DIY Exihibit Design

Final Workshop
Friday, 10:30am-1200pm

DIY Exhibit Design
Iowa Children’s Museum

Cindy Dietz, Rockwell Collins
Deb Dunkase, Executive Director
John Dunkase, U of I Science Education center
Pam Hoogerwer, U of I Children’s Hospital
Fran Jensen, Marketing
John Weis, NASA Education Specialist

This was another session where the description makes the class seem like it is about a broader subject, however it is really just focused on the particular museum and there project. I guess the idea is take in the process and tips based off of their experience. I just wish they put that in the description.

It was a pretty good session. I really like Deb Dunkase – she is really well spoken, upbeat, seems really passionate, and like she knows how to get stuff done. They have a 28,000 sq. ft. facility with a community o 250,000 and an annual attendance of 125,000. Their annual budget is 1,071,000 and the museum operate sin the black with no debt. They also are located within the Coral Ridge Mall who does not charge them rent! They signed a 25 year lease for $10. She says that a value of 750,000 annually. They do all of their own exhibits in house. They only host occasional traveling exhibits, typically, VSA Arts, from the Freeman (?).She said they like change there exhibits on average about 2 to 5 times a year. It can be small like changing out the food in their international market or building a large scale exhibit.

Their two projects they discussed were refurbishing their children’s hospital exhibit about 10,000 sq. ft., which has been open for about 8 years. They spent a segment talking about the importance of partnering and how they had this relationship with hospital offering them storytimes and they would have students come out for program for years. The Hospital applied for a FEMA grant, based on knowledge about unintentional injury (who intentionally injures themselves?). Anywho, Pat from the hospital was inspired after visiting Indiana’s children museum and seeing the unintentional injury kits in their gift shop and thought it would be a great opportunity when the exec. Dr. came to her.

The other project was a 1.3 million dollar two level exhibit on aviation. It was spawned by a local pilots group who wanted to donate a flight simulator. They got grants from NASA, who had worked with the museum on previous programs. They got funding from Rockwell, who had previously worked with the museum offering an engineering day, as well as an IMLS grant.

I believe they did work with an exhibit designer (I wasn’t clear if that was a firm or inhouse) who didn’t really do everything they needed. I think whomever this was helped to develop space concept and then the museum took over. It sounded like they relied heavily on the university, local teachers, NASA, and Rockwell to develop educational content and whatever their needs were. I think the museum chose to work with “local contractors” and created the pieces. The biggest wow factor was that they said fabricators typically charge 250-300 per sq. ft. and it costs only 20 to 50 sq ft. to do it yourself. I think that is not entirely accurate. At the workshop on Thursday when they were discussing building your own small traveling exhibits they said it was more because of staff overhead. So I’m not sure what these folks numbers included.

I thought there were interesting tidbits in between their project description. She recommended when working on projects in house she would put the person was the most passionate or most knowledgeable as the team lead. Also useful, she said that getting the local Universities involved in the evaluation portion of the process was invaluable. She said that the whole aviation exhibit took them about 5 years to design and build. The gentleman from the University said that all educators are required to do 3 things: teaching, research, and service. He said that children’s museums can make a plea to help them based on fulfilling their service requirement.

I think it sounds like we’re on the right track. We’ve got Amanda Wilcox from San Bernardino involved in our evaluations. Tim Gunn from Azusa Pacific seems like a good back up. Michelle is great with grants! We’ve been partnering with lots of interesting folks. I think we’re on a good path. I think we could definitely do some small scale exhibits with the help of facilities, much like how Denver crafted their vet exhibit. I’m not sure we could do a two level exhibit and have it look the way we wanted it to since we really have such a polished look. Good to hear the inside story.