Photo Credit: Richard Tsong-Taatarii |
Museums use the word engaged in describing visitors wholeheartedly involved with activities. They are engaged when they try different features of a component, repeat actions and add variations, show others what to do, talk about what they are doing, or stick with an activity for a long time. Engaged is what museums hope for in creating exhibits and programs, in connecting people with one another and with the museum, and in having an impact.
In Forces at Play at
Minnesota Children’s Museum, children and adults are ENGAGED. They are engaged
with water, air, and bubbles; with hoses, cranks, and valves; pipes and pumps; sprayers
and suds; blowers, brushes, and balls; with children and adults, with people
they know well and with friends they just met.
Opening on August 31, Forces
at Play is the first new permanent gallery of the Museum’s $30 million
expansion and renovation to be completed in April 2017. This IMLS-funded
project makes what children (and adults) find fascinating–air and water–intriguing,
accessible, and joyful.
Designed for a primary
audience of children 4 through 10 years and their caregivers, the gallery’s
secondary audience is children 3 years and under and their caregivers. An overarching
focus is on actively engaging visitors’ critical thinking through open-ended,
self-directed play and materials exploration, and reinforced with an
engineering layer. Along with creating a compelling water experience, the
Museum wanted to add air as another medium for investigation. With this
combination, the Museum also hoped to move the upper end of the age range closer to 10
years.
The exhibit’s design,
activities, real materials, and abundant loose parts wholeheartedly invite
everyone to try something, to fit pipes together, twist tubes apart, press
levers, aim a hose, or pull on a gate valve. The promise that doing something
will make something interesting happen is met. Ping pong balls hover in the
air; feathers fly; suds climb through tubes; dots of light appear by pressing a wet
finger. The words “wash me” appear seemingly from nowhere as warm water spills across
a surface.
Two main areas, air play
and water play, both with designated tot spots for very young children are
connected by a ramp. Giant hanging dryer tubes line the ramp; they are both
functional–for drying off–and for investigation–making the overhead Mylar
strips dance. In air play, visitors connect tubes, aim blowers, and adjust valves to
launch ping pong balls at the Blower Build Stations. They start a chain reaction by
pumping air into tubes at various air sources and trigger spinners and
propellers. And they use prediction and timing in launching ping pong balls into traffic cone targets.
In the water play area visitors
crank the giant blue carwash brush to make it spin; draw images with water on a
panel of LED lights; fill a series of basins with water to start a cascade; and
transform trays of bubble solution with dichroic gels. Undoubtedly, the main
attraction of the entire gallery is the Car Wash Bonanza. Parked in the car
wash is a fantastic vehicle constructed from parts of 13 different vehicles.
If pretending to drive a car is fun, then driving one with the hood of a VW
bug, the door of a police car, the back of a city bus, and wheels of 4 different sizes
(including a giant tractor wheel), is a dream beyond belief.
The vehicle’s varied
contours, surfaces, and colors beg to be washed, rinsed, and polished. When the
car wash cycle begins, the wash, rinse, dry lights light up in succession dispensing suds, a clean rinse,
and puffs of air. At the 4-cylinder bubble engine, children crank and pump bubbles
delivered through 4 different tubes. Nearby, dozens of brushes that do work of
every sort, hang ready for scrubbing and buffing. There’s a job, a brush, or a
hose for everyone.
The SteamPunk Side of Seuss
Forces at Play is designed
by Gyroscope, Inc. (Oakland CA) and built by Kidzibits (Minneapolis, MN) and
the Museum’s in-house fabricators.
The design brief expressed
the gallery’s look-and-feel as the SteamPunk Side of Seuss. More than a clever
trope, this image inspired a deconstructed design aesthetic that is spare,
inventive, functional, whacky, beautiful, and occasionally surprising. Conceptually,
it served to strip away layers from how we often experience the forces of air
and water in museum settings and everyday situations. Right at the entry, four
powerful air blowers stripped of casings are visible through a glass window and
help make obvious how air is delivered to the floor blowers that lift balls and float feathers.
Decisions in lay out, materials, and surfaces contribute to the transparency. Open sight lines keep the large, 3,400 square foot space visually simple, mechanisms visible, and freedom of movement easy. Stripped to essentials, the car wash and vehicle are simple frameworks with intriguing elements and quirky twists: the rearview mirror of a Mack Truck, the hood ornament of a Minneapolis Moline tractor, old license plates, or suds oozing from a hose like soft-serve ice cream.
A consistent use of
stainless steel panels throughout brings order to abundant brushes, raincoats,
and visitor comments. Against neutral gray walls, the orange traffic cones and
yellow fans pop. Beauty is in the details of the copper pipe Water Contraption,
the shallow pools of the Ripple Effect, and the bubbles spilling through the
Water Graffiti.
Although Forces at Play is
still new, the Museum is dealing successfully with operational issues many
museums face in less ambitious exhibits: water, loose parts, text, and adult
engagement.
With multiple water hoses
around the care wash, Forces at Play is definitely wet, especially under the vehicle. Floor contouring, drain, and water-proof
non-porous surfacing result in surprisingly little standing water. Raincoats
with hoods in all sizes and distributed in several areas are handy. Drying off is
easy, engaging, and accessible: at a bank of hand dryers, at the dryer tubes on the
ramp, or from a rub down at the big carwash brush. Children will get wet, a
little or a lot, but so far no one seems to mind. That may change when an
Alberta Clipper passes through Minnesota in January.
The Museum does not just
tolerate water and loose parts–tubes, ping pong balls, brushes–but
embraces them. Essential to materials exploration, brushes, dichroic gel, suds,
feathers, tubing, ping pong balls, water, and air are plentiful. Brushes are intended
to travel from the tool bin to the Car Wash to Water Graffiti. Loose materials, says the
exhibit’s developer, Mary Weiland, are meant to live on the ground where
they are visible, accessible, and suggest possibilities.
Signs
are scarce and, when present, are short. One says, “Directions. (There aren’t
any.) And that’s on Purpose.” The
absence of signs telling what to do or why it is important makes a point. If
play is a strategy for learning then big play provides big learning
opportunities. In Forces At Play, concepts like flow and pressure can be
experienced directly. Understanding them well may be in the future, but the joy of investigating
them, working with others, and making things happen with water or air–are decidedly
in the present where it matters.
On my two visits to the
gallery, I saw everyone get into the act, from wobbly walkers to 10 and 11 year
olds, to parents, grandparents, and staff. In contrast to so many exhibits
where adults hang back, look on, or tap their phones, here they were as active
as the children. The exhibit makes it easy to connect over a ping pong ball flying
by or a water hose misfiring. One parent slipped away from the family at the Feather
Blaster to tweak the chain reaction one more time.
Conversation flows. A
father explains what windshield wipers do; a mother suggests her son increase
the water pressure; a grandmother asks, “what if we…?” Often, and with adults
in the lead, silliness and group fun erupts. Families blow their hair into
crazy styles, shoot ping pong balls at each other, strike silly poses with
squeegees, and give each other rubdowns with the giant blue brush. Staff gets
into the act too. Jordan put on a soapy mit and polished the vehicle’s red truck
door, directed the air hose at the Mylar strips, and danced with the air
dancers.
Off Kilter and On Target
Before Forces At Play was
a wet and whacky car wash temporarily called Scrub Hub, it was a STEM gallery
with more structured water, air, and light experiences. The design was strong
and the exhibit was accomplishing its broad goals. Following an advisors’
meeting during Schematic Design, the Museum team seriously considered the
advisors’ input and rethought the exhibit approach. The result was a much
deconstructed exhibit, with a car wash that hit harder on critical thinking,
play, and materials exploration. In my role as a project advisor, I was initially
hesitant about changing direction at that point in the process and where a car
wash exhibit might lead. The team’s instincts were on the mark.
I applaud the Museum’s courage
to look critically at its work and create a wet, windy, and whacky experience.
At many points in the planning process, the museum could have backed up and,
conceptually, mopped up the experience. Very likely, the exhibit would have
been engaging. Instead, MCM chose to venture where museums often talk of going,
but seldom do: creating open-ended exploration around what is fascinating to children (and adults) and involves abundant loose parts and a play-rich mess as a way to explore STE(A)M.
This is play as we seldom
see it in museums. Unlike the structured play that exhibits tend to provide,
here is a glimpse of play among children of different ages directing their play,
following their ideas, and transforming objects. This is play that flows, folds
an interruption into a planned scenario, expands to include more children, even children who don’t know each other.
The promise that anyone
can make something happen in this gallery is ever present. I watched a 3-year
old girl carefully load 3 ping pong balls into a clear tube laying on its side
near, but unconnected to, a blower. She focused intently, as if expecting the balls to move. When nothing happened, she placed 2 more balls in the tube and waited.
When still nothing happened she looked into the end of the tube; she then shifted
the tube one way and then the other. She continued making small adjustment
after small adjustment. When she accidently passed her hand across the blower,
the ball she held flew up and hovered in mid air. The delight on her face
predicted a new round of investigation.
To the forces at play with
water and air in this gallery, I would have to add the forces of curiosity, persistence,
thinking, and delight that are at play and make this a success.
Great article Jean!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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