi-year support from New York State.

Managing Finances Appropriately

The best financial managers work to meet both short-term metrics as well as long-term goals that transcend their own tenure. It’s a philosophy that requires transparency of financial results, conservatism in estimating income, long-term thinking, and the indirect benefits that come from giving back to the community. Here are several ideas for maintaining strong financial hygiene.

Develop a diverse mix of income sources. Work toward a mix of earned, contributed, grant, endowment, and other forms of support. At the Sciencenter, we maintain five primary sources, none of which provides more than 30 percent of total income. Combined income from admissions plus memberships is maintained below 20 percent of total revenues.

Recognize that earned income comes in two categories. Earned income can come from either visitors (e.g., memberships, entrance and program fees, gift shop, food service, parking, etc.) or non-visitor sources (venue rentals, grants, exhibition rentals, educational services, leasing of unneeded space, etc.). Having a business model that actually minimizes income from visitors is a great way to strengthen community relationships and increase the incentive for donors to support your museum. Some museums, such as the Children’s Museum of Tacoma, have gone as far as instituting a “pay as you can” model. Many others have embraced Museums for All, a cooperative initiative between the Association of Children’s Museums and the Institute of Museum and Library Services in which visitors showing an EBT card at the front desk pay $3 or less for museum admission.

While some museums attempt to squeeze every dollar from their visitors during each visit as a way to close the nonprofit funding gap, museums that take a different approach and subsidize operations through non-visitor revenue sources (and thereby promote frequent visits and being a child’s “home away from home”) are much more likely to be regarded as “necessary” if and when financial difficulties appear. Museums that charge $20-25 admission per person hardly tug at the heartstrings of most donors.

On the other hand, increasing earned revenue from non-visitor sources, such as rental of unneeded space, exhibition rentals, or sales of educational materials, is viewed positively by communities. It signals an entrepreneurial spirit that reduces costs to visitors, diversifies income sources, and bodes well for long-term financial wellbeing.

Know the difference between capital vs operating costs. Many museums have unknowingly entered into financial trouble because they ignored the difference between capital and operating costs. Capital costs, such as one-time costs of constructing a new building or addition, are relatively easy to raise, because donors are generally inspired by the vision of a new, tangible asset. However, boards and staff are transitory, and often the board and staff that raised the money for a new facility are gone when the need for ongoing operating support becomes the reality.

The best insurance against these kinds of costs is for a museum to be conservative and realistic regarding its projected attendance and the operating budget estimates for a new facility. Interactive museums in the U.S. typically see about six visitors/sq ft/year, with children’s museums slightly higher than average and less-interactive natural history museums slightly below average. Be wary of any estimate for a new museum of greater than eight visitors/sq ft/year, and of greater than two to four visitors/sq ft/year for an addition to an existing museum (Trautmann 2017).

Start (or grow) your endowment. All museums should have an endowment, if their governance allows for it. If your museum does not have an endowment, start one. A good rule of thumb is to shoot for an endowment equal to twice the annual operating budget, which will produce enough annual income to support about 10 percent of the annual budget. The Sciencenter began its endowment in 1994, just as its first capital campaign was ending; many board members were opposed on the grounds that operational needs were more critical and that “we can always start an endowment in the future.” With a steady drumbeat of promotion, however, the museum’s endowment grew to $5 million in the twenty-five years that followed and now provides almost 10 percent of the museum’s operating income—slightly more than the museum’s annual fund.

Avoid debt! Museums should avoid taking on debt of any type, but especially long-term debt. This discipline requires conservatism during capital campaign planning to avoid starting a construction project that ends up costing more than can be raised. Debt makes a museum highly vulnerable to financial downturns, because debt service remains, even if revenues decline. In addition, debt service is about as un-appealing a case for support as it gets, and donors often shy away from supporting an organization if they learn that their support dollars are going to a bank to service a debt, rather than delivering programs to the museum’s audience.

Unfortunately, debt is often advocated by business-savvy board members who are used to the tax advantages of debt financing of for-profit organizations. Because nonprofits have no tax advantages, however, debt financing brings few advantages and, on the other hand, can be debilitating. The only type of debt a museum should take on is short-term borrowing for well-defined cash-flow purposes, such as when receipt of a confirmed grant or donation is expected after the expenditures of a program or other project are incurred. For construction projects, building in phases is the best way to complete a large capital project with reduced financial risk and without long-term debt.

Practicing Appropriate Governance

Improving governance is easy to ignore, because even though it’s important, it is rarely urgent, and therefore rarely rises to the top of a CEO’s list of priorities. However, at least 5-10 percent of a museum’s efforts should be devoted to “sharpening the saw” of governance. Good governance makes every other activity of a museum more efficient and effective, and helps a museum avoid debilitating issues that can absorb large amounts of management time and attention later on. Here are several suggestions for improving governance.

Develop short but strong mission, vision, and values statements (MVV) and use them regularly in making decisions. Short, specific statements are easier to remember than long, inclusive paragraphs and are more likely to inspire staff, board, volunteers, members, and friends to use them in daily decision-making. Well-crafted MVV can serve as effective initial filters for accepting or rejecting ideas that cross a director’s desk. All museums are constantly approached by those who offer partnerships with strings attached, and starting with “Does this idea advance our mission, vision, and values?” is a good way to begin the decision-making process.

Think of diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) as a process, not a destination. Many museum board members and staff think of diversity as a destination (“We’ll recruit two members of color to our board and then we’ll be diverse.”) Instead, think of DEI as a journey, which we start, continually get better at, and continue for as long as we serve our museum audiences.

While good museums are resilient, the best museums seek to be “anti-fragile.” Good museums weather storms, but the best museums have an active process for learning from them, so they can become stronger and better over time, much as a muscle ultimately becomes stronger after being temporarily weakened by exercise. A muscle needs more than just exercise, it needs nutrition and rest. Trainers call this the “Fitness Cycle,” characterized by stress, recovery, and adaptation. Similarly, the best museums do post-mortem exercises to learn from stressful events, whether financial, operational, governance-related, etc. In this way, they become more able to avoid similar situations in the future as a result of their learning. For these museums, problems become a laboratory for learning and continuous improvement. COVID-19 is no exception, and once museums are (hopefully!) able to view the current pandemic in hindsight, it will be helpful to document their experiences, share them, and learn from both theirs and others.

Prepare for the Black Swan. A Black Swan is an event that is so unlikely that it literally doesn’t fall on any reasonable distribution of statistical likelihood (Taleb 2007). The novel coronavirus that is currently affecting people worldwide is an example of a Black Swan: no one had predicted that such a viral outbreak in Wuhan, China, would cause such widespread disruptions to business and life worldwide. On a more local level, the sudden illness or death of a key staff or board member; a fire, hurricane, or earthquake; or even a water main break that closes the street by a museum’s entrance—all of these events can severely affect a museum’s capacity to deliver on its MVV and survive as an organization. The best way to prepare for a Black Swan is to conduct periodic scenario planning, train board and staff, discuss options with an insurance carrier, and maintain a liquid reserve fund equal to three to six months of operating expenses.

Building community value, managing finances wisely, and practicing appropriate governance are three broad areas of museum operations that directly affect a museum’s capacity to thrive, especially in the difficult environment caused by a financial downturn. While I have shared a few specific ways in which museums can address these topics, there are many other actions that could be appropriate for individual museums and their communities. These examples are meant to provide a starting point for discussion; creative staffs and boards can brainstorm other specific measures that make the most sense from the perspective of their own communities and financial contexts.

Charlie Trautmann teaches and conducts research on early childhood education in the Dept. of Psychology at Cornell University.  He was previously director of the Sciencenter in Ithaca, NY for twenty-six years and has served on the boards of the Association of Children’s Museums and the Association of Science-Technology Centers. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Cornell.

References

Dawson, E., “Not Designed for Us: How Science Museums and Science Centers Socially Exclude Low-Income, Minority Ethnic Groups,” Science Education, 89:6, Nov. 2014, p. 981-1008 https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21133

Taleb, N.N.  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Random House, 2007, p. 400.

Trautmann, C.H., Bevilaqua, D., Chen, G., Monjero, K., and Valenta, C., “Reaching New Audiences at Science Centers and Museums,” Informal Learning Review, Denver, CO, May-June 2018, pp. 13-19.

Trautmann, C.H., “The Business of Science Centers,” ASTC Dimensions, Association of Science-Technology Centers, Washington, DC, May-June 2017.

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Serena Fan, Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Museum

After almost three years of planning, Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Museum (HKCDM) opened in September 2018 on the first floor of a commercial building in a family-friendly district on Hong Kong Island. The 6,600-square-foot space has more than forty exhibits for families with children ten years old and under to explore, create, and express themselves. During our first year of operation, 60,000 visitors came to the museum, including field trip visitors from 210 kindergartens, primary schools, and other community organizations. HKCDM opened with eighteen full time and twenty-three part time staff.

The ‘Best-Laid Plans’

Due to capacity issues, this city’s first children’s museum initially opened on a reservation-only basis. (By law, HKCDM has a maximum capacity of 200 people, including staff.) Three daily fixed-time sessions allowed visitors to explore the museum for up to two and a half hours. The timed reservation system helped ensure we would not have to turn visitors away, as our online ticketing platform could show when a session was full. Visitors could purchase tickets before coming or, take their chances: if the session was not full upon arrival, they could purchase tickets onsite.

In addition to legal capacity, the three fixed time slots were important because of the one-hour break in between them. This respite allowed us sufficient time to clean thoroughly, as Hong Kong parents are hyper-vigilant about cleanliness. More importantly, it provided time for staff to process what we just experienced and to quickly share how we could do things better in the next session. 

There were downsides to the ticketing platform. If a family pre-purchased tickets and a child became ill, we had to help them rebook their visit to another day. It was also challenging in the event of sudden inclement weather, like typhoons or heavy rain, during which we would have to rebook multiple sessions. We also learned that the fixed visiting times were restrictive for a primary demographic—families with toddlers—as each child’s eating and sleeping routines could vary from day to day.

Almost ten months after opening, as staff gained experience, the need for the hour-long cleaning and debrief intervals was reduced. So we started planning to move to a more traditional museum visitation model, where visitors could arrive at any time. Still bound by maximum capacity levels, we would keep visit durations at two and a half hours.

Protests Accelerate Operational Changes

Less than a year after HKCDM’s opening, Hong Kong experienced a major citywide disruption. In June 2019, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against the Hong Kong government’s proposed extradition bill, which would allow criminal fugitives to be extradited to places with which Hong Kong currently does not have an extradition agreement. Notably, one of those countries is mainland China. When the government decided to proceed with the reading of the bill, a much larger demonstration was organized, which ended with the deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets. From there, weekly weekend demonstrations, often ending with tear gas, were common.

As time progressed, weekday boycotts called for citizens to stay home from work as a way to show support against the extradition bill. At the height of the anger against the government, demonstrators successfully shut down the city’s transportation system for a week. The Mass Transit Railway (subway) was so damaged at some major stations that it became unusable. In addition, roadblocks were set up at key areas around the city. Between the two, it was practically impossible to go anywhere. During that week, schools closed and more than half of our staff were unable to come to work.

Needless to say, these unprecedented events left us scrambling to put protocols into place. Furthermore, it pushed us to quickly change the way we operated, especially because it was predicted that protests could last for months and it was clear visitor attendance was already being affected. New and unforeseen variables added to the known limitations of the reservation system.

In July 2019, we piloted open sessions for two weeks. Visitors could come experience HKCDM for two and a half hours at any time during our regular hours. New visitors thanked us for the change, as some had always wanted to come, but could never find a session time that fit their schedule. Now they could come at a time that was most convenient for them. We learned some things about ideal visit start times as well. Our previous 12:30 p.m. fixed session start times were not as busy as our 4:00 p.m. sessions, because most families were still eating lunch midday. Once we moved to open sessions, we saw a rise in families coming at 1:30 p.m. On the weekend, this flexibility became important, because families would come in the early afternoon and leave in time to get home before the protests started again in the evening.

However, during the two-week pilot, we learned that the museum would need to implement major operational changes before this system became permanent. For example, we required a more sophisticated point-of-sale system. Open admissions required staff to handle all ticketing directly, instead of relying on the online ticketing platform formerly used to make reservations. We also needed a dedicated phone line and staff member to answer visitors’ inquiries about fluctuating daily capacity. We determined it would take us two months to adequately prepare for a permanent change to open sessions. So, we returned to our original fixed session system once the pilot was completed. This was painful, as the protests continued and families were limited to when they could come. The decrease in attendance was drastic, but we remained committed to a return to the fixed session system until staff was completely comfortable with a more sustainable plan.

In early November 2019, we switched permanently to open sessions. By then, protests were somewhat dying down, although families were still planning weekend activities around where ongoing protests were scheduled to take place. On weekends when rumors indicated that protests would occur near us, attendance would be low. Furthermore, the hot and humid summer had changed to cool and crisp fall weather, so fewer families were searching for engaging indoor activities. Thankfully, school field trips resumed so we were busy during the weekdays.

As Protests Wane, Coronavirus Hits

In mid-February 2020, Hong Kong experienced its second major citywide disruption within eight months. The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, closed schools and government facilities, such as libraries and swimming pools, until further notice. As news of the virus began to emerge, our first response was to purchase an enormous supply of face masks and cleaning supplies. The day after this purchase was made, both masks and supplies were either completely sold out or twice the price all over the city. Thankfully we made a timely decision to purchase additional supplies, as the stress of not having enough masks or cleaning products would have been tremendous and extremely costly. It may also have hindered our decision as to whether to open and for how long we could operate.

We also reverted back to fixed-time sessions. Once again, people need to make a reservation before coming to the museum. However, a new part of the reservation process requires potential visitors to answer a travel-related question: has anyone in the group wishing to visit been anywhere outside of Hong Kong in the past fourteen days (the virus’s supposed incubation period). In order to avoid discriminating against people traveling from different countries (mainland China, for example, as opposed to Canada, where the virus was exceedingly rare at the time), we made the difficult decision to impose a blanket ban on all destinations outside of Hong Kong. If anyone in the group answers yes, staff politely asked that the family book at a later date.

We also established new guidelines. All visitors and staff must wear a surgical facemask throughout their time at the museum (if they do not have them, the museum will supply them) and we lowered our maximum capacity number to fifty people. With fewer visitors, everyone can spread out and if a sick person, often yet to be diagnosed, is in the museum, the chances of infecting others are lower. Despite these precautionary measures, reservations are understandably still down. Although we were only able to open four days in February, some families were grateful that we were open at all so that their children could run around and to do something different from being cooped up at home.

A Present on Hold; A Future Unknown

After three years of conscientious planning, the museum opened with every expectation of success. However, these two unparalleled, back-to-back challenges have not only severely reduced admissions revenues, but have drained our three months of operating revenue cash reserves as well. Fortunately, museum donors are still supportive of HKCDM’s work, so the goal is to try to survive this period of unknowns.

In the meantime, we reduced expenses in order to sustain the museum through an indefinite period. For starters, beginning in February, temporary salary adjustments were put in place in accordance with Hong Kong employment regulations. All twenty of the museum’s full-time staff members received about 62 percent of their normal salaries. Fortunately, staff were in agreement with this arrangement. However, if the virus persists and the government continues to advocate that public places be closed, it is unclear whether this salary arrangement will continue to be acceptable to all. During this temporary reduced-salary period, the operations manager and myself are working full-time; remaining staff are working half-time, and sometimes from home.

Staff responsibilities have also been temporarily adjusted to make best possible use of available time and skills to meet the needs of the museum and our audience. For example, initially it was difficult to determine what additional tasks could be assigned to floor staff, working half their hours and with fewer visitors. Social media content, typically created and managed by the marketing team, was essential for keeping the public updated about health and safety measures as well as museum operating hours. We have now combined the skills of all teams to create social media content to keep our audience engaged. Floor staff and the education team are working together to create activities for children to do at home, which the marketing team then posts on the museum’s social media channels.

The above paragraphs were written in mid-February. Now, as we move into June, after a one-month mandatory closure by the government in April, we cautiously re-opened in May. People have gradually resumed going out to public places. Our reservation-only fixed-time sessions are often reaching our lowered maximum capacity. In the summer of 2019, many groups booked visits, but with the uncertainty of whether a second wave will occur in 2020, there have yet to be any similar bookings for the remainder of this year. We are planning to hold our own summer workshops to hopefully help generate additional revenue. While the past year has been difficult, we can confidently say we are a team of flexible, creative problem solvers, and that no problem is too big for us to tackle!

Serena Fan is the founder and executive director of the Hong Kong Children’s Discovery Museum.

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By John W. Jacobsen with Laura Roberts, David Ellis, George Hein, and Lynn Baum

The crucible of a crisis provides the opportunity to forge a better society, but the crisis itself does not do the work.  Crises expose problems, but they do not supply alternatives, let alone political will.  Change requires ideas and leadership.”

New York Times Editorial Board, April 9, 2020

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve amazing progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal in a feedback loop.

Bill Gates, 2013

Introduction

This article explores one of the ideas that may shape the new normal for children’s museums as we come out of the lock-down: The idea of using data to get where you want to go, or navigating with knowledge. We have heard that data is important, but how can a children’s museum actually use data to inform decisions when so much is uncertain and when past data seems irrelevant? By carefully selecting the data that will track your desired impacts and benefits. This article describes how to do this using the PIID Sequence and reports the findings from the five museums that used the sequence to improve their impact.

Prior to the lock-down, many museums used data operationally. Annual budget objectives, attendance forecasts, and the number of grant proposals are examples of common tactical uses of data. The next step is to use data strategically in forward planning to evolve into the new normal and then to prove and improve value.

A museum aspires to impact its community, audiences, and supporters, who in receive benefits from the museum. Impacts are the effects desired by the museum; benefits are what matter to the beneficiaries. The distinction is important. Both are end results, or outcomes, of the museum’s activities. Both should be intentional, and both should be measured. In good times, a museum should maximize impacts; in times of trouble, it should maximize benefits.

Benefits can differ from impacts: A family visiting an aquarium receives the benefit of a quality family experience, while the aquarium’s desired impact on the family might be to heighten awareness of conserving biodiversity. Alternatively, the benefits and impacts can be aligned, which is an edge for children’s museums: New parents bring their toddler to a children’s museum to see her develop and learn with new kinds of challenges; the children’s museum’s mission is to be a resource for learning about child development. Studying the alignment between a museum’s benefits and impacts may illuminate inefficiencies. Some degree of misalignment may be desirable for strategic or advocacy reasons, but too much may be inefficient and unsustainable.

What are the steps/skills needed for museums in the new normal to gather/analyze data that will support their operations, inspire confidence in funders, and help them make informed strategic decisions about the future of their institution? This article explores those questions, as they all lead to becoming a stronger organization better able to withstand uncertainties, such as pandemics.

Museum administrators need measurements to prove our value and advocate for our institutions. More fundamentally, we need the right metrics to drive progress toward our goals so that we can improve the human condition and preserve the trust the public has in museums. In a nutshell, we need measurements to make museums healthy and effective again.

How Do We Quantify Abstract Results with Hard Numbers?

The theory is that a purpose or goal, if successfully achieved through the museum’s activities, should produce its planned results, which should be observable by tracking predetermined key performance indicators (KPIs) that are qualitatively and/or quantitatively measurable through data.

Museums that have multiple sources of revenue (earned and support) end up serving multiple purposes for their various masters. Such museums are “multi-missioned,” ideally prioritized. For instance, a science museum might say their top mission is science learning (50 percent), with community gathering (30 percent) and economic development (20 percent) as secondary and tertiary purposes.

Because we have so many outcomes, audiences, and supporters, because every museum is unique, and because each museum pursues its individual missions differently, the global field of museums has no commonly accepted metrics to measure impact and performance. Our richness and complexity challenge any simplistic assessment of a museum’s value and impact, such as attendance or collection size. As a result, one of the museum field’s most challenging needs is to find ways to articulate, measure and increase a museum’s desired outcomes.

The tool to apply this theory to practice is the “PIID Sequence” (Purposes 4  Impacts 4  Indicators 4  Data fields). The sequence starts with museum leadership articulating one or more of its intentional purposes, then stating what changes or impacts they aspire to achieve for each purpose, and what real world observations might indicate that the impact was happening. Then, what data fields might measure or document changes in that indicator. This PIID Sequence is illustrated here:

The Assessing Museum Impact (AMI) Research Project

John Jacobsen, Laura Roberts, David Ellis, George Hein, and Lynn Baum ran the Assessing Museum Impact (AMI) research project from 2017 to 2019 to explore whether the strategic use of data could help museums improve their impact and performance. The four AMI volunteer advisors found that the theory is promising in practice, and that wider, deeper, and longer research is suggested. Their report, Assessing Museum Impact: From Theory to Practice – A Summary Report was published in October 2019. The report details changes that six participating museums made to their programs and operations, and the methods they found most effective in the collection and application of data. The advisory team coached the museums through the PIID Sequence to select meaningful and revealing data fields and then to use that data strategically to inform decisions about mission-related outcomes.

With the support and partnership of the New England Museum Association (NEMA), the participating museums included: Gore Place (Waltham, MA); Children’s Museum of New Hampshire; Paul Revere House (Paul Revere Memorial Association, MA); Rough Point (Newport Restoration Foundation, RI); Seacoast Science Center (NH), and the USS Constitution Museum (MA). The freely available database of Museum Indicators of Impact and Performance (MIIP 1.0.xls) lists 1,025 potential indicators that some participants found useful for guidance.

Data Collection

Participants took stock of what data they were already collecting and reviewed relevant historical data to serve as the basis for analyzing incremental change over time. Collectively, the participants used the following on-site and online data collection methods:

• Point of sales (POS) system reports
• Revenue and expense data
• “Bean counting” – Tallying by hand (stickers, etc.)
• Pre and post program evaluations by students and teachers
• Visitor surveys
• Observations
• Compiling social media comments
• Google Analytics
• Social media ratings (Trip Advisor, Yelp, etc.)
• Zip code and geolocational tracking

All methods were relatively low cost, as the project offered no incremental funding.

Participants generally favored quantitative data collection over qualitative data, perhaps because it was more readily available and seemingly easier to gather and apply.

Participants encountered logistical and capacity challenges. Allocating staff time, particularly during busy seasons, was difficult. Some felt their limitations kept them from fully completing the job of systematically collecting consistent data or accomplishing as much as they hoped.

However, while acknowledging the limitations, participants observed that it “doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it sounds.” They realized they were already collecting (but perhaps not sufficiently analyzing or using) data. Further, there are both low-tech and high-tech options (online and in-person surveys, interviews, comment cards) for improving data collection and analysis. Training staff, interns, and volunteers was essential, as comfort with using data in one part of the operation (like evaluation of school programs) can inform efforts in another part. Starting with easier data-collection tasks (e.g., using stickers to ‘vote’ for favorites on a large gallery map, counting attendance at events, asking a single question, etc.),rather than daunting undertakings like visitor surveys, can get the process going. Participants found technology could make a huge difference, such as employing new customer relationship management or point of sale software. Also, carefully placing data collection points in prominent locations, where people have time to complete surveys or other instruments, was useful.

Participants were excited about the potential of social media as a source of information and feedback but often found randomness, quirks, inconsistencies, and unpredictability in ratings on platforms like TripAdvisor and Google frustrating and “perplexing.” Often qualitative social media data—visitor comments—were more useful than ratings, although time-consuming to monitor. “The reviews remind us that even with our high attendance levels, the visitor experience can always be improved.” Participants also found that positive comments on these sites provided quotes for marketing, and that responding to reviews helped boost their rankings. They also watched for overall improvement and a decline in the proportion of negative reviews and comments. As with survey data, participants found information from reviews helpful in depersonalizing criticism and improving staff performance. Other sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, present a different source of insights. By developing metrics to measure engagement with learning and content pages on these sites, museums saw the potential for “a reasonable measure of mission impact as people elect to visit our institution’s content and thereby shape their digital personas.” Finally, participants were reminded of the usefulness of web analytics for improving the museum’s website.

Data Analysis:  Extracting Knowledge and Useful Meaning from Data

Participants were clear that raw data alone was not enough, that the utility of data depended on clear analysis and routine reporting. Some had reliable data from multiple years or sources that could be analyzed to identify trends. One participant used geo-location software to analyze data collected over prior years for trends and areas of opportunity in participation and visitation by schools and groups. But others confessed they had yet to “institutionalize” analysis or generate regular reports from the data they had. One noted the need for iterations in data collection and analysis, refining processes over time.

Some were left asking “so what? What do we do with this information?” Even with data in hand, analysis remained a challenge, often due to a lack of skills and experience. Participants noted other frustrations such as collecting data about visitor diversity or different departments collecting data in different ways.

Data Reporting: Communicating the Findings

Data and its analysis are helpful only when information is shared clearly and routinely, but how do we report what we have? Pages of numbers make people’s eyes cross; visuals are better. For instance, bar graphs are good when comparing similar museums or staff, where your museum is a differently colored bar seen next to others showing the same metric, such as the percentage of repeating teachers (an indicator of educational impact), or the absentee levels of floor staff. Pie charts, on the other hand, excel at visualizing different shares of a whole, such as a museum’s various sources of revenue, or a staff member’s allocation of work time.

A careful selection of KPIs is like the many gauges on the dashboard of an airplane’s cockpit that pilots use to fly safely to their destination. In order to fly to its destination, a museum needs to integrate and prioritize its KPIs to understand what they say collectively. These metrics will reveal the direction the museum is pointed in, and how that relates to where it intends to go and where it wants to make progress.

Using Data Strategically

As they became more comfortable with data and analysis of that data, participants envisioned how this capacity could inform organizational assessment and decision-making as an ongoing or regular practice. For example, a deeper understanding of the sources of revenue (events, admissions, rentals, annual appeals) could help museums make decisions about the allocation of resources and policies related to revenue generation.

Involvement of staff at multiple levels can help to change organizational culture, building and sustaining staff buy-in. There may still be resistance, but if staff at multiple levels and from all departments understand the large picture, the shift can take place. Participants recognized the importance of keeping a culture of evaluation going at their institutions.

Participating museums reported using data to inform decisions about functional issues like staffing, scheduling, and budgeting. They also saw utility for thinking and operating more strategically. They were better able to articulate intentions and goals and then become more rigorous about collecting evidence to support decision-making. One noted that data either “supports what you think is happening and/or exposes false assumptions.”

Understanding visitors—who they are, why they are visiting, and what they enjoy—was a focus for many participating museums. Museums also looked at the nature and quality of the experience and the ways that interventions like signage, amenities, and tours are, or are not, successful. One looked at data about returning visitors to fine-tune activities that would appeal to them. Another looked at improving the visitor’s experience of the museum’s grounds to support introducing a grounds-only ticket option. A third used data to look at the impact of a new visitors’ center and found that it met some their objectives but fell short on some of their other aspirations.

Museums were better able to understand patterns in visitation and organized program participation, confirming impressions or identifying opportunities in the market. Importantly, some were able to demonstrate their reach into previously under-served communities. One looked at changes in the distribution of the zip codes of members to gauge how well the museum was reaching new audiences.

One museum used data to more closely analyze how school and outside community groups made decisions about enrolling in various programs. It also identified potential new markets for programs. Another was able to demonstrate an increase in facilitated school visits over time, which they interpreted as an indicator of success.

Learning assessments completed by both teachers and their students and by visitors reported positive results, primarily around development of new skills and the confidence of children.

Participants noted that data can “substantiate your claims about your museum,” supporting the case made to funders for maintaining or increasing support. It can also strengthen discussions with potential grantors, sponsors, and donors and keep the museum accountable to all stakeholders.

The authors observe that expanding the use of data from tactical operations to strategic decisions may inform and support three broad areas of museum practice:

• Advocacy and fundraising: Public officials and private donors are increasingly demanding data as evidence of a museum’s accomplishments.
• Planning: Data from a museum’s track records and its peers informs both what it should be planning for and how much to expect it to cost and deliver.
• Administration: Leadership uses data to set realistic objectives and to monitor how the museum is doing, motivating each department’s role toward an overall vision.

All these are essential in creating a stronger, more resilient museum able to withstand external pressures that come from economic downturns, pandemics and other crises.

John W. Jacobsen is president (ret) of White Oak Associates, Inc., a U.S.-based museum analysis and planning firm. Jacobsen has led analysis and planning projects for museums around the world for over four decades, including when he was associate director of the Museum of Science in Boston. He is the author of Measuring Museum Impact and Performance and the Museum Manager’s Compendium.

Laura Roberts is the principal of Roberts Consulting.

David W. Ellis is consultant and President Emeritus, Museum of Science, Boston.

George Hein is Professor Emeritus, Lesley University.

Lynn Baum is principal of Turtle Peak Consulting.

References

Jacobsen, J. W. (2016). Measuring Museum Impact and Performance: Theory and Practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Q&A with Jane Bard, CEO, Children’s Museum of New Hampshire

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire was one of six New England museums (and the only children’s museum) that took part in the Assessing Museum Impact study. Museum president Jane Bard reflects on what she and her team learned in the process and how they are applying that knowledge to build a more sustainable operation.

Why did you decide to become involved with the project? How much time/effort was involved?

Collecting and analyzing data is important, but in the grand scheme of all we do, evaluation consistently moves to the bottom of our to-do lists. I say “our” because, in order to be effective, the commitment to engage in evaluation involves all museum departments. The project took eighteen months and included participation from several museum departments for an average of ten hours per month.

What data did you collect, which departments did most of the collecting, and what collection methods had you been using?

Prior to our involvement with the project, we had been collecting financial data, zip code data, and used both paper and online surveys to collect feedback from visiting families, teachers, and program participants. The visitor services and marketing departments primarily conducted data collection, with input from the education and development departments for specific projects or grants. This data gave us basic details and sometimes valuable information that helped inform decisions. However, there were gaps, especially among data that could measure our success in reaching goals set forth in our strategic plan. The AMI project challenged us to engage our entire staff in determining what data we could and should collect, and how it could help guide our decision making across departments.

What did you learn about using data effectively?

We tested some of our routinely made claims and assumptions about the museum, carefully reviewing the language used in those communications. We also reviewed which claims we should test such as, are we reaching a statewide audience? Are we fulfilling our mission and vision? Are our programs achieving their stated impacts in the community, with children, with low-income families? Is the museum the economic engine we claim it to be?

What were some of the data collection challenges, and how did you overcome them?

Primary challenges included collecting data from several departments, using multiple tools, and then trying to determine how to synthesize, analyze, and share it all in useful ways. We overcame this by dedicating two all-staff meetings to delve into the specifics: what data did we want to collect, how would we collect it, and who would lead each collection effort. We then assigned one staff member (who loves data!) to compile and share all the data. Another challenge was getting parents and teachers to return surveys. For parents, we incentivized their participation by periodically raffling off a museum membership to those who completed surveys. For visiting teachers, we eventually gave up trying to collect paper surveys and are now finding greater success by sending them a link to an online post-visit survey with results automatically tallied in a Google doc.

What did you learn about data collection? How did you come up with indicators that would determine success (or not), and then what data collection methods did you use to collect that information?

We used our current strategic plan pillars to develop success indicators. For example, one of our strategic goals was to expand and deepen our impact. How do we measure that? To show audience expansion, we gathered the following quantitative data:

• zip code data to show geographic reach;
• growth in participation by low income families and Title 1 schools to show socioeconomic reach; and
• growth in overall admission numbers, including first-time visitors, the number of member families, and program participants. 

Much of this data was collected using our Altru CRM system and is now being used to target marketing efforts to specific towns and audiences where we know, thanks to census data, there is room for growth. 

To gauge how well we were meeting the second part of that goal—to deepen our impact—we gathered staff observations as well as qualitative data through surveys of parents, teachers, and children. Survey questions probed changes in understanding of subject matter, changes in observed behavior and skills, and changes in learning approaches following a museum experience.

We also used our AMI project data to answer the big question: are we fulfilling our mission and vision? Our mission is to actively engage families in hands-on discovery, and our vision is to inspire all to become the next generation of innovators and creative thinkers. Much of the qualitative data we gathered served a dual purpose in helping us determine 1) success in achieving our mission and vision, and 2) course adjustments that might be needed. 

There are some very sophisticated data collection methods available (e.g. geomapping), but primarily for large organizations with well-developed skills and capacity. What simple but effective methods did you devise to collect useful data?

We experienced an “aha” moment during this project when our advisors validated the idea that “snapshots” of data can be as valuable as year-long views, and that collection methods do not need to be sophisticated. We tested this idea during a Free Family Day hosted to celebrate the museum’s thirty-fifth anniversary. We wanted to know how many first-time visitors this event drew and whether it attracted local families or expanded our geographic reach. We set up large pieces of poster board and gave families stickers to post indicating whether this was their first time to the museum or whether they had visited before and where they lived. This quick and simple method of collecting data did not overburden our staff (on a very busy day with more than 2,000 visitors!). At a quick glance, it showed us that about 50 percent were first-time visitors and represented towns throughout the state of New Hampshire, as well as southern Maine and northern Massachusetts. We also gave these stickers to everyone, using a different color for members, and then counted how many were left. Since we knew how many we printed, we could easily count the number of overall visitors and how many were museum members.

You have said that data is used to confirm what you think is happening and inform decisions. Did any new data reveal any surprises?

Data from our point of sale (POS) system showed hourly visitation patterns: the largest percentage of families started their museum visit between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., our first hour of operations. Through a Constant Contact survey of our members, as well as a Facebook survey of the general public, we found overwhelming interest in earlier opening hours. Many respondents said this would allow them to visit more often, work better for their family’s schedule, and increase their interest in renewing their membership. The museum changed to an earlier opening in September of 2019, and now 13 percent of families start their visit between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Although we can’t prove causation, we have also experienced a 10 percent growth in family memberships during the same period.

What aspect of museum operations, or which museum staff, is underutilized in data collection? What are some unturned stones of useful information?

A “secret source” of data that surprised me, but may not surprise our marketing colleagues, is the aggregate of comments, reviews, likes, shares, and interest generated by the museum’s social media content. Paying attention to social media metrics helps us gauge what resonates with our audience, as well as what doesn’t. We also use Google analytics to track engagement with our website pages. With a little time, effort, and training, the information we have gathered has helped us understand how our visitors utilize information on our site, and that pattern is constantly evolving. A nonprofit Google grant helped us set up a Google Ads account, which gives us access to $10,000 of monthly advertising within the Google search console. With the help of an outside consulting company, we’ve able to see how people are searching for information about us, how to reach new audiences, and then how to better get them in the door for a visit.

It’s been said that “numbers without stories have no humanity; stories without numbers have no accuracy.” Has any of your new data affected your story?

New data hasn’t changed our story; it has reinforced the story we were already telling. We recently conducted a survey in an effort to measure our impact on the lives of the children and families. We asked members and program participants to rate the accuracy of several statements on a scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree in. Between 80 and 100 percent of parents and caregivers strongly agreed with the following statements:

• The museum is a major contributor to my child’s development.
• Visiting the museum is educational for my child.
• The museum has helped my child develop the skills of communicating, cooperating with others, solve problems, being creative and persevering.

Being able to back up our claims with data has been powerful, both for our staff who feel their efforts are validated, and for supporters, who are making funding decisions based on data we are able to provide.

This article was originally written before the COVID-19 crisis swept the world. Did your participation in the Assessing Museum Impact project provide any additional resources to help you plan for our uncertain future, which now includes preserving your institution while navigating a path to reopening?

The article still stands, although it now seems like it was written a lifetime ago. Beginning in March, we have been using surveys to gather data to help us make decisions about the direction of our summer programming (traveling library programs and summer camps), and we will be surveying our audience about their intent to visit the museum once we have a possible opening scenario.  We are also closely monitoring our social media engagement to see what is resonating with families and educators so we can hone our virtual offerings to both support our mission and best serve our audience.

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Stephen Ashton, PhD, Gary Hyatt, Lorie Millward, and Mike Washburn,
Thanksgiving Point

A Note to the Reader: Most of this article was written prior to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic that has so drastically impacted all museums throughout the world, including Thanksgiving Point. It remains to be seen how the ideas and principles discussed in the following article will help Thanksgiving Point weather the storms of uncertainty this pandemic has unleashed. In the article below, sentences in italics were written after the pandemic hit.

Thanksgiving Point is a multi-museum complex based in Lehi, Utah, about twenty miles south of Salt Lake City. Our mission is to draw upon the natural world to cultivate transformative family learning. Thanksgiving Point was founded twenty-five years ago when Alan Ashton, former WordPerfect founder and CEO, purchased the Fox Family Farm for his wife Karen, with the intent to build a large garden as a way to give thanks to the community for the many blessings they had been given.

The original plan created a large, fifty-five-acre garden, which opened in 1997, but in the process other ideas and experiences began to take shape on the site. Because the land was originally farmland, a farm and animal experience known as Farm Country opened to the public, also in 1997. A short while later, some paleontologists and investors contacted the Ashtons about building a dinosaur museum on the property, resulting in the Museum of Ancient Life, which opened in 2000. Thanksgiving Point now had three separate venue experiences: 1) Thanksgiving Gardens (renamed Ashton Gardens in 2016), 2) Farm Country, and 3) the Museum of Ancient Life.

In 2003, Thanksgiving Point hired Mike Washburn as president and CEO to help the growing organization achieve financial sustainability and become less dependent on ongoing Ashton family support. At the time, spending was high and visitation was low. Washburn and other team members worked diligently to lower costs and increase revenue. As Thanksgiving Point became more sustainable and more widely known, community stakeholders and board members requested that Thanksgiving Point add a children’s museum to its list of venues.

After several years of fundraising and construction, Thanksgiving Point’s fourth venue, the Museum of Natural Curiosity, a cross between a children’s museum and science center, opened in 2014.

From opening day, the Museum of Natural Curiosity was an immediate success. It completely revitalized Thanksgiving Point. Memberships grew from about 7,000 households to more than 20,000 households. In 2013, Thanksgiving Point’s annual revenue was $15.9 million; in 2015, it was $19.9 million. Thanksgiving Point has continued to grow. In January of 2019, Thanksgiving Point opened its fifth venue, the Butterfly Biosphere, an insectarium and butterfly conservatory. Visitation to Thanksgiving Point is now more than two million guests per year. The revenue for the most recent budget year was just over $23 million, with about 85 percent coming from earned revenue, including membership sales, venue admission, food and beverage, catering and meeting space rentals, some educational programs, and events.

Thanksgiving Point now faces new challenges. We closed our doors on March 16 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proud of our former 85 percent earned revenue figure, that number is now difficult to sustain based solely on current operation levels. With no endowment to fall back on, founders Alan and Karen Ashton generously stepped in to continue paying all employees’ salaries until we could secure a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Small Business Administration loan of just over $2 million. With that interim support in place (at this writing it will end July 1), we are looking for ways to significantly cut back on the original. Now more than ever, it is critical that Thanksgiving Point diversify its sources of revenue, including securing more ongoing public support to make up for the upcoming budget shortfalls.

Growth and Response

While Thanksgiving Point has experienced significant growth in the past twenty-five years, major challenges and obstacles accompanying that trajectory emerged. Shortly before the opening of the Museum of Natural Curiosity, several changes occurred that helped the organization grow sustainably.

At that time, the senior management team was composed of seven individuals who filled the following roles:

1. President and CEO
2. Chief Financial Officer
3. Director of Food and Beverage
4. Director of Marketing
5. Director of Design and Programming
6. Director of the Ashton Gardens
7. Director of the Museum of Ancient Life and Farm Country

This management structure had evolved organically. Although the entire organization was overseen by the CEO, each venue had its own director and staff. This led to competition among the venues: rather than all five venues acting like parts of one cohesive organization, each venue operated as a silo, resulting in inconsistencies in guest experience and messaging. Additionally, while guests could purchase a property-wide membership, each venue’s staff encouraged guests to purchase venue-specific memberships to financially benefit their own site. While we admired their enthusiasm, the results were adversely affecting the organization as a whole, and not contributing to the development of a stable foundation that could support growth.

Consistent with the management structure to date, the opening of the Museum of Natural Curiosity would have required the creation of a new senior management position—director of the museum—bringing the senior management team to eight people. Not only would this have been difficult financially, requiring Thanksgiving Point to pay another senior-level employee, but also it would further complicate the existing silo problems.

A senior management reorganization was deemed necessary to streamline operations, eliminate disconnects, and direct a consistent approach across all venues. Working collaboratively, the senior management team made drastic changes to eliminate silos and set up the organization for more sustainable future growth. The former director of the Ashton Gardens became the new director of facilities for the entire property, and the former director of the Museum of Ancient Life and Farm Country became the new director of guest experience for all the venues. While these two directors were no longer on the senior management team, they retained their senior level pay and benefits. They report to the vice president of operations, a restructured senior management position that absorbed the director of food and beverage position.

In February 2013, a year prior to the opening of the Museum of Natural Curiosity, the new senior management structure was announced to the entire management team, giving everyone time for the transition to settle before the new museum opened. The restructured senior management team included the following titles and roles:

1. President and CEO
2. Chief Financial Officer
3. Vice President of Operations
4. Vice President of Marketing
5. Vice President of Design and Programming

To continue to break down the silos and make operations more efficient, we built a robust education team. Rather than each venue developing its own educational programs, the new education team became responsible for all the educational programming throughout Thanksgiving Point. We also built or repurposed other skill-specific teams to impact the whole organization. For example, Thanksgiving Point now has one exhibits team to develop and maintain exhibits throughout all the venues. Other universal teams include marketing, signature experiences, accounting, facilities, audience research and evaluation, and food and beverage/catering, to name a few. Additionally, we encouraged employees to start using the term “team members” rather than “employees” when referring to anyone who worked at Thanksgiving Point, to help everyone feel like they played a defined but equally significant role in the success of the organization.

Communication and transparency were critical to making this transition successful. Staff at all levels and throughout all departments were kept informed and involved to ensure buy-in. For instance, we gave regular updates at monthly management meetings, composed of more than forty full-time team members. Individual departments also held departmental meetings to keep their teams apprised of what was happening. Clear communication about the process and impacts of restructuring helped our entire team feel vested in what was happening for the future good of the organization.

Results

While the restructuring was not seamless and Thanksgiving Point still relies on some ongoing annual support from the Ashton family, it was successful in accomplishing the goals of streamlining operations, eliminating disconnects, and providing a consistent approach across all venues. The senior management team built a more stable financial and management foundation to support growth and ensure long-term sustainability.

Rather than hire a new director for the Museum of Natural Curiosity, a venue guest service manager was hired. This person, along with the other venue guest service managers for the Museum of Ancient Life, Farm Country, and Ashton Gardens, now report to the new director of guest experience. As such, when the Museum of Natural Curiosity opened in 2014, there was consistent messaging and guest experience throughout the entire organization. Venue-specific memberships had been discontinued, and guests could purchase all-inclusive memberships only.

The change in the management processes allowed Thanksgiving Point to open its fifth venue in 2019, the Butterfly Biosphere, at a fraction of the cost of operating a standalone museum experience. When the biosphere opened, the infrastructure already existed to support a new experience. We already had an education team, an exhibits team, and all the administrative staff in place. To open it, Thanksgiving Point hired a chief containment director, an entomology team, and a few additional guest service and education team members. The rest of the supporting departments necessary to operate the new museum experience already existed.

This model has worked well for the existing organizational structure, and it puts Thanksgiving Point in a strong position for future growth. Content-specific team members can be added as needed, but they will be supported by existing team members in other areas.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the integration of teams across Thanksgiving Point has been tested in new ways and proven to be even more important than we originally thought. While we were closed to the public, multiple teams have been working closely together to provide internal and external communications, digital content for our guests, and updated policies for guest safety. For example, our marketing team has worked closely with our education team to create videos of various exhibit spaces, including virtual tours of our annual Tulip Festival in the Ashton Gardens. These videos, uploaded on various social media, have been well received by our guests and members.

Financial benefits have included some savings, as the old model involved hiring and paying individual venue directors at senior management level salaries plus benefits. While guest service managers have been hired for each venue, they are paid less than a director; this pay scale model is now in place for future hires. Additionally, Thanksgiving Point now has a variety of teams that can support multiple venues at a time, thus keeping overhead costs low. The senior management team is supported by a management team comprised of about forty full-time team members, all directors or managers who support all aspects of Thanksgiving Point.

The management team supports more than just the five venues. Thanksgiving Point also operates an extensive catering and special events operation for private and corporate events; five restaurants across the property and additional concessions during major events; and facilities and grounds maintenance for all of the property, which includes a golf course (managed by an outside partner). At seasonally busy times of the year, Thanksgiving Point can employ up to 550 team members, while the number of members on the management team remains roughly the same.

Similar to other museum organizations, we are now looking for ways to cut costs, including potentially cutting hours, reducing salaries, and laying off employees. The management and senior management teams are working hard to minimize the impact as much as possible. But much will depend on how quickly the economy recovers and what additional support we can receive from federal, state, and local governments.

Today, even with a smaller senior management team than we had prior to restructuring, Thanksgiving Point can elevate our offerings. Calling on specific expertise from team members, who are strategically positioned where they can do their best work, Thanksgiving Point does better work overall. For example, having a single director responsible for guest services for all the venues ensures consistent and quality experiences for all guests, regardless of which venue they visit. Possibly as a result of “doing our best work,” annual visitorship has increased to more than 2 million. We have about 20,000 membership households, with an operating budget of almost $25 million. The restructuring helped us achieve these current increased numbers. Of equal importance, it has helped us unite teams and goals across all of Thanksgiving Point, resulting in a stronger organization prepared to meet the challenges of the future.

While, clearly, current uncertainty will continue into the near future, we are optimistic that we will be able to rebound from this economic and global downturn and emerge a stronger and more efficient institution. More importantly, this pandemic has given us time to look introspectively and make changes in order to be more relevant to our community. We have confidence in the value of our offerings. As we have slowly begun re-opening our venues to the public, following state and local health guidelines, we have observed that our guests are thrilled to be able to visit Thanksgiving Point again. We’re thrilled too!

Timeline:

• 1995: Ashtons purchase Fox Family Farm and name the development Thanksgiving Point.
• 1997: Thanksgiving Point Gardens and Farm Country open to the public.
• 2000: The Museum of Ancient Life opens to the public.
• 2003: Mike Washburn becomes President and CEO of Thanksgiving Point.
• 2013: Thanksgiving Point undergoes significant senior management level changes to streamline operations and provide consistent experiences throughout all of Thanksgiving Point.
• 2014: Museum of Natural Curiosity opens to the public. Number of membership households goes from 7,000 to about 20,000.
• 2016: Thanksgiving Point Gardens renamed Ashton Gardens to honor legacy of founders Alan and Karen Ashton.
• 2019: Butterfly Biosphere opens to the public.

All authors are on staff at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah. Stephen Ashton, Ph.D., is director of audience research and evaluation; Gary Hyatt, is director of guest experience; Lorie Millward is vice president of possibilities; and Mike Washburn is president and CEO.

By Lisa Van Deman and Melanie Hatz Levinson, Kidzu Children’s Museum

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

Describe your museum in 2008 (size, location, years in operation, target audiences, whether it was undergoing expansion/renovation/other major change, financial health, etc.)

In 2008, Kidzu Children’s Museum was two years old and operating in its first location—a 2,400-square-foot storefront in downtown Chapel Hill.   Having spent these years creating the visitor experience from a calendar of temporary exhibits, in 2008, Kidzu opened its first place-based original exhibit, Kidzoom: The Power of Creativity, which occupied the entire museum. The museum continued to serve between 30,000-35,000 visitors/year, with two and a half full-time professional staff, supplemented by work-study students from the University of North Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) and volunteers. Kidzu received several foundation grants and built a network of community partnerships, leveraging outside expertise to help create the museum experience and extend it beyond our walls. We worked extensively with the university, not only supporting numerous students and unpaid interns, but also working with the School of Education and its early learning research arm, The FPG Child Development Center.

As a university town, Chapel Hill was insulated from the economic fluctuations that occurred in other communities in 2008.  However, by 2010, Kidzu leadership realized its prime property rental wasn’t sustainable long term, and began looking for other options. UNC, in the midst of creating a new master plan for its downtown properties, generously offered the museum a temporary home (three years) in a vacant, university-owned storefront several blocks down the street at no charge while we strategized our growth plan and continued to serve the community. So, in 2011, Kidzu packed up Kidzoom and moved down the street to its new location (1,800 square feet) until the university was ready to repurpose the building.

In 2014, our public library moved into its new building and its previous temporary location was offered to the museum for free. Kidzu moved into this 10,000-square-foot space in University Place, a shopping mall two miles from the UNC campus. After only a few months, the museum was asked to move again to a similarly sized space across the hall, to make room for a large, rent-paying multi-plex movie theater. Kidzu opened a pop-up in an empty suite as the mall built out our new home. We again relied on the creative and artistic expertise of our community to create a museum that prides itself on “serving, celebrating and reflecting the community Kidzu calls home.

Even though your community was not heavily impacted by the recession, how did you plan for the viability and sustainability of your museum during these years of multiple relocations?

Throughout the museum’s early years and its many moves, board and staff continued to plan and fundraise for a permanent downtown location. Kidzu received a $1.5 million matching grant in 2012 from an international foundation with a Chapel Hill connection. With the significant income stream provided by this grant, the museum was able to explore a public/private partnership with the Town of Chapel Hill for a town-owned downtown space on the top deck of a parking garage. For a number of reasons, including structural issues, the location was ultimately not feasible. Fortunately, the museum was able to continue to work with the foundation to pivot their gift and use the funds to move into and operate our current University Place location.

While the 2008 recession had minimal impact on museum operations, the matching grant’s expiration in 2016 did. This grant had provided the impetus for an aggressive fundraising campaign of matching gifts and, as anticipated, its absence was keenly felt. Although we always knew the grant had an end date, its benevolent presence clouded our financial reality. When that funding ended, we had to make some serious changes, streamlining operations, not filling certain open positions and combining others. We restructured the board to include more members with broader networks, and developed a Museum Circle of community influencers who have helped open doors to new funding opportunities.

What did you learn from this experience that is applied to Kidzu’s operations today and its future planning?

In 2014, Kidzu opened a makerspace that is emblematic our brand—gritty, scrappy, highly creative, and rooted in North Carolina’s well-known arts and crafts culture. The maker mentality was a good fit for what we’d always done—repurposing materials and components, relying on local craftsmanship, pursuing less expensive ways of doing things (out of necessity)—all of which led to outcomes that were often unexpected, but more creative. Prototyping, tinkering, and the maker mindset became our modus operandus, not just in the makerspace, but throughout the entire museum and even into the way we operated. We became even more flexible, more adaptable, more creative in our visitor experience.

We began hosting adult events to build community and bring in additional revenues. We put greater emphasis on membership drives and fundraising to provide access for marginalized populations. We’ve continuously focused on transparency and communicating the value and impact of the museum. We’ve become deeply involved with our local Chamber of Commerce to build relationships with businesses and the corporate community.  We’ve become more explicit with funders about the financial realities of sustaining museum operations. And we continued to rely heavily on local expertise and our relationships with the university that help support and credential our work.

While the COVID-19 crisis could not have been predicted, how did your lessons learned from your 2016 crisis help you plan for the future, which now includes preserving your institution while navigating a path to reopening?

Following our 2016 experience, we have been working on building our cash reserves and establishing a working capital fund in order to weather whatever the economy has in store, but it’s not easy, and we certainly weren’t financially prepared for the impact of the pandemic. While our location in a university town offers many advantages and resources, fundraising is always challenging for all non-university affiliated nonprofits, including Kidzu.

With the onset of COVID-19, Kidzu was thrust into survival mode. We immediately raised funds from our closest supporters to help us minimize the immediate impact of revenue loss.  We downsized our staff to an essential few and have, like so many others, pivoted to focus on making the Kidzu experience available on-line. Frankly, Kidzu has operated in an environment of change and uncertainty for so many years that this latest challenge has been met with the our typical collective “can do” attitude, and ability to be creative on a shoestring. 

Our current operating budget pre-COVID fluctuated between $850,000 and $900,000 annually. Right before the museum closed for COVID-19, we were at about 50 percent earned revenue, and 50 percent unearned revenue and served over 85,000 visitors a year. Kidzu is still intent on growing into that “right sized” museum. We’re engaged with the Town of Chapel Hill and a local developer, weighing location opportunities in other areas of the city against expanding in place, while continuing to serve a wide swath of our region both at the museum and through outreach. We are working on a 2,000-square-foot expansion in our current location for fall of 2020 to make room for The Nest, a dedicated early learning space for children zero to three. This new space will also serve as a platform for collaborations with UNC’s School of Education and the North Carolina Reggio Emilia Alliance.

When we do open our doors again, we know it won’t be business as usual. Our operating hours may be limited, our team may be smaller, but we will continue to be the scrappy, innovative little museum that could!

Lisa Van Deman is executive director and Melanie Hatz Levinson is creative director and lead curator of Kidzu Children’s Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

This article is part of the June 2020 issue of Hand to Hand, “Tightening Up: Streamlining Museum Operations.” Click here to read other articles in this issue.

By Patty Belmonte, Hands On Children’s Museum

Give us a snapshot of Hands On Children’s Museum in 2008.

In 2008, with 116,000 annual visitors in 11,000 square feet, Hands On was a strong but small museum experiencing over-capacity. We were located in a rented home on the state’s capital campus, but had recently won our bid for $8M in Public Facilities District funds to support the construction of a new, permanent museum on Olympia’s downtown waterfront. Our regional reputation was strong: about 25 percent of our visitors came from outside of Thurston county.

The museum was part of the East Bay Partnership along with the City of Olympia, Port of Olympia, and LOTT Cleanwater Alliance, all working together to revitalize a prominent Brownfield site and restore it to public use. We were planning a beautiful LEED Gold facility on a three-acre campus that included parking, an Outdoor Discovery Center, and the new East Bay Public Plaza featuring an interactive 250-foot naturalized stream fed with reclaimed water.  Our new home, intended to be a model of green practices, was three times the size of the previous museum and planned to accommodate growth for fifteen years before additional expansion would be needed. Our campaign was set to launch in late 2008; we had already raised about 60 percent of our goal through public funds and initial major gifts.

How did the 2008 recession affect your community?

The Northwest’s economic make-up made it a bit more resilient than the rest of the nation, but times were not good. Larger banks and businesses that had been encouraging our move began to distance and hunker down—noting that social services really needed support during troubled times. There was a pervasive sense of gloom about the future; running a campaign for a new cultural institution was not the most important issue of the day.

How did it affect your museum?

Our organization was unprepared for the recession’s many consequences on campaign commitments and payment schedules. For example, our largest and lead gift from a well-respected Northwest foundation was reduced dramatically in the days leading up to their formal commitment. After initially suggesting a $1M pledge, they called to say that, in light of the times, they were revising their gift to half that amount. This significant, overnight reduction set the tone for the rest of the campaign. We realized that gifts would likely be less than our original fundraising plan had projected, and we immediately decided to phase the campaign. Phase I focused on the building, parking, and 80 percent of indoor exhibits; Phase II focused on the Outdoor Discovery Center, as well as facility enhancements discovered after opening, such as a larger coat and stroller room and additional parking lot lighting. Gift size wasn’t the only area impacted. We quickly learned to listen to our donors’ fears and worked out unusual payment options such as five-year pledge payments rather than three, a mix of cash and in-kind materials or services, and the option to make a smaller commitment early with permission to revisit the initial gift in a few years.

At the time, we were very disappointed to have to open the museum in phases. However, in retrospect, it gave us five years of new exhibits opening each year. This brought visitors back over and over again to see our progress. We did not experience the “sophomore slump” typical with new projects, and by year five we were overcrowded! The new facility nearly doubled attendance in two years and was up to 300,000 visitors in five years. By year seven, 2015, we leased a nearby parking lot, taken a lease option on two adjacent properties, and were in pre-planning for a future expansion.

How did you respond immediately (between 2007- 2009) to protect the viability of your museum? Or, to better serve audiences experiencing recession effects?

We were asked over and over again why we were pressing forward during a recession.  Our honest replies were: first, our Capital Campus home was due to be demolished leaving us homeless. Second, a large sum of public funds would be lost if we didn’t break ground by a certain date.

It was the worst and best of times. As gift sizes shrunk, we started thinking about how else donors could participate, eventually leading to nearly $2M in donated goods and services. For example, we wanted a sustainable building, so we asked Weyerhaeuser if they would donate posts and beams for construction, along with some cash. They did. The museum features fir doors from Simpson Timber Co, siding from a timber family, and a gorgeous floor made of leftover end pieces from the region’s premier wood flooring installer. One company donated three trees, which skilled woodworkers turned into exhibits and furniture. The museum’s front entry desk was repurposed by a local casework company from a mistake made for another job. With great building and exhibit designs in hand, we were able to break them down into the parts and workmanship we needed and then approach the community with requests for specific help. Hundreds of in-kind donations, including landscaping, exhibit construction, artwork, carpet tiles, appliances, etc., became part of the new museum. Although it was challenging to manage it all, a key team of contractor, exhibit designer, board members, and senior staff led the effort. In the end, the fingerprints of our entire community are on this museum, making it aesthetically pleasing and unique, as well as a source of pride for all who contributed.

Did that experience inspire practices in place today?

We just used the same “community build” approach to renovate the Megan D, a vintage, buccaneer-style schooner languishing in the Port’s boneyard for several years. The same contractor who led the museum construction rallied seven of his retired carpenters (several who had worked on our building) to donate more than nine months and 1,000 hours to renovating the ship into a premier Outdoor Discovery Center exhibit. We also learned that we needed to maintain our decades-long commitment to access, even when times are good. Families, especially lower income working families, still need ways to affordably access the museum. We now have more than twenty different access programs, including an expanded EBT program, deeper military discounts, and $20 Access Memberships, and more. Our access programs serve more than a third of our annual visitors (about 120,000). We partnered with a major credit union to evolve a five-year naming gift to launch Hands On into the Museums for All initiative. They enjoy the benefits of naming, while we are able to fund a signature component of our access programming.

What did you learn from this experience/process that is applied to daily operations today and future planning?

This sobering and very challenging experience made us think more about the value of contingency planning, phasing, and multiple budget scenarios, and reinforced our commitment to flexibility. We listen to and work with our visitors and donors to shape the museum experience based on community needs. These relationships generate more support and positive feelings for the institution.

While the COVID-19 crisis could not have been predicted, what lessons learned from the 2008 crisis are helping you preserve your institution while navigating a path to reopening?

In mid-March, I ended what I thought was the final version of this interview by saying, “Right now I’m thinking…what if coronavirus spirals in the US and we are making contingency plans for that scary possibility.”

In fact, we had already begun the early stages of planning for a recession, focusing on our need to expand but thinking about it through a new, more realistic lens. Perhaps we could consider mini-expansions within the existing footprint of the building using existing space in creative new ways. On weekends, classrooms already become mini exhibit galleries. And perhaps we could invest in higher quality portable exhibits to make the most of those spaces. On holidays and school breaks, we already feature programming in the Outdoor Discovery Center to encourage more visitors to go outdoors. Based on early research on COVID-19 that suggests outdoor environments are a safer than indoor ones, we are now thinking a lot about how to further extend outdoor learning experiences. Can we increase our footprint by using some of our entry plaza and adjacent public plaza as programming space? Can we activate low-use areas in new ways? One of our operating models anticipates more small-group and private-play visitation times. Extending operating hours into the evenings would provide us with more hours to work with in developing multiple visit options, including ones that accommodate visitors who feel safer in more personal settings.

In mid-March, as we moved into COVID-19 crisis planning, we drew on previous positive experiences with in-kind partnerships. For example, after construction we had developed an in-kind sponsorship with our HVAC company saving $13K annually in HVAC maintenance. Knowing that in the age of COVID-19, visitors expect not only cleaner buildings and exhibits, but also cleaner air, we recently secured a major in-kind sponsor to clean our duct work, saving the organization $25,000. Other new or expanded partnerships have allowed us to add steam-cleaning bathrooms, high ceiling area dusting, and carpet cleaning. As we considered our facility through the eyes of the post-COVID-19 visitor, we recently secured power washing for all of our outdoor exhibits, buildings, and the parking lot so that everything will be cleaned, re-stained or repainted prior to reopening.

Leading through the recession and now through COVID-19 challenges us in ways we could not have even imagined in February. Growing pains feel especially acute when you are in the middle of them. On really difficult days, I find myself comparing this 2020 pandemic period to 2008, only to conclude it was somehow easier or better then. Yet, I know that my perspective has changed over time and with accumulating experience. In 2008, I was in complete despair managing a high-profile, huge public project under extreme financial constraints. What came out of those dark days were new ways of solving problems and creating innovative operating models that led to long-term benefits for our organization. It is that experience that gives me the most hope as we muddle our way through surviving this pandemic. I find myself asking, what are you learning from this journey that will help you tomorrow?

Patty Belmonte is CEO of Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia, Washington.

Pictured clockwise from top left: Brooklyn Children’s Museum (1899), Boston Children’s Museum (1913), The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (1925), and Detroit Children’s Museum (1917)

The following post appears in the “History and Culture Summit” issue of Hand to Hand, ACM’s quarterly journal.

By Jessie Swigger, PhD

In the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century, four museums for children opened in the United States: Brooklyn Children’s Museum (1899), Boston Children’s Museum (1913), the Detroit Children’s Museum (1917), and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (1925). These four museums—opened by different individuals and groups in different places and at different times—were linked by more than their shared focus on young audiences.

First, they were all shaped by the progressive education movement, which was then at the height of its power and influence. Second, at each museum, women played significant leadership roles (which was unusual in the museum profession, or anywhere). Many of these women knew one another and created a new professional network for their particular brand of museum work. Reflecting on the origin stories of these pioneer children’s museums sheds light on current trends and directions in the children’s museum movement.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) opened in 1899, less than one year after Brooklyn became a borough of New York City. The museum originally operated under the umbrella of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (BIAS), then in the process of moving into a new and much larger building under construction on Eastern Parkway. The children’s museum opened just a few blocks away in what was known as the Adams House in Bedford Park (now Brower Park) in Crown Heights.

BCM was open to the public, free of charge, and sought to provide young people with an introduction to the natural sciences that supported the “various classwork of the public schools,” particularly along the “lines of nature study.” The BIAS Annual Report of 1901-1902 included a special invitation to teachers encouraging them to draw on the museum’s resources when developing “class work in nature-study.” This focus on nature study is perhaps unsurprising—New York’s recently appointed superintendent of public schools, William Henry Maxwell, was an advocate for nature study in the curriculum.

The nature study movement, part of the increasingly popular progressive education movement, encouraged young people to learn by observing and interacting with the natural world. Historian Sally Gregory Kohlstedt explains that “at the core of nature study was a pragmatic insistence on using local objects for study emphasizing the connection between those objects and human experience.” It was particularly popular in urban areas, where progressives feared the lack of contact with nature in America’s growing cities would be detrimental to the Americanization of newly-arrived immigrants.

In 1902, Anna Billings Gallup, a teacher, nature study advocate, and recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined BAIS as an “assistant” at the children’s museum. Two years later she was named curator-in-chief. At a time when few women held significant positions in museums, Gallup was a pioneer.

Brooklyn Children’s Museum’s collections certainly reflected a commitment to nature study, but they also addressed the wide range of childhood interests and the breadth of the public school curriculum. Inside BCM, children found collections illustrating zoology, botany, U.S. history, mineralogy, geography, and art. Gallup explained in an article for Popular Science that the exhibits were “attractive in appearance, simple in arrangement, and labeled with descriptions adapted to the needs of children, printed in clear readable type.”

Gallup’s work was well recognized by her peers. In 1907, she was one of five women who attended the Second Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums (AAM) in Pittsburg, PA, where she presented a paper titled “The Work of a Children’s Museum.” For the next thirty-four years, Gallup and her staff worked to expand the museum’s collection and physical presence.

Boston

Delia I. Griffin was one of the other women attending the 1907 AAM meeting, where she presented her paper, “The Educational Work of a Small Museum.” At the time, she was director of the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, VT. Like Gallup, Griffin was trained in nature study techniques and had even produced a pamphlet titled Outline of Nature Study for Primary and Grammar Grades. At St. Johnsbury, she created lesson plans in nature study at the museum for local public schools. Griffin and Gallup became friendly, and when a second museum for children opened in Boston, Gallup recommended Griffin for the job of curator.

In 1909, members of Boston’s Science Teachers’ Bureau began building a collection of natural history objects that could be used in public school classrooms. By 1913, the bureau had founded the second children’s museum in the United States, the Boston Children’s Museum. Like Brooklyn Children’s Museum, it was housed in a former mansion. Located at Pine Bank in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, the museum offered children access to ethnographic, natural history, and historical collections. Griffin would later write that the goal of the children’s museum was to train the “plastic minds of children to observe accurately and think logically.”

Detroit

In 1917, the Detroit Museum of Art, undergoing its own growth, opened a children’s museum, with yet another woman at the helm. Gertrude A. Gillmore, a supervising teacher of the Martindale Normal School, was appointed curator. She explained that the museum’s purpose would be “two-fold: to loan illustrative material to the schools and to attract the children to the Museum through monthly exhibits appealing directly to their interests.”

In 1919, Gillmore reflected on the Detroit Children’s Museum’s (DCM) progress in a report. Like Brooklyn and Boston, the museum’s work developed in tandem with that of public schools. While the collection was drawn from the Detroit Museum of Art’s holdings, the children’s museum reported, “in general our policy has been not to organize material as a collection until a wish for it has been expressed.” This approach meant that collections were created in response to requests from public school teachers in an even more direct way than at Brooklyn and Boston. By 1919, the children’s museum had hosted exhibits on the “History of Detroit,” “Common Birds and Mammals of Michigan,” and several exhibits on “phases of art of interest to children.” In 1927, the Detroit Museum of Art changed its name to the Detroit Institute of Arts and moved to a new and larger building on Woodward Avenue. Two years earlier, the DCM had been placed directly under the Detroit Board of Education. The Detroit Children’s Museum found a new home in a building type that was now a familiar one to children’s museums—a former mansion—the Farr Residence at 96 Putnam in Detroit.

Indianapolis

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis opened in 1925. Discussions about children and museums had begun two years before, when the Indianapolis Progressive Educational Association (PEA) held its first meeting at the Orchard Country Day School. Founded in 1922, the Orchard School was a fitting location for the meeting. The curriculum followed Marietta Pierce Johnson’s “Organic School Model.” Johnson drew from progressive educator and philosopher John Dewey’s ideas about learning by doing. Two of the school’s nine founders were Martha Carey and Mary Carey Appel, daughters of wealthy socialite Mary Stewart Carey. In fact, Mary Stewart Carey had donated her home and apple orchard for the cause.

There were several items on the PEA agenda, but most pressing was a desire to make the museum collections housed in the Statehouse available to the city’s public school children. Faye Henley, newly appointed director of the Orchard School, argued, “The material should be put into traveling cases and sent around to the schools.”

Mary Stewart Carey may not have been at this meeting, but it’s quite likely that she knew about the Indianapolis PEA and their conversation given her association with the Orchard School.

The next year, Mary Stewart Carey visited Brooklyn Children’s Museum while on vacation in nearby Asbury Park, NJ. Soon, she was on her way to the Adams House. When she returned to Indianapolis, she was determined to create a similar institution in her hometown.

Carey was well positioned for this kind of endeavor. Her philanthropic activities expanded beyond the recently founded Orchard School. For example, she played a key role in selecting the Indiana state flag in 1917, and was a member of the Indianapolis Woman’s Club and the Art Association of Indiana. Carey’s connections would prove useful in garnering support and resources for the museum.

Soon, an organizational committee was formed with Carey at the helm. They quickly formalized their commitment to creating a museum centered on their intended audience rather than a collection, writing that “the viewpoint of the child should be considered in providing for the equipment and installation of all materials.” Over the next few months, the museum wrote a constitution, elected a board of trustees, and began developing partnerships with the local public schools and with clubs for children.

The museum board had members and interest, but they lacked the funding to purchase a collection. So, the board called on the local community to donate objects they believed would educate children. Museum lore claims that the first donated objects were a few arrowheads that Carey’s grandchildren had found and given to her. They received an overwhelming response from community members. One woman tried to donate a live alligator, perhaps knowing the Brooklyn Children’s Museum included a live animal collection, but the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis turned it down. While its sister institutions had solicited collections from established sources, such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the children’s museum was the first to directly invite the community to participate in the creation of the collection.

In July 1925, the museum found its first home when the board rented a carriage house behind the Propylaeum, the city’s women’s literary society. By November, the board hired E.Y. Guernsey as curator. Guernsey was formerly an archaeologist for the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles and at the Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, Indiana. When Guernsey oversaw the museum’s first opening to public school classes the following month, there were no cases. Instead, the objects were placed on tables, out in the open.

Two years later, primarily due to high rent, the museum moved out of its first carriage house home and into Carey’s former home on North Meridian, where children visited a larger collection distributed among themed rooms that included the Geology Gallery, the Natural Science Gallery, and the Pioneer Gallery.

Connecting Past and Present

The four museums discussed here were created more than 100 years ago, but their origin stories raise questions for the contemporary movement. Each museum had strong links to the progressive education movement and to public schools. In many ways, the first four children’s museums saw themselves as partners with public schools. How do current children’s museums work with schools, and how do they view their relationship with them? Second, women played a central role in founding each museum. As an extension of the public schools, where a majority of the teachers were women, it was acceptable for women to take on the role of curator or director of a children’s museum. These women formed an unofficial but important network as they shared ideas about how best to do children’s museum work. Do women continue to play a larger role in the children’s museum profession than in other fields, or has this changed over time? How has the presence of women from the very beginning impacted the approach of various children’s museums?

There are many other similarities that these first four museums shared. In studying the connections among Brooklyn, Boston, Detroit, and Indianapolis, we can learn more not only about the foundational history of children’s museums, but also about the current state of the field.

Jessie Swigger is the director of Western Carolina University’s Public History Program. She earned her MA and PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to presenting at numerous regional and national conferences, her work has appeared in The Encyclopedia of Culture Wars and The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade. In 2013, she received the North Carolina Museums Council Award of Special Recognition. Her award-winning book, History Is Bunk: Assembling the Past at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2014.

To read other articles in the “History & Culture Summit” issue of Hand to Hand, subscribe today. ACM members receive both digital and printed complimentary copies of Hand to Hand. ACM members can access their copies through the Online Member Resource Library–contact Membership@ChildrensMuseums.org to gain access. 

The following post is condensed from the introduction to the latest issue of Hand to Hand, ACM’s quarterly journal. 

The first museum designed for children, Brooklyn Children’s Museum, opened in 1899. By 1960, thirty-eight children’s museums were in operation in the U.S. By 2012, this number had increased to 300 children’s museums worldwide, and continues to grow today.

Looking at the timeline of children’s museums, it’s possible to identify the social and cultural trends that fueled the field’s different periods of growth. However, in addition to empirical research, it’s critical to engage the people behind this growth, and learn their firsthand experience.

With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), ACM convened a small group of children’s museum leaders, past and present, for The Children’s Museum History & Culture Summit on May 5, 2017, following InterActivity 2017. The Summit engaged leaders active in the children’s museum field in the past twenty-five years, with a focus on the explosive development of the field between 1995 and 2005.

This meeting was part of an ongoing project to collect stories and data to help tell the story of the recent history of the children’s field, building off the last major effort of this type, 1999’s Bridges to Understanding Children’s Museums project and report. A related goal of the Summit was to reconnect past leaders who have left the children’s museum community, many to retire or join related fields.

Over the course of an afternoon, panelists and participants engaged in reflection, camaraderie, and storytelling. Together, they reviewed themes from ACM’s initial data collection about the history of children’s museums, using this as a jumping-off point for a far-ranging discussion about the field.

The conversation was guided by the following questions:

1. How has practice in children’s museums affected practice in the broader museum field? What are the implications for how object-based museums present exhibits and programs to children and/or family audiences?
2. How does the lens of the humanities and academic study help ACM understand how children’s museums affect children’s learning?
3. How have children’s museums influenced the idea of childhood? How has the idea of childhood affected practice in children’s museums?

The Summit unearthed themes and ideas that were of critical importance during the children’s museum field’s early growth—and continue to resonate today. With further insight from leaders of the field during the 1995- 2005 era, the “History & Culture Summit” issue of Hand to Hand naturally extends the conversation about the connection between our field’s history and future. (Look out for key quotes from the Summit throughout the issue.)

Telling our own story with confidence is the way forward as children’s museums continue to professionalize. How can we empower individual museums to gather their own stories to contribute to this field-wide effort? How can we use these stories to build the institutional self-confidence that comes from knowing who you are?

Alison Howard is Director, Communications at the Association of Children’s Museums. Follow ACM on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

To read other articles in the “History & Culture Summit” issue of Hand to Hand, subscribe today. ACM members also receive both digital and printed complimentary copies of Hand to Hand. ACM members can access their copies through the Digital Resource Library–contact Membership@ChildrensMuseums.org to gain access if needed.