Way To Grow, Minnesota Children’s Museum

Photo credit: Minnesota Children's Museum

In reviewing a big museum project, we tend to review the building, a new wing and the exhibitions. At the top of the review is the project cost, facility square footage, the number of new galleries, new acquisitions, major donors, and sponsors. Depending on the project, the design team, architects and exhibit designers are mentioned.

On June 7^th, Minnesota Children’s Museum cut the ribbon and opened its doors to a major renovation and expansion. Its $30 million campaign, Room To Play, launched in 2011 helped grow the building from 65,000 to 74,000 square feet. The makeover represents 35% more space for visitors. The Museum is, as billboards, bus sides, its website, and Facebook page announce, Bigger, Better, Bolder.

Imaginopolis is created and recreated countless times each day.

The obvious, and exciting changes are more experiences and added amenities. The ten exhibits offer a wider range of experiences and interesting spaces that are more open-ended. A maker space; a four-story climber with a super speedy spiral slide; Sprouts a larger early childhood space; a second outdoor area; Forces at Play, Imaginopolis, and Super Awesome Adventures with a Laser Maze have been added to a new Our World, and TipTop Terrace. 

There added amenities, from a skyway-level entrance, café and coffee bar; more bathrooms; more seating, and a kitchenette in Sprouts. An easier entry experience through the parking-connected skyway and another elevator improve circulation. On my two visits prior to opening and at the ribbon cutting ceremony, I noticed crowds move easily through the spaces, bigger kids as part of family groups, natural light filling more areas of the Museum, and a beautiful space that someone described as a part art museum and part place for play.

Deeper, Less Visible Growth

While all new exhibits, and expanded footprint, and more amenities attest to Bigger, Better, Bolder, MCM has accomplished more than that. The deeper, less visible ways MCM has grown count in the long run.

From the start, it was clear that a major expansion of the building was going to be challenging. In 1995 I was head of exhibits and education at MCM when the Museum re-located to a new building in downtown St. Paul. The site was small with limited space for physical growth, but the new 65,000 s.f. building easily accommodated the 350,000 visitors who came the first year–doubling previous attendance.

Over the years, attendance climbed to regularly surpassing 450,000 visitors annually at the downtown St Paul location. It became apparent that something needed to be done to ease the crowding. Opportunities for expansion had been designed into the original building: adding a floor, building into the small side yard and filling in the street-front setback, and filling in a mezzanine level. But the building was virtually landlocked.

Moving through new spaces, an adventure and better circulation

Aldo Leopold might not readily come to mind in thinking about museum expansions. In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold observed that, “To build a road is so much simpler than to think about what the county really needs.” To build a new building or wing, some museum leaders and writers suggest, is simpler than addressing long-term visitation problems. (here and here).

While every major project is an opportunity to grow institutional value and physical presence, physical growth, a new building or wing, usually wins out–and not necessarily with the best results. Growing value involves going to the core, remembering and reconnecting with what is fundamental, staying true to the audience. Growing value relies absolutely on paying attention to what is necessary but invisible.

Even as the Museum conducted a capital campaign and worked with its architects MSR Design and exhibit planners, Gyroscope, Inc. (on whose team I served), it directed resources thoughtfully and from the beginning to institutional growth.

Throughout the process, MCM invested where its visitors would benefit directly from the expansion and renovation: 35% more space for visitors and more amenities. To go deeper into the structure of its value, the Museum also studied itself, its audience, and its stakeholders. By the grand re-opening, MCM's extensive platform around the power of play had brought on friends, leaders, and the community as its partners. 

My folder with the studies MCM conducted to guide expansion is thick and interesting to look at in retrospect. “Inspiring Future Growth” summarizes the results of a questionnaire to over 900 parents of children in the age range. A “clicker” study analyzed traffic, space usage, tickets, and attendance in 2011 and compared it to a 2004 study. A white paper summarized research on play and learning. The Museum also conducted a survey on play with its members. A focus area assessment explored perceptions of the Museum’s learning value. A brand study, stakeholder engagement audit, and technology scan round out the set of studies. The Museum has generously shared some of these studies on their website.

The Museum diligently used its planning time to plumb its foundational thinking and, in the process, I believe, internalized its core purpose to a significant new degree. 

Play to the 7th power

Sparking children’s learning through play, the Museum’s mission, could have been a catchy slogan with a new look for the reopening. Instead, the Museum engaged in a sustained investigation around play.  Drawing on research on the value of play, the Museum connected why play matters with skills that are crucial to children’s learning, well-being, social interactions, and creativity. Dubbed the Seven Powers of Play, opportunities to practice skills such as creative thinking, collaboration, and communication were deliberately incorporated into design, activities, and material selection, and messages. The 7 Powers of Play are posted through out the galleries.

An  intentional approach also brought parents and caregivers to the forefront. Parental adults have a key role in encouraging children’s play and exploration. Their interests and comfort must be provided for whether through seating, restrooms, or anticipating their reactions to play’s mess or a lack of structured experiences. While the novelty and ambiguity of spaces, materials, and structures may invite playful exploration, they also can create uncertainty and hesitation for adults and for children about how to get started. Full-scale prototypes of Creativity Jam in 2013 and 2015 and Forces at Play in 2016 took on some of these challenges, testing engagement strategies for adults, messaging, and staff prepared to facilitate free-choice, open-ended play experiences.

The Museum’s comprehensive view of play and its value has been adapted to messages for multiple audiences and across platforms using a friendly, engaging tone. #PlayMoreMN invites members and visitors to post their stories and photos of powerful play that it has defined as captivating and fun, active and challenging; self-directed and open-ended. Tips on Let’s Play helps parents and caregivers enhance the learning that occurs through children’s play.  Successful People Play videos profile how leaders, friends, educators, artists, and chefs in Minnesota play. Since opening the Museum has also launched Stand Up for Play, a community campaign to make play a priority.

While the Museum has been for and about play since its founding more than 35 years ago, over the last seven years it has become an advocate and a leader for play. And it shows. MCM President and CEO, Dianne Krizan, encouraged creativity by letting children play in her recent Commentary in the Star Tribune. A joyous spirit of play also shows throughout the Museum as children paint their faces, spiral down the slide, transform a light-filled landscape, set off a chain reaction, wash a vehicle with bubbles, and build forts, and discover the possibilities of play.   

Way to go, Dianne, Barbara, Jess, Jennifer, Mary, Kirstin, Joe, Blake, Michelle, Bob, and so many more! 

Rewind: Playing with...Mud

International Mud Day is approaching.

Mud Kitchen, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

  

I have long loved mud. It is a messy and joyous medium full of great possibilities. As a child I molded “fruit” from the mud excavated from around the foundation of our newly built house. I built nests out of mud and dried grass and sat in the woods to watch which mud-grass nest design birds would choose. Hearing e.e. cummings’ phrase, “…when the world is mud-luscious…” for the first time in college, the ooze and joy of mud play and the deep, dark pungent mud smell from childhood engulfed me.

The scooping and sculpting, digging and dunking, concocting and cooking, mixing, making, and sitting in mud has long been part of childhood. Just as I remember sculpting with mud, a friend recalls a spring mud ritual in New Hampshire. When the snow was almost melted and the dirt-covered playground softened, eager boys hurried outside and scooped out snow to play marbles in the mud. Christine Maestri wrote in the Star Tribune some years back about her year old niece choosing mud to explore over an entire whole farm. Passing the barns, animals, garden, toys, grass, the toddler walked directly into the mud puddle and sat down where she stirred and squished the mud in her fingers and played with it for nearly half an hour. 

Childhood without mud play is sanitized in too many respects. This is more than adult nostalgia, a romanticized vision of childhood, and my personal fondness for mud. Given mud’s great learning value as fascinating content and inspiration for varied experiences, mud play has a limited presence in most children’s lives. Clay and sand are great, but mud is better. It is local, plentiful, versatile, and somewhat forbidden.

And Then There Was Mud

Mud is a world-making medium. The world was covered with primordial ooze, mud, at its very origins. Mud in its many forms, hot and eruptive has contoured the world; cool, slimy or thick, it has been a habitat for critters.

Just as mud was at the beginning of the world, it is also a universal medium for children to explore, discover, and use to shape their world. It is elemental, putting children in touch with the earth. The pressures of a small hand or the push and poke of even a tiny finger can sculpt mud and shape a world. Mud is not only local, it is also intensely seasonal.

Anything a-la-mud

Mud lends itself to cooking, painting, sculpting, building, and full body slathering. Children can create mudloaf, mud pies, mud lattes, and anything-a-la-mud in muffin tins, pie pans, ice cube trays, cake molds or cookie sheets. Do not forget the scrapers, pancake turners and spatulas; the stirrers, spoons, sticks, and brushes for mixing, mushing, spreading and stirring. In short, set up an entire mud kitchen. And the birthday candles. Leaves, seeds, and sticks make any mud creation better. Equip a mud patch with hand shovels and trowels for digging; buckets and tubs for filling; hoses, watering cans, and cups for adding water and making sure the mud is “just so.”

Mud play is inevitably child-directed. Few adults want to get in there and take over a mud activity. We do not need to teach children to investigate mud or how to do so. Investigations with mud start in many ways. Not surprisingly, children’ investigations of mud begin with touch, a finger, a toe, a hand, a foot, whatever the moment (and supervising adult) will allow. Deeper immersion will follow.

When I have watched children play with or in mud, they are either extremely intent and serious or are playful and exuberant. If intent, a child is alone in thought, observing closely and with great concentration as if measuring with her mind how much she must press this mud patty before the mud fills in. Or a child might watch how the mud drips form at the lip of the cup. A child might concentrate on a muddy finger and drag it across a stone, a bare arm, or a piece of paper and notice how mud paints.

If joyous and spirited, children crow, cajole, and compete with one another about their mud related accomplishments. They might be stringing together mud-inspired rhymes in a sing-songy voice, serving mud lattes to imaginary friends, or applying face paint to scare others. Their imaginations transform mud to oobleck, to lava, to chocolate. Children join forces to sculpt mud worlds with castle outposts, great walls, towers and moats.

 This is just the kind of lively participation in the world–physical, natural, social, sculptural, aesthetic–we so want children to enjoy. We seldom, if ever, see the same excited questions, deep absorption, extended discovery, and elaborate play narratives emerge from an exhibit on sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks with fixed specimens, labels and photos.

Learning from Mud

Attractive to all ages, the mud table at Discovery Hollow

Considering mud is so prevalent and versatile, so joyously accessible, there are surprisingly few opportunities for children to explore mud in museums, classroom, and camps. Occasionally a children’s museum or nature center will boldly embrace mud. Tamarack Nature Center added an enormous mud table in Discovery Hollow. Yet, one museum asked me to take “mud pies” out of the final draft of the exhibit master plan. Visions of muddy-fingered children disturbed board members.

Mud is quintessentially interdisciplinary. Is mud science, solids suspended in liquid? Is it art, a plastic medium with expressive qualities? Is it humanities, a universal building material providing shelter the world around? Yes. Yes. Yes. and No. Mud is mud.

While exploring mud is often unstructured and open-ended, it is also an entry point for children to explore and learn about big and sometimes complex ideas and often with a degree of authenticity that is valued.

Making bricks at the Santa Fe Children's Museum

Children are able to make adobe bricks at the Santa Fe Children's Museum. Outside, under the trees, children mix the soil (typically a sandy clay loam) and water, find the right proportion to get a stiff mix; fill and compact the wooden forms; and then remove the brick from the form and let the bricks dry in the sun. In the play and work of brick making are centuries of building knowledge, a feel for the native soil, the heft of wet and dry bricks. This can be repeated in other locales with wattle and daub methods using an underlying structure with twigs and sticks, mixing cut grass or straw into the mud, and ‘plastering’ it onto the structure beneath.

The clay house at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

As part of the summer 2012 exhibit, Dirt-O-Rama: Intriguing Tales of the Underground at Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, children worked with artists to create a clay house in front of the Arboretum Learning Center. Starting with an underlying straw bale structure, a coat of clay from the local brickworks was plastered over the spiral structure. Nearby, the Mud Kitchen was open for play on weekends.

In addition to the indoor clay studio and outdoor sandbox at Pittsburgh Children's Museum are vats of beautiful, bubbling mud in the Backyard. Children can dip their hands and arms into the roiling ooze that suggests the Earth's origins, feeling its temperature and consistency, and sensing how it coats and clings to the skin. In Animated Earth by Steven Eisenhauer, children can add air to the mud vats. Turning the handles adds air pressure to change the surface, the size of the bubbles, and the music of the mud.

Backyard bubbling mud at Pittsburgh Children's Museum

In an ode to the medium of clay, Denver Art Museum’s 2011 exhibit, Marvelous Mud: Clay Around the World explored clay’s range and versatility as a mark of human interaction with the earth. The show features a great sweep of ceramic arts through human history and around the world, with antiquities and contemporary arts from the museum’s collection. Artists, asked to create specific works for the museum, stretched the possibilities of mud and ideas about clay. In the Mud Studio, children and adults explored clay as an inviting and forgiving sculptural medium that invites experimentation, permits mistakes, and allows reworking. 

Mud play doesn’t have to be outside or full body, although that is a terrific way to enjoy mud. Mud can be scooped onto a cookie sheet, fill up the sensory table, top off a plastic swimming pool, or be discovered in a mud puddle. It can turn an outdoor kitchen area into a mud kitchen. But I have to say that watching children at the Arboretum play in the mud, that the one having the most fun and on whom all eyes were directed was the boy sitting in, covered with, and lolling about the mud patch.  Oh, International Mud Day is June 29th. But I think any day can and should be a mud day.

Tackling Persistent Questions About Learning Frameworks

I feel fortunate to have recently attended InterActivity 2017 in Pasadena and to have a great time. As always, seeing and catching up with colleagues from far and wide renews me. Gathering recollections about the first InterActivity they attended made many personal connections even richer. I was impressed with the courage and imaginations of two museums, The Children’s Museum of Brownsville and Play Africa, in the session, Children’s Museums as Strategies for Children’s Rights. Wandering the pathways in the Kidspace Arroyo Adventure among native plants and tiny lights as darkness set in was magical. And, I learned a new word, adulting, thanks to Henry Schulson.

I was also encouraged that learning frameworks are receiving attention, perhaps even more than in previous years. One session description began with, “The buzz continues about learning frameworks, …” More perspectives on what learning frameworks can be, smaller museums developing learning frameworks, frameworks referenced in discussing play, and frameworks guiding museum research are all indicators that museums are serious about improving their planning and evaluation of learning experiences and deepening their learning value.

At the same time, some basic questions still hover around them. At the conference, I was in group discussions, overheard comments, and was asked questions that I have been thinking about. On reflection, these explicit and tacit questions seem to touch on more than just learning frameworks. They relate to how learning in museums is viewed and how professional practices are sometimes pursued. In the long run, they can limit our thinking and our capacity to increase museums’ value to their audience and community.

These questions focus on 6 areas. They may be ones you and others in your museum also have and want to explore. They may be questions you hear from colleagues for which you wish you had better responses. Or thinking about them just might help move your thinking or produce helpful insights about learning frameworks that will facilitate your work.

Why do we call this a learning framework when it focuses on play? If a museum is all about play and the power of play, this is an obvious source of confusion. At least initially. In following that thought, we need to ask why play is valued in the museum. Is play valued for its own sake or is because of the learning that occurs during children’s play and how it contributes to children’s overall development? True, the relationship between play and learning is not always obvious. In fact, museums, and children’s museums in particular, are working to explore the nature of this relationship and how to convey it to parents and caregivers and to understand it themselves. Another reason a learning framework is called a learning framework is that education, or learning, is, at core, the nature of museums’ value to their communities. In 1992, the American Alliance of Museums’ report, Excellence and Equity, established education as central to museums’ public service.  

While a museum may focus its learning framework on play–or creativity, inquiry, making, or global awareness–those serve as entry points to learning, to thinking about diverse learners, serving as a solid platform for a new initiative, or describing the museum’s learning value.

Do we have to use the word, “pedagogy”? A director of education confided in me that when the CFO hears the word pedagogy, he shrieks with horror. He’s an otherwise normal guy. When I asked for clues about this response, she said that pedagogy sounds academic to him. He may be protesting or making fun of the word; she isn’t sure. Pedagogy, as the theory and practice of education, should not be considered an outrageous or pretentious term to use in talking about a museum’s learning focus, the theories that inform it, and how it encourages learning through its resources and practices. Especially in an institution with learning central to its purpose and education tied to its tax-exempt status. I doubt that saying, fund balance does not elicit screams.

Of course, it is not mandatory to use the word pedagogy. When it’s the right word for your purposes, however, and the best way to refer to the museum’s learning ideas and approaches, use it with confidence. When the howling stops, you can explain what it means and model what listening learn looks like.

Aren’t definitions limiting? Definitions are a vehicle for a group of people to focus, think together, and discuss what something important to them means. Very often, however, we assume that the people we work with mean the same thing we do when we use the same words frequently–play, interactive, creative, global awareness, etc. Without discussion that leads to a shared definition of what something means, how are we to know? Like guiding principles, criteria, and even a mission, definitions make important ideas visible and public for others to consider, ask about, and build on. Rather than a box that confines our thinking, a definition allows use to look into a word or phrase, and glimpse what meanings it may hold. We can revisit it and rethink it based on new information.

Definitions don’t need to be long, technical, or academic. They can brief and in the museum’s own words. But they must be clear and used consistently for communicating among museum staff, with museum supporters, and partners. Months, or years from now, that definition of learning can be revisited and updated.  

Should all areas of the museum be involved in a learning framework? Everyone who works in a museum has a responsibility for visitor safety and security. Likewise, each person is expected to use resources carefully and to align their work with the museum’s strategic plan. Because each person’s work contributes to the museum’s delivering engaging learning experiences for its visitors, perspectives from across the museum–from the bookkeeper and cashier, to the volunteer coordinator, preparator, events coordinator, and receptionist–all help in creating a well-thought out learning framework. Furthermore each person has insights and ideas about the museum’s learning experiences as museum-goers, as learners themselves, from conversations they overhear in the museum, or what they hear from their contacts.

Everyone on the museum staff doesn’t need to be on the learning framework team or deeply involved in developing the framework. At a minimum, everyone should know the museum is developing a framework or has one and should have an opportunity to think with others about how it relates to their own work. Ideally, however, all should be invited to contribute their expertise; and offered a chance to be a sounding board or a reviewer.  

  

Do we start from scratch for the learning framework? If your museum has a mission (and it probably does), you already have a start on your learning framework. If your museum has a vision, values, and a description of its intended audience, you are on your way to having a learning framework that aligns with your museum’s driving principles. Clues about what else to include in the learning framework can be found in the strategic plan, exhibit plan, MAP (Museum Assessment Project) materials and report. Think about the conversations staff have had about learning, diversity, partners, adult engagement; gather studies and articles that have excited staff and are referenced in discussions. You can look at learning frameworks from other museums too and see how they have addressed learning focus or impact.

All of this informs the learning framework which consolidates important ideas about learning, learners, and learning experiences in your museum. You will likely need to organize, prioritize, and fill some gaps. But you don’t need to start from scratch.

When is a learning framework done? More important than being “done” is having the essential framework parts in place and assuming it will grow and change over time. First and foremost, the framework should reflect the big ideas and ongoing dialogue about the museum’s learning purpose, its learners, and learning experiences. With the main parts in place, a museum can start to use the framework to develop exhibit goals, plan an initiative, or evaluate its camps. Time and actual use provide information for integrating the framework into current museum practices and developing new ones.

Conditions in the museum and its community are guaranteed to change over time. Naturally a museum can’t anticipate everything. The audience may age up or down; engaging parents and caregivers may become a new priority; community initiatives may come on-line; new studies will shed a new light on learning in museums. A framework should be planned for updates that reflect changes and new insights. For instance, as it learns more about learning through its framework, a museum may want to add indicators to its outcomes or develop a research agenda.

Each museum best determines when its learning framework captures the essence of its learning interests and is sufficiently robust and ready to serve as a useful tool for its educational planning and evaluation.

What questions persist for you about learning frameworks?

InterActivity: 27 Years, 15 Recollections

Connected
InterActivity 2014

It’s May, a seasonal start of sorts for museums. May is Museum Month in many cities and states and Thursday May 18^th is International Museum Day, celebrated since 1977. It is also the season of museum conferences beginning with ACM’s InterActivty 2017 in Pasadena (May 2-5) and AAM2017 in St Louis (May 7-10).

(Carol Scott (c) and Catherine Horne (r)
ReImagining Children's Museums (2012)

Professional conferences bring us together for what email, Facebook, GTM, Tweets, and Instagram can’t do even with their remarkable immediacy and connectivity: to encounter, engage, and explore, personally and professionally. Seasoned professionals and enthusiastic newcomers travel and meet in a new city where a host museum opens its doors and welcoming arms. We reconnect with colleagues in new positions and at new museums and hear of others whose careers and life journeys have taken them on other paths and to other conferences. Part family gathering, class reunion, and professional development institute, it’s a work party wrapped in a 3-day conversation.

Countless hours of planning by the host museum and ACM’s experienced staff shape a shared identity and build capacity to strengthen our museums and communities. This occurs at an increasingly larger scale with more registrants, exhibitors, and colleagues from more countries every year. In formal sessions, roundtable discussions, casual gatherings, and memorable evening events, we share accomplishments, meet new colleagues, navigate new realities, and learn together.

A platform for field-wide growth, the conference kicks off with the emerging museum conference. It channels fresh ideas to museums such as the Promising Practices awards (1999 – 2005) and host museum training for the (first) Asian Exhibit Initiative (2006). In 2014 participants from the 2013 Museum Study Group Tour to Reggio Emilia shared experiences at a pre-conference, Bringing Reggio Home, in Phoenix. The launch of Reimagining Children’s Museums in Portland in 2012 was followed by a preview of reimaginings in 2013 in Phoenix. Since 2011, representatives from international museums gather annually. Presenting the annual Great Friend to Kids award closes the conference, sending us off reflective, reconnected, and recharged.

Each year’s conversations inevitably conjure up past conferences. I often remember the first InterActivity I attended in 1990 hosted by Chicago Children’s Museum. I think the idea for YMEC (Youth Museum Exhibit Collaborative) started taking shape then as did lasting friendships that came from it. I loved the quirky, “makery”, and creative mail art exhibit. I still remember Karen Dummer, then Executive Director of Minnesota Children’s Museum, wonder out loud whether our museum should house an immunization clinic. The idea seemed outlandish to me at the time. I now realize Karen was 20 years ahead of the rest of us with museums now alert to ways of serving their communities in meaningful ways.

This year I asked friends and colleagues, what continues to stand out for you about your first InterActivity? A seemingly simple question, it elicited powerful impressions of personal relevance, connection, belonging, and gratitude.

Elee Wood (l) and Mary Maher (r) (2017)

Elee Wood, Museum Studies Program, IU School of Liberal Arts. ”My first conference was in 1996, the year it was in St. Paul where I then worked. Mr. Rogers received the Great Friend to Kids award. That was back when ACM was AYM (Association of Youth Museums). As a young professional, I was beyond thrilled to be able to meet all of the ‘big kids’ of the children’s museum field from Brooklyn, Boston, and Indianapolis. Of course it was a fantastic opportunity to meet Fred Rogers and show him around our new museum. That was also the first conference presentation I organized; I think the session title was “For the People, By the People” and centered on community involvement in exhibit planning. I had connected with others who created community-centered exhibitions that included people from the Troppen Junior Museum (Amsterdam), Chicago Children’s Museum, possibly Boston and highlighted the One World gallery at Minnesota Children’s Museum.” 

Collette Michaud, Children’s Museum of Sonoma County. “What I remember from my first InterActivity in 2005 in Indianapolis (IN) was how scared I was because I didn’t know anyone or anything about the children’s museum industry. All I knew was that I had a ridiculous dream of starting a children’s museum in my community and was hoping to learn all I could about how to do it.  What I found at the conference was an incredibly warm and welcoming group of people - mostly women, who selflessly took the time to share with me how they had started their own museums. I realized that they had been like me at one point  - just a person with a dream.  They confirmed that anything was possible. Ten years and as many Interactivity conferences later, I was able to open a museum in my community. I will forever be grateful for the generosity of so many people at that first conference. Their stories and willingness to share have deeply inspired and encouraged me over the years.”   

Julia Bland, Louisiana Children’s Museum. “My first conference was in 1998 in San Jose. I felt so overwhelmed and exhilarated - all mixed together. I probably looked like a reporter - asking questions constantly and taking notes from everyone I met. I moved through the conference days bursting with pride, with full confidence that children's museums were addressing the most important issues of the country!

What I remember from that conference could be said of any one since then - really committed professionals, passionate about their work and its hierarchy in the national ecosystems, explosive creativity (even on the tables as centerpieces), a learning environment that made me wish for cloning, nationally significant speakers (Hillary Clinton accepted the Best Friend to Kids Award) and a lot of really nice people.”

Tsivia Cohen, Chicago Children’s Museum. “My first Interactivity was in 2004 in Houston. Our presentation was called Presto! You’re There! Using Pretend as a Vehicle for Learning. We presented with two other museums, and my colleague Elaine Bentley and I were thrilled to hear how this same concept was being explored in completely different ways. We were in a hotel attached to a shopping mall outside of town. It was extremely hot outside and the only way into the city itself--and the museums--was on busses. I loved getting to see the Children's Museum of Houston as well as the Art Museum. For me the best part of the meeting was the opportunity to chat with colleagues whose roles were similar to my own. The connections I made led to new connections and a sense of a broader community of colleagues.”

Carol Scott, Children’s Museum of the Desert. “I was a new Director of Kidspace which was struggling when I attended my first InterActivity in Indianapolis in 1997. I was overwhelmed by TCM’s grandeur and wondered how I could ever compare what we could do with what Indy was. After more research, I came to realize that their museum was the exception, not the typical model.”

Aaron Goldblatt, Paul Orselli and Jen Alexander (2012)
Photo courtesy of Paul Orselli Workshop

Paul Orselli, Paul Orselli Workshop. “I don’t think it was my first ACM, but one of my most memorable and fortuitous conferences was the one in 2007 (I believe) in Chicago during which I met Vessela Gercheva from Bulgaria.  Vessela introduced herself after a session I presented in, and I thought, I’m never going to see this person again. I’m never going to travel to Bulgaria. Little did I know that chance meeting would lead to my involvement with Muzeiko, the first Children’s Museum in Bulgaria!”

Tanya Andrews, Children’s Museum of Tacoma. “The first IA I attended was Indianapolis--it must have been 1997. I was recently engaged! I think what struck me was the size and diversity of our field. How many small fries there are amongst some giants. It's like the ocean--small little fish swim peacefully with the big whales.  Everyone is in support of one another. I felt that right away.”

Kathy Gustafson-Hilton, Hands On! Studio. “My first InterActivity was 1997 in Indianapolis which makes this my 20th I/A; how time flies when you're having a blast. What a memorable combination, attending my first I/A conference and visiting the Indianapolis Children's Museum for the first time! I didn't know what to expect from the conference and didn't know many people. Of course, I had heard a lot about the legendary ICM. Neither disappointed. The thing I remember most about the conference is how friendly and welcoming everyone was - that hasn't changed in 20 years. And what I remember most about ICM is the joy of riding on the beautiful carousel. Both were whirlwind of uplifting experiences!”

Catherine Horne, Discovery Place. “My first impression at InterActivity at Minnesota Children’s Museum in St Paul in 1996 was that I had finally entered a museum that demonstrated good design, great learning, and wonderful play. A triple threat.”

Mary Maher, Hand To Hand. “The first InterActvity I went to was in Seattle in 1994. Actually ACM hired me as conference manager. It had just hired Janet but her start date wasn't until June 27. The Great Friend to Kids Award went to Peggy Charren. The biggest standout over the years has been how the leadership and "character" of each host museum colors the conference. Host museums play a role in defining the program, but they also play a much bigger role in truly welcoming attendees, opening their museums and their communities to us as visitors, and inviting us to sample the resources and local expertise they live and work with every day. They give a good feel for the place. At the best conferences, you come away thinking, I see how this museum staff thinks, how they operate, and who their community is—and now I understand how they became who they are." 

Brenda Baker, Madison Children’s Museum. “I remember sitting crossed legged on the floor of Elaine Gurian's hotel room, as she held court perched atop a double bed. 20 or 30 people crammed into her hotel room for a session on navigating our field's future. This was before ACM had a professional staff, an office in Washington, or a conference with more than 80-100 people. I listened and absorbed. But mostly, I was in utter awe, swept up with inspiration and enthusiasm when I realized I had met my tribe.” 

Jen Alexander, KidCity. “I'm pretty sure I got my money's worth out of my first Interactivity. It was 18 years ago in New York City. To this day, I'm still inspired by two presentations I saw there. I listened to a pair of playground designers describe their collaboration on the incredible Battery Park City playground - the one with a multi-kid cycle-carousel and waterspout lion heads made of stone. It became the standard by which I've judged every playground ever since! 

1999 is also the year Neil Postman gave a breathtakingly brilliant speech titled, Five things we need to teach our young. He made a pitch that we should stop thinking about learning in terms of subjects like math, English, science and instead teach things like rhetoric and methods of persuasion, appreciation of art, and understanding of religion. It would be hard to overstate the impact of that speech on my parenting and my work as a children's museum designer.  It was later published in the 1999 Hand-in-Hand (Vol. 13, #2).

I always learn something new at InterActivity. It also works as a mirror -- I see things about my own work that I hadn't noticed before. As we say in the tourism business, worth the trip!”

Aaron Goldblatt, Metcalfe Architecture and Design. “I attended InterActivity for the first time in Houston in 1993. It was a watershed moment. At the time I had been at Please Touch for 2 years and I still had a solo studio practice. In Houston, the world cracked open. I saw this world as full of people doing stuff that was exciting, fun, and challenging and thought, this is what I should be doing. I decided to close my studio practice and join this collaborative, challenging work.” 

Erik Schurink, Long Island Children’s Museum. "My first ACM conference was in Indianapolis.  The year? 1997 or 98. I remember loving the storytelling exhibit (the car, the hair salon), and a tween stationed at the porch of the house in that exhibit beautifully reciting a poem by Langston Hughes. What also struck me about this exhibit was its intimacy in contrast to the size of the museum itself. I remember how my childhood memories were triggered by the model trains and the impressive model landscape. I remember a session about teamwork explaining its 4 stages: forming, storming, norming, performing. It's an awareness still very useful to me. However I'm not positive that this was at my very first or second ACM conference. 

I remember visiting the Eiteljorg, how its art resonated with me in relation to the first children's exhibit I designed, To Walk in Two Worlds, an exhibit about indigenous people living contemporary lives in America, while carrying on their cultural heritage. I remember meeting Jane Clark Chermayeff, and having a chat with her at the hotel's breakfast setup. I remember sitting in on a YMEC meeting brainstorming ideas for the next exhibit round." 

This is a very small selection of recollections from only a few people who have attended InterActivity over the decades. Yet even just these memories speak to the remarkable, committed people who come together to fulfill the hopes of our gatherings.