Reimagining children's museums

PLAYING WITH THE STATUS OUO

It is time for Children’s Museums 1 to stop being the Lactation Room of Play and reposition themselves as 2 ideas lab, seed bank and workshop.

Drawing on the knowledge of the 3 Children’s Museums we believe the advocacy of play can be play itself.

If you’re worrying ‘how does this sell tickets?’ or ‘since when did an idea get a donor plaque?’, we address these questions too.

1) Lactation rooms are a US phenonoman, a built response to the status quo (only Liberia, Papua New Guinea and the United States have no statutory manternity leave).

YOUR COMMENTS

We are interested in ways that the Children’s Museums and Play itself can be transformative, catalysts which change the settings within which they operate.

2) The childrens museum of the C21st can be the lab. By ‘lab’ we mean a rapid prototyping of spaces and experiences and difficult discussions that have transferable applications beyond its confines.

At the center of Obama’s education agenda is a program that would guarantee public preschool for all 4-year-olds from families with low or moderate incomes.

To pay for the plan, the administration has proposed an increase in federal cigarette taxes to $1.95 from $1.01 per pack.

CIGARETTES $ ----------

$0.94 EXTRA TAX

PVC PIZZA $ --------

10 MIN OF EXTRA STAFF TIME

SECURITY FIRM $ PER HOUR -----

PUBLIC PRESCHOOL FOR 4-YEAR OLDS

EXPERIENCE AND 10 PIZZAS

PLAYWORKERS $ PER HOUR -----

3) The future of the Children’s Museums has been imagined from attendance at the 2012 conference and visits to Children’s Museums.

As in tarot reading or fortune-telling, the future is always told by looking closely at the present

In 2010 the site was announced for a long planned new children’s museum for Newark: “a kid-sized interactive microcosm of urban life, complete with a train station, restaurant, grocery store and video studio, with an

emphasis on children with special needs.

It would allow children to ‘play grown-ups’.”

Since 2009 Damon Rich founder of CUP (Centre for Urban Pedagogy) became the first Urban Designer for the City of Newark.

This project has been frozen.

involve children and young people in an understanding of the processes and in their realisation.

Play is a mode of operation.

He has ensured that projects from Zoning to Storm Water Run-Off

CASE STUDY — CITY OF NEWARK

Can a city join the Association of Children’s Museums?

RIVER FRONT There had been 20 years of campaigning to do something about the inaccessible Newark River when the River Front project began

WHAT IS MISSING?

to ensure that the city is a place of learning, exploration and play?

Continuity is needed to consolidate and build on existing projects and knowledge.

Playing out the possibilities of the contaminated river as an amenity for the city.

(Pretend play)

A model made by children imagines the river transformed. It is positioned by the Mayor’s office in City Hall.

To mark the opening of the first part of the park, the separate neighborhoods and interests come together to “walk to the water.”

The new park hosts activities intermittently.

Signage explains the landscape of the park, its history and its processes, from Agent Orange to what you can see on the bank on the other side.

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

play and making had their place in all policy?

there were narrative boat rides all summer long?

play could continually suggest possibilities for the future?

activities in public spaces were seen as everyday maintenance like refuse trucks?

you could play with water beside the river?

PROPOSITION:

PROPOSITION:

PROPOSITION:

Play opens up discussions.

Play reimagines the existing and changes its status.

Enactment is a powerful form of play

RIVER FRONT PARK

Spaces in the city need someone to take care of them, animate them and tidy up at the end of the day.

Children can take a role in decision-making if there are structures to support them.

Making good spaces for children makes spaces for adults.

Play and the place of children is moving up the agenda in the City of Newark. It needs a dedicated guardian to keep it there.

Funding structures which value experience and knowledge as much as they value capital projects.

an ongoing process of linked projects

STREET CITY HALL

Children explore and describe their neighborhoods, and become clients for street furniture built by young adults.

They are actors in the future of the city.

Sites are selected by the people living in them, children tell stories about their neighborhood, young artists describe these stories. The mural is step one in creating a place to linger.

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

this was not a one-off, the workshop was made permanent and the experience could be developed and passed on?

this project could keep going as a process (creative workshops) and expand its footprint and its effect?

PROPOSITION: Making is visible on the street.

YOUR COMMENTS

Storm water run off is exploited as an opportunity for sensory gardens and play on the street .

WHAT IF play and consideration for the presence of the child becomes a city and state standard?

A model of the city and its zoning is made by residents including children and placed in city hall.

Public information, researched and designed by children, foregrounding children’s creativity in public arena.

WHAT IF

WHAT IF

this was a catalyst for a continuous process of making the future of the city?

this was not a one-off it could be an ongoing programme?

PROPOSITION:

PROPOSTION:

Playing transforms meaning

Making the model makes a space for discussion and places that discussion in city hall

All projects draw on and are responsive to what is there already, the knowledge and interests of the site and situation.

All projects described have an outcome, whether built spaces or new zoning laws, and a rich and parallel process

which make spaces for discussion and invention by children. But all examples are funded on a project by project basis: there is an infrastructure missing that could be described as the skills and practices found in the Children’s Museum.