How Every Museum Can Be More Like a Children's Museum

As I head off to the InterActivity Conference this week, I’ve been thinking about how traditionally hands-off museums can learn valuable lessons from their Children's Museum counterparts. While most cultural institutions strive to educate and inspire, Children's Museums have mastered the art of making learning an immersive, hands-on adventure that visitors actually *want* to experience. 

Here's how different types of cultural institutions can channel some of that same Children’s Museum mojo:

Art Museums: Let Visitors Create, Not Just Contemplate

Art Museums traditionally rely on the "look but don't touch" approach, but they could also: 

• Create "inspiration stations" near notable works where visitors can try artistic techniques.

• Offer "remix corners" where visitors can create their own versions of famous paintings.

Michelangelo didn't become an artist only by looking at sculptures—he also made them. Let your visitors create art, too!

Natural History Museums: Bring Those Dioramas to Life

Your taxidermied animals are looking a bit dusty. We know they're not real, so why pretend? Instead, why not:

• Transform static exhibits into sensory experiences (What does fossil or mummified evidence tell us about what a mammoth could have sounded or felt like? Let visitors find out!)

• Create "science detective” stations where visitors solve real-life ecological mysteries tied to the actual locations featured in the dioramas using scientific tools

History Museums: Let Visitors Step Into the Story

History museums often treat visitors as passive observers of the past rather than active participants. To change this:

• Create "decision points" where visitors face the same choices as historical figures.

• Design immersive environments that engage all senses (Yes, medieval towns did smell that bad!)

The Secret Sauce of Children’s Museums: Less Reading, More Doing

The magic of Children's Museums isn't just about bright colors or simpler content—it's about active engagement. Children's Museums transform visitors from passive observers into active participants -- creating meaningful experiences that stick with people long after they've left the building.

So go ahead—add that dress-up corner to your art gallery or install a wind tunnel into your history museum!

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

If you enjoy the blog, you can help keep it free to read and free from ads by supporting ExhibiTricks through our PayPal "Tip Jar"

Collective Impact: Impressions of the 2016 InterActivity Conference

Children's Museum colleagues from around the world (including representatives from Bulgaria, El Salvador, Korea, Israel, Nigeria, Australia, and China!) recently converged in Connecticut to meet, learn, and discuss about topics of common interest during the annual InterActivity Conference put on by the Association of Children's Museums (ACM).

I attended the entire conference, so I offer my impressions here for those who were not able to attend, but also to give a sense of the current state of the Children's Museum field.

The theme of this year's conference was "Collective Impact." Building on the notion that no single organization can create large-scale lasting social change, but rather we have more impact when different parts of the community work together.

This theme of collective impact --- of learning together and changing the world through common cause was evident throughout the sessions and keynote talks at the conference.

Here are my impressions of the sessions and events that I participated in:

Welcome Dinner and Opening Program
This was a great way to start the conference by getting everyone together.  A nice opportunity to eat and chat with old friends, and to meet new colleagues.  In addition to the meal the program featured Jeff Edmondson, the Managing Director of StriveTogether, and a Children's Museum "Fashion Show."

Mr. Edmondson's talk, while energetic, felt a little too motivational speaker-y for my tastes. It also felt a bit like a generic talk that could be presented to any kind of professional group (in fact, Mr. Edmondson misspoke and said "Children's Hospitals" instead of "Children's Museums" at one point and got quite flustered apologizing for a simple mistake.) But extra points to Mr. E for his energy and brevity!

The Museum Fashion Show was quite fun, since every participant had a DIY outfit with elements highlighting some part of their museum's programs or exhibits.  Pictured below is Megan from the Fairbanks Children's Museum with a book dress highlighting the Fairbanks "take a book" program that allows young visitors (who are often upset when they have to leave the museum) to take home a children's book from a designated book shelf near the front desk and entrance/exit door.

Thursday Morning started with a great Professional Networking Breakfast where I found out a little bit about the "Mind in the Making" program -- a way for the public and organizations like museums to plug into children learning research,  and also the Daily Vroom app --- a way for parents to discover "brain building" activities with their kids using their everyday activities.  I'll definitely be looking more into both of these resources, based on my fortuitous breakfast conversations!

Thursday morning I attended the Material Matters 2.0 session, which I found interesting and useful. I love a session that gives me practical takeaways!  Panelists spoke about the pros and cons of using specific materials in exhibit projects and brought samples for folks in the audience to handle and look at. For example HDPE is a good material to use for removable access panels since it holds up to repeated inserting and removing of mechanical fasteners. It would be great to have more deliberately practical sessions like this at every museum conference!

The other Thursday morning session I attended was called "Engaging a Community Through Social Media" and it also was a winner.  Three museum practitioners and a marketing professional gave their practical tips and experiences with Social Media through examples.  One great takeaway for me was the idea that nowadays people often come to your Social Media channels first, and then your website. So it's important to think about how best to use your resources for your institution's online presence.

The entire rest of the afternoon was spent inside Norwalk City Hall in a format of presentations inspired by New England Town Hall meetings.   Let me start off with a positive by saying the local Soweto Melodic Voices musical group were amazingly entertaining.

As for the rest of the Town Hall program, it was, frankly, a train wreck --- if a train wreck could also be boring. The format of speakers pouring out dense bits of information very rapidly with little, if any, interaction with the audience felt like being forced to drink from an informational fire hose --- if drinking from a fire hose could also be boring.

I know the organizers' motivations for developing a Town Hall format were good, but I'd like to offer a suggestion for future ACM Conferences in the form of a Town Hall resolution.

RESOLVED:  ACM and InterActivity Conference Planners shall offer interactive session blocks on selected topics such as the "Achievement Gap" instead of theatrical programs that force all conference attendees to passively be gathered into one large auditorium space.

If an entire session block of eight or nine smaller sessions had been offered around the topic of the Achievement Gap, for example, with each smaller session focusing on an aspect of the Achievement Gap like Education, Health Care, Literacy, etc.  We could have then gathered as an entire conference group to have each session moderator report out on what was discussed in a more digestible (and actionable!) format.

(For context: when InterActivity was in Pittsburgh a few years ago, an extended session format of "Small Talks" (like TED talks) was introduced.  It was fun and successful.  Since then, subsequent InterActivity hosts have tried similar extended sessions for all the conference attendees at once that have been much less successful. People come to conferences to learn things and interact with their colleagues, not attend a multi-hour lecture.)

Stepping off soapbox now ...


Moving on to the Thursday evening event, hosted by Stepping Stones Museum.  It was wonderful in every way.  Stepping Stones has a super museum and their staff and sponsors offered plenty of inspiration (AND plenty of great food and drink!) for everyone.

Friday sessions included excellent presentations on working with artists and developing museum leadership, entitled respectively: "Need a New Knockout Installation? Try Partnering with an Artist" and "Strategies to Develop the Next Generation of Leaders."   Both sessions were really well done and involved good takeaways.  One interesting connective thread between the two topics that I found was the importance of clear communication and expectations making the difference between highly successful (or less successful ..) interactions between museum staff themselves or with museum visitors.

Another highlight of Friday was the ACM Marketplace, where vendors show off their ideas and wares to the Children's Museums community.  There were a good range of folks showing interesting stuff, but I especially liked nWave letting me pet Owlbert the owl!

The 2016 InterActivity conference wound up for me with a morning session entitled "Mistakes Were Made." I was one of the speakers/facilitators that first shared our own mistakes and lessons learned, and then small groups shared their mistakes/lessons before one grand mistake winner was chosen, and awarded the coveted "Mistakes Were Made" trophy.  You'll have to attend next year's InterActivity conference in Pasadena to ask Brenda Riley, the Director of Fairbanks Children's Museum to share her prize-winning story (and lesson!) with you herself.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

How I Helped Open The First Children's Museum In Bulgaria, And What I Learned In The Process

Muzeiko, the first Children's Museum in Bulgaria (and really the first truly interactive museum in that entire part of the world ...) opened officially on October 1st, 2015.  Having been involved in the entire development process of Muzeiko for the past few years (and even before the official Muzeiko project started!) has certainly been one of the highlights of my museum career so far.

People often ask how I ever got involved in a museum project in Bulgaria, and what I've taken away from the whole experience.

The story starts in 2007 when I was presenting at the annual Association of Children's Museums (ACM) conference in Chicago.  After one of my talks, an energetic young woman strode up the aisle and introduced herself to me.  "My name is Vessela Gertcheva" she said.  "I'm from Bulgaria, and I want to start a Children's Museum there, since we don't have anything like that in my country.  When we start the project I hope you can work with us."

That's Vessela!

At that point I had never even met anyone from Bulgaria, and I was taken with Vessela's enthusiasm.  We exchanged business cards and agreed to stay in touch.   After Vessela walked away, I thought, "I'm never going to see that woman again.  How am I ever going to end up in Bulgaria?"

So, one of those pleasant serendipitous conference encounters, but that's that, I thought.

Little did I realize that I would receive an email in the Fall of 2009 inviting me to come to Bulgaria to help Vessela work on a pilot project with the New Bulgarian University to develop "Children's Corners" (really small interactive exhibitions geared toward children and families ) in five existing museums throughout Bulgaria. A series of email exchanges commenced, and then along with two wonderful colleagues, Deborah Edward and Sally Yerkovich,  I made my way to Bulgaria in November 2010 for a whirlwind tour of the various museum sites and many meetings with Bulgarian museum professionals and educators to kick the process off.

Deborah Edward and myself at the New Bulgarian University

SIDE NOTE: If you have have the chance to visit Bulgaria, GO!  It is an amazing country filled with friendly people, great food, amazing natural and cultural sites, including a number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, like the Rila Monastery up in the mountains.

Rila Monastery

After my initial visit to Bulgaria for the Children's Corners project, I continued to stay in touch with Vessela and offer advice remotely (and even help to coordinate the occasional shipment of materials to Sofia.)  Needless to say the Children's Corners were a big hit!  I was so touched when Vessela sent me a picture of the first anniversary of the opening of the exhibition at the museum in Blagoevgrad --- school children dressed up, sang songs, and even made a cake for the Children's Corner there!

Children's Corner Celebrations in Blagoevgrad!

With the Children's Corners being so successful, The America for Bulgaria Foundation issued an international call for proposals in early 2012 to create the building and exhibitions for a new Children's Museum in Sofia, the capital.  I was part of the proposal with the talented team at Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership in New York, and we won the competition!

Me with part of the Skolnick team in the Sofia Metro

What followed from the middle of 2012 right up until the opening of Muzeiko in 2015 were meetings (both in person in Sofia and New York) as well as flurries of emails and Skype calls to keep everything moving forward.  It truly was a mutually respectful creative partnership between the Bulgarian team and the American team, which I think shows in the final incarnation of the Muzeiko project.

So after nearly four years of planning, prototyping, building (and yes occasionally arguing!) about what would end up inside (and outside!) Muzeiko, I was able to fly to Sofia with my wife to attend the fancy Grand Opening party during the evening of September 30th, 2015.  It was awesome!  Boyko Borissov, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria was there, as well as the American Ambassador, and the Mayor of Sofia.   Ribbons were cut, and a marching band played.  A choir group even sang a special Muzeiko anthem!   It was tremendously gratifying to see years of ideas and passion and hard work come to fruition!  Also, since Muzeiko is the first museum of its kind in the entire Balkan region, I am sure it will have a tremendous impact on the lives of families, children, and educators throughout Eastern Europe.

Bulgarian Spiderman inside Muzeiko!

So what did I learn from my Bulgarian museum adventure?  Three main things:


• Always be open to expanding your museum network 
If I hadn't met Vessela during the ACM Conference in Chicago and stayed in touch afterwards I would have never ended up in Bulgaria.  To me, networking should not be a strictly "quid pro quo" arrangement (what can this person do for me, right now?) but rather an ongoing professional relationship of mutual interest.

• Prototype and pilot!
I'm sure the Muzeiko project is stronger because of the things that were learned from the Children's Corners pilot projects, and the extensive exhibit prototyping (and "soft opening" days) that all happened.  As with most projects, I wish we had done even more prototyping, but the Muzeiko teams really were concerned about trying things out ahead of the formal opening.

• Choose strong creative partners!
I couldn't have asked for better creative partners than the Skolnick team and our Muzeiko counterparts in Bulgaria.  Smart and nice makes a great combination. I always felt that everyone was putting forth their best efforts with a clear shared end-goal in mind.  In the end, I feel that people get the creative partners they deserve --- a creative relationship, like any relationship, needs to be able to survive the occasional bumps in the road.  I want to make sure my creative partners are proactive problem solvers, not finger-pointing whiners.


Muzeiko will always be a special museum project for me.  And I'll continue to use it as a benchmark for future work. Lucky me!

If you'd like to learn more about Muzeiko, check out their website (parts in English!) or this nifty Google virtual walk-through the entire Muzeiko building!

Happy Creative Partners at the Muzeiko Opening

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.  Looking for a great creative partner for your next project? Let's talk!  Email me to get the conversation started.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Revisiting A Bulgarian Museum Revolution

I am now in Bulgaria as part of the team kicking off the process to create the first Children's Museum in Bulgaria --- in Sofia the Capital.  When I last visited Bulgaria in late 2010, pilot interactive exhibition galleries were just starting to open around the country.  These "Children's Corners" have since been enormously successful and popular with children, parents, and teachers.

Now the dream of creating a full-fledged Children's Museum in Sofia is marching down the road to reality.  While much has been accomplished by our Bulgarian Museum colleagues, it is interesting how the lessons learned from the pilot Children's Corners are still informing the burgeoning Children's Museum project.  While I'll be reflecting on my current Bulgarian trip in future posts, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit my (slightly modified) posting from my 2010 trip below:

A Bulgarian (Museum) Revolution

What would you do if you lived in a country that had no Children's Museums?

That's currently the state of affairs in Bulgaria.  Fortunately for the Bulgarian Museum community, and Bulgarian museum visitors in particular, a determined and resourceful young woman named Vessela Gertcheva ably assisted by Nadia Zaharieva of the America for Bulgaria Foundation are working to change all that.  In fact, Vessela, Nadia, and their colleagues in the museum and cultural sectors are on the brink of a true Bulgarian Museum Revolution.


I just returned from a trip to Bulgaria to observe and provide advice on the pilot project designed to develop five "Children's Corners" (really better thought of as small interactive exhibition areas designed to introduce children and family groups to hands-on exhibits) into five different museums around Bulgaria.  (Note: remember that this post refers to my first trip to Bulgaria in 2010.)

Vessela is spearheading the "Children's Corners" project as a way to build public awareness for the possibilities of interactive learning spaces in Bulgaria, and to ultimately pave the way for a free-standing Bulgarian Children's Museum there.  In this blog posting, I'll share some of the experiences of my trip to Bulgaria, as well as some of the museum and exhibit ideas I came away with.

But first, a little background.  Everyone I told about my trip before I actually left for Bulgaria was surprised and/or fascinated by my destination.  But most people (including myself, originally) weren't really sure where Bulgaria was located.  So, here's a map:

Bulgaria is bordered to the south by Greece and Turkey, to the west by Macedonia, to the north by Romania, and to the east by the Black Sea.  My sense of central Sofia, the capital, was that there were a few beautiful buildings surrounded by much blocky, oppressive architecture reflective of the Soviet-dominated, totalitarian past of Bulgaria.  This is changing since Bulgaria's entry into the European Union, but slowly.

Similarly, the Bulgarian museums we visited were decidedly "old school."  Large buildings whose interiors were dominated by rows and floors of artifacts and objects in glass cases (or as our Bulgarian hosts charmingly described them, "cages.")  While many of these traditional Bulgarian museums provided interesting staffed programs (such as weekend bazaars or the popular annual "European Bat Night" at the National Museum of Natural History) museum staff have become increasingly interested in exploring ways for integrating interactive exhibit areas geared toward children and families into their museums.

The first of the five Children's Corners opened in September 2010 at the Regional Museum of History in Blagoevgrad, in the southwestern part of Bulgaria.  Having seen the finished gallery, I am very impressed and think that the Blagoevgrad exhibition raises the bar high for the succeeding four galleries in this project to match.  (You can read my entire review and see a batch of pictures from the Blagoevgrad installation by clicking over to the ExhibiFiles website.)

I also learned a new exhibit trick from our Bulgarian museum colleagues: their animal track stamping component makes use of "Moon Sand" in the central stamping area, which makes for sharper track impressions as well as limiting some degree of the messiness associated with traditional loose sand.

In visiting the other museum sites that will be creating their own Children's Corners, and by meeting with their directors and curatorial staff, I was struck by several things:

• It is exceedingly difficult to imagine the possibilities or develop interactive exhibit ideas if neither you, nor your visitors, have directly experienced a hands-on gallery or museum.  This is a key part of both the challenge, and the revolution, inherent in the Children's Corner project.  Fortunately, the completed gallery in Blagoevgrad is already serving as a model and benchmark to Bulgarian museum professionals and visitors alike.

• Prototyping and testing your ideas is the most effective way to achieve good results.  There was a little bit of the tendency in Bulgaria (as there is in the U.S. and elsewhere in the museum world) to want to design and develop the interactive children's exhibitions inside meeting rooms with a quorum of experts.  Fortunately, by the end of our trip to Bulgaria, our hosts seemed to be warming up to the notion of using prototyping as a way to answer exhibit design and development questions.

• Failure IS an option.  As I often say to my kids, "It's o.k. to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them, and don't keep repeating the same mistakes over and over."   There is an enormous degree of professional pride and pressure at stake for the Bulgarian Children's Corner project sites --- which might make some people decide to stick with very safe exhibit design and development choices.   Fortunately, the vast majority of project partners we came in contact with seem to realize that this is a time and opportunity that favors choices that may be difficult and risky.

We really are witnessing the start of a truly exciting museum revolution in Bulgaria, and I can't wait to see what happens next!  (Feel free to contact me with questions or to request addition details about my work in Bulgaria.)

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Portland Takeaways (InterActivity 2012 Impressions)

What do a Chinese Garden and a Children's Museum have in common? That's one of the things I'm thinking about as I ponder the conversations, lessons, and visits that have taken place this past week in Portland, Oregon as the annual InterActivity conference draws to a close. Over 800 Children's Museum professionals from around the world came to share the stories, triumphs, and challenges of their existing (or emerging) institutions.

Aside from obvious themes like the power of play in the lives of children, here are a few other common threads that I noticed during InterActivity:

• The Maker Movement has definitely gotten the attention of the Museum World in general, and the Children's Museum World in particular. Many sessions and hallway conversations focused on how museums can form additional partnerships with all segments of the "maker" community (inventors, artists, crafters, etc.)  One big question is how to convince museum administrators to pony up the cash to hire and train additional staff to work in, and facilitate, museum maker spaces.

• Prototyping and testing: Several sessions focused on the many ways to prototype and test exhibit and program concepts with visitors.  My favorite takeaway about prototyping from one of the sessions I attended was that, as far as prototyping is concerned, something is better than nothing, no matter what your museum's size or circumstances.

• Attention to detail(s) Little human touches and details really add up.  In my visits to both the Portland Children's Museum and the Lan Su Chinese Garden  (pictured at the top of this post) you could find small details seemingly around every corner.  In both places a welcoming "human touch" was apparent. I especially admired the wonderful hand-painted murals and the thoughtful use of materials at the Children's Museum that said simply, "the person who made this really cared."

• This is your Brain on Exhibits:  Many sessions and speakers dealt with the work scientists and researchers are doing that help us understand not only "what" our brains learn, but "how."  Thinking about ways to translate brain research into exhibit development is fascinating.  (Plus I learned more about dopamine than I ever expected to at a Children's Museum Conference!)

• The Power of The Object. Last, but certainly not least, Susie Wilkening of Reach Advisors spoke about her latest study of museums, and the memories people retain of their museum visits.  A very interesting finding was how "sticky" objects are in visitors' recollections of their museum experiences --- even stickier than hands-on experiences!  What this means to the bulk of Children's Museums (which are not collection-based institutions) is something very interesting to consider.

Congratulations to the ACM staff for putting on a great conference, and thanks to the staff of the Portland Children's Museum for being such great hosts!

If you attended InterActivity in Portland, what were some of your takeaways?  Let us know in the "Comments" section below.

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Automatic ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)