Professional Perspectives

This session sounded much better in the description than it turned out in the execution. The time allotted for each speaker was fairly short and their talks didn’t appear to be coordinated but each managed to plug his or her booth in the Marketplace on Friday.

Reb Haizlip, the first speaker started off talking about the Gulf oil spill and was very emotional . This led into his talk about children today not experiencing nature. He thinks there is a place for children’s museums to reconnect kids with nature. Incorporate genuine nature play to reconnect to love of outdoors. Children’s museums can show us the world again.

The second speaker was Allen Berger of Roto Studio, a design firm. He said there are 3 things to know in planning for exhibits
1. Know who’s out there.
Know what exhibits are out there, museums & attractions. Know the people, professionals who can help.
2. Know what you want.
Craft an RFP or other document that fits your needs. Make it very clear. Relationships can help . Roto helps write RFPs
3. Know who you are. Soul search—who are we within the community.

Ron Street of Northstar Museums came next. Although his company does project management at other installations his passion is children’s museums. Currently serves on the board of Please Touch Museum. Background in construction. Things that might be overlooked in construction or remodel, focused a bit more on remodel.
Keep it simple.
Keep the team focused on end goal and vision of institution.
Never lose sight of the visitor during remodel. Safety, sound containment, dust containment.
Make code officials your friends. They don’t understand how children’s museums work, how they are fabricated. Make them an asset to the project.
Be sure to plan for a soft opening prior to grand opening. Give staff opportunity to see how things work (like pizza & play!).

Cheryl Bartholow, Argyle Design since 2001 previously Cheryl was with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
She posed a number of questions to ask during your planning process.
Who is your audience?
What ages?
Local or destination seekers?
Will organized groups visit?
What will they see, do learn? What are the big messages?
What will it feel like? Look like? What is unique about your space?
Visitor Experience—where do we start and end?
Recently completed completed 20,000 sq ft display space at the Houston Children's Museum. One area Kidtropolis, looks and works similar to Pretend City, get kid card and get paycheck, Kidtropolis dollars, appeals to children 8 and up. Also included Matter Factory, Tot Spot, Invention Convention.

Brown Bag Session

At $35 I skipped the brown bag lunch but sat down to hear about opportunities for federal funding for museums. The IMLS and the NEA had representatives. Most interesting to me was Christopher Reich's opening statement that there are 122,000 libraries and only 17,000 museums, so the larger budget is on library side. Museums for America grant program has funded exhibit development, programming, audience development, building infrastructure, technology, and the hiring and training of staff. Not all funded projects are new but can be ongoing.

The NEA is the largest funder of arts in the country. The cannot fund bricks & mortar but can fund design & installation. The staff cannot read a draft of an application but will spend time on phone helping applicants through the process. They want us to have the best chance to get a grant.
How awards are decided:
IMLS --Peer review process, 3 reviewers score & comment then applications are ranked on those results. Those most highly ranked go to next tier of peers, director makes final awards working with IMLS staff
NEA—Peer review, 1 tier, recommend those they would like to see funded and the chairman has the ultimate responsibility.
Both agencies are looking for peer review panelists. Honorarium and travel expenses are paid. Becoming a peer reviewer helps you see the sort of things funded.

How the Brain Wants to Learn

This was a challenging workshop presented by Cognitive Scientist Dr. Michael Connell. The purpose was to encourage the implementation of cognitive science in exhibit design. He presented a Knowledge Design Matrix and compared it to the Periodic Table. I must admit I was pretty lost in the first part of this session. Towards the end we broke into small groups to improve an existing exhibit called Rainbow on Your Plate and move toward an exhibit with different levels of challenge. Our group wanted to place this exhibit adjacent to a farm then a grocery store or market and finally the meal so that children could have a better understanding of the source of food.

Interactivity Begins

The conference commenced Thursday morning with breakfast at themed tables. We self selected a table based on areas of interest and Angelica and I chose an Exhibits table. We met museum staffers from St. Louis, Champaigne, Il, Virginia Beach and Omaha. They shared info on projects at their museums as well as recommendation to visit the Lincoln museum in Springfield. My favorite story came from Judy Leise a St. Louis area consultant working on a project for Delta Dental. Her current project is an expanding dentistry museum where the board is forcing them to keep set of 3 ft. tall teeth. She is trying to include them around the stage of a recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre! The Board created these many years ago and will not let them go.

After breakfast we all went to the opening Plenary session with speaker Dr. Johnetta Cole, Director, National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian. Dr. Cole was introduced as a “thought leader”,and spoke on preparing children to become21st century learners & contributors. She referred to the audience as her sisters and brothers based on her upbringing in a southern church, from the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, her training as anthropologist—kinship is more about behavior than biology and shared values. She said we share a profound belief in the power of museums to teach and even change lives. She called herself a newbie to world of museums and was honored to be asked to speak today.

Dr. Cole says we must continue the call for diversity and inclusion and create inclusive environment that makes everyone feel comfortable. When children’s museums are at their best they are models of diversity and inclusion. We should educate youngsters not only about the world they live in but the world they will live in.

Photos of Denver Museum

Worst flight of my life

Sitting in my hotel room looking at the river and the beautiful clouds move across the sky you might never imagine what a horrible landing we endured this afternoon. The flight was pretty nice until we began to decend through the clouds. There were lots of bumps but they became much worse as we got closer to the ground. As it was in Denver, it was very windy here in Minneapolis/St. Paul and there was a lot of movement as one wing dipped and the other rose while the crew tried to get the plane in line for landing. Angelica will have to tell you how close to the ground we were (I couldn't look) when the plane pulled up and we went around again! After a repeat of all the bumps, dips, shivers and shakes as well as a looong turn we finally made it down on the runway to the applause of all the passengers.

I have to fly home through Minneapolis next week--please pray for calm weather!

Renee

InterActivity 2010

Angelica and I will be attending the Association of Children's Museums annual conference, InterActivity 2010, May 6-8 in St. Paul Minnesota. We'll be posting about the event so stayed tuned later this week.

Renee