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! 

Forces At Play

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.

From Air Play to Water Play

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.  

Wet and Whacky

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.

Habitot, So Long

Minnesota Children's Museum's HABITOT

Minnesota Children’s Museum recently announced it will replace 3 iconic galleries as part of its $30 million expansion and renovation. After 20 years, Earth World, World Works, and HABITOT will close and be replaced by new galleries.

Since 1989, HABITOT has been Minnesota Children’s Museum’s area for very young children, first at its Bandana Square location and then at its downtown St. Paul location. Designed as a learning landscape for infants and toddlers, 6 to 36 months and their caregivers, it followed Boston Children’s Museum’s PlaySpace as one of the early spaces designed specifically for the youngest museum visitors, their parents and caregivers.

When HABITOT was being planned I was head of exhibits and education at the Museum. My background in early childhood and children’s environments and the Toddler’s Nest I had created for Madison Children’s Museum were helpful in working with a team of Museum founders and board members. Karen Dummer, then Executive Director, had advocated for a dedicated early childhood space. Her question, “What does babies parked in strollers and perched on hips say about how a museum values children?” became the rationale for the project.

Doing is becoming 

At 900 square feet, HABITOT was not large. It was, however, a safe, engaging environment where infants, toddlers, and caregivers could feel comfortable actively exploring together. More like a landscape than a playpen, its research-based, developmental-design approach recognized that, especially for very young children, physical development is cognitive development and social-emotional development. A new walker careening down a ramp is walking, moving from here to there, dealing with gravity, and motivated by the sight of a parent nearby. What that toddler is doing is what that toddler is thinking is what the toddler is becoming. Even at this small size and squeezed into a narrow slice of space near the Museum’s entrance and the bathrooms, HABITOT was large enough to signal a firm intention to serve young visitors well, share information about children's developmental potential, and support a range of related activities.

Three abstract landscapes–canyons for peepers, creepers and crawlers, islands for toddlers, and caves for increasingly independent preschoolers–were designed and built in the Museum’s fabrication shop. Ramps, steps, a wavy walk, crawl-in caves, changing surfaces, a birdcage-climber along with loose parts, sensory tubes, and busy boxes supported a range of experiences for moving in different ways, testing new motor skills, playing games, and mastering new feats.

Before opening, a group of toddler sons and daughters of staff and board, affectionately known as the HABITOT babies, explored and tested the spaces with their parents. Their activity and enthusiasm was a clear endorsement soon to be played out repeatedly by families with very young children and small groups from childcare programs.    

The year HABITOT opened, attendance increased 40% over the previous year. In 1988 attendance statistics were rudimentary, recorded by cashiers with paper and pencil. While the precise percentage increase might be off, the magnitude reflects the impact on the Museum in recognizing and serving this young age group.

Over the next few years, HABITOT was a site for staff observations, University of Minnesota student internships, and an academic research project by the Kinesiology Department. Also a hub for programming, weekly programs for parents were presented by Museum partners. Parents shared anecdotes about their child first rolling over on the Canyon cushions, taking their first steps, and overcoming hesitation to crawl into the texture caves. Caregivers reported they found the brochures useful and liked chatting with other parents and caregivers. Some families visited weekly, a pattern that has since become familiar in many museums among members with very young children.

HABITOT Grows

Evidence of the need for more museum space was reinforced by the attendance growth that followed HABITOT’s opening and plans for moving to downtown St Paul began taking shape in 1991. The 10 focus groups conducted confirmed a high interest for an updated HABITOT. Valuable lessons from HABITOT’s first 4 years guided us in many ways. A focus group with HABITOT parents allowed us to explore family experiences in greater depth. Input from these groups informed the 1992 Programmatic Master Plan and launched gallery planning.    

Jane goes ice fishing in the Forest 

Parents, caregivers, and educators were emphatic about a larger HABITOT with amenities. We were able to double the size of HABITOT to a still modest 1,800 sf. that also included a resource alcove, nursing room, bathroom, and stroller park. When parents talked about experiences they wanted for their very young children, they mentioned positive experiences in nature. This fit with the place-based context suggested by the name HABITOT, originally constructed by Director of Development Kristin Midelfort. It also fit with conceptualizing the 4 new galleries as Worlds. Landscapes became less abstract and more local. Each of the 4 areas, Pond, Prairie, Woods, Bluff Caves, were specific Minnesota locations in a different season. 

Both parent input and the availability of a resource space for books, articles, and information sheets allowed us to rethink caregiver messaging. In this version of HABITOT, adults’ supporting and extending infants’ and toddlers’ exploration was a high priority. Graphics used a playful, conversational-style with questions and prompts to invite exploration. Paired with bold, picture-book style images and sandwiched between clear Plexi panels, they were easily visible from two sides as adults kept up with toddlers. A short video starring a new group of HABITOT babies and their parents focused on how children at different ages explore each landscape and its features supported by parent engagement.     

HABITOT inspired more programs and events geared to this very young group of children. Weekly HABITOT Tuesdays designated for children 4 years and under offered story, movement, and sensory programs. HABITOT Halloween grew and eventually evolved into HABITOT Holidays throughout the year. 

In A HABITOT Generation

These days, when I work with a museum to develop a vision statement, I typically frame a question asking, “What changes does the museum believe are possible in the next generation for children and families in our community?”

The generation since HABITOT opened has been a good one for very young children and their caregivers in museums. Museums have broadened their view of their audience, now serving the full life span from the early years to the elder years. With a boost from research on early brain development and national conversations on the critical role of early experiences in the first 5 years of life, museums have stepped into larger supportive roles around early childhood. Publication of the 2013 policy report, Growing Young Minds: How Museums and Libraries Create Lifelong Learners by the Institute for Museums and Library Services, both reflects and encourages this trend.

Spaces planned for very young children have taken root and grown in museums. They have spread from children’s museums to science centers, art museums, history museums, and natural history museums. Less likely to be squeezed into a small, unused space, they are increasingly among the core experiences a museum offers. Often as designated totspots distributed throughout the museum, early childhood spaces make it easier for families to explore galleries together. In some museums, the early childhood space is one part of a comprehensive resource for serving young children, parents, educators, and the community along with supporting programs, professional development, a research agenda, or preschool.

Iterations and updates of design for these spaces have generated other changes. Increasingly the distinctive needs of this young audience are being recognized. HABITOT and PlaySpace environments are not just smaller versions of other exhibits in a museum. Experience rather than content-driven, sensory exploration and play are at the heart of these developmentally- calibrated and responsive environments. Playing a crucial role in their child’s everyday and museum experiences, parents, grandparents, and caregivers are a high priority audience in these spaces. Making it easy for them to get into the act requires considering their comfort, interests, and expectations. Multiple strategies for involving caregivers need to be incorporated into the complex choreography of the experience.

The “HABITOT babies” of 1989 and 1995 are now parents themselves. Soon they will be bringing their sons and daughters to Sprouts, a new and larger space for very young children opening in 2017 as part of Minnesota Children’s Museum’s expansion. Designed by Gyroscope,Inc., Sprouts continues to explore the concept of young children’s physical development as social and cognitive development with a fresh, engaging design approach. At 3,000 s.f. and a wider range of experiences including water play and more amenities, the spirit of HABITOT continues to grow.