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is offered through the UW School >> Jeanan Yasiri: This course
University of Wisconsin, of Human Ecology at the
I'm Jeanan Yasiri. Madison.
extend thanks to our partners Asin supporting this course:to
the UW Office of Corporate
the UW College of Engineering for their technical,
and financial support which is
Kauffman Foundation, which is committed to advancing academic
education in entrepreneurship.
partners, Wisconsin Public I'd also like to thank our media
Place crew for taping Televisitoday's lecture.versity
I'm quite pleased to introduce
Shelly, executive director of the Madison Children's Museum.
Ruth is a native of Milwaukee where she began volunteering at
the Milwaukee Public Museum in
She graduated from the the eighth grade.
Milwaukee with her dual interest University of Wisconsin
to a career in museums across the country from Albuquerque tod
Santa Barbara to Atlanta and
In 2003, Ruth returned to Wisconsin to become the
executive director of Madison Children's Museum, and in the
past eight years she and the
building through the generosity musof Jerry Frautschi. new
The team raised more than $10 million to renovate the
structure and fill it with new
to rave reviews in August of exhibits, and the museum opened
Since then, the facility has 2010.
Unique to this endeavor was the museum's only local initiative
where the organization focused
products and processes that involved our local community.
The museum has won four national
recognize that approach as a and regional awards that
So I asked Ruth to come and bshare with us the museum's
experience in developing their
to the entrepreneurial new space and their commitment
Please join me in welcoming onlyRuth Shelly.ent.
[APPLAUSE]
Jeanan. >And thanks all of you for your,
attention this afternoon. As Jeanan mentioned, I am
executive director of Madison Children's Museum, and I
represent 68 people and 111 volunteers who have helped
Madison Children's Museum achieve its goal of a new
building. I'd like to present our only
local initiative in the spirit
offer some reflections at the end with some dialogue in terms
of how you feel this particular movement is entrepreneurial.
Here we are at our new building on Capitol Square.
May I ask if any of you have
Museum? visited Oh, great.ildren's
Do any of you happen to have
I figure all of you were a kid kids?
to relate to what we look at. aOur new building offered manye
options.
at 100 State Street, We used to be at a tiny museum
As Jeanan mentioned, through the 8,000 square feet.
we were able to acquire this generosity of Jerry Frautschi,
develop it into a new builchildren's museum.hen
When you have the opportunity to
many, many choices to make, and it was in this overwhelming task
of developing a new museum with being able to go in any
direction possible that we
direction that was specifically decidegoing local.ake a
And this was a natural outgrowth
commitment to the environment. of Madison Children's Museum
museum. WeIn fact, in the late '90s wen
were one of the first museums to
totally out of natural ever do an exhibit developed
foreign concept to us. materials, and so this was not a
environmental movement progress, But as we watched the
equating natural with green. we realized that people were
developing an exhibit and you want to use a natural material,
you might choose bamboo.
But think about the fossil fuel that you would have expended to
take bamboo and ship it to
It mitigates the benefits of Wisconsin.
resource like bamboo. And so we decided to go beyond
green by going local and by keeping everything in the local
economy.
on three specific aspects: using As Jeanan mentioned, we focused
products and using processes local people, using local
community. that involve the local
here is the entrance lobby so And thour new museum.you see
We were inspired by a commitment
And I'll have to step back a to local talent.
museums, which I've been in for over 30 years, typically develop
their buildings and exhibits. It's very typical to hire an
architect who's got a brand name
exhibit designers and fabricators who are not in your
local area but rather in a
coast or in Chicago, to meet company that might be on either
and forth by plane to develop ideas and designs that used to
go back and forth through FedEx and now are shared through web
links, and then finally to have everything fabricated in some
far off workshop and shipped to the museum, installed, the
fabricators leave never to be seen again.
As we thought about developing
was tons of local talent right the new museum we realized there
need to go far beyond in order here in town, that we didn't
In addition, as an outgrowth of our green initiative we decided
that we really wanted to use
recycled materials. We wanted to use materials with
low embodied energy.
somewhat strange concept, but if Now, this might seem like a
example, this table involves all you think about this table, for
There are people who grew the trees, who cut them down, who.
sent them to the sawmill, who took them to the carpentry shop
where the table was designed and
used at the university. Think about all of the energy
that's embodied in that table.
use things that had low embodied Well, in our case, we wanted to
going to be using things that ehad already been made thate
didn't have much energy inputted
And so rather than creating a innew table, we would use ane.
existing table. And even with new products, we
were looking to get directly
amount of energy that was used back to the source so that the
little as possible. In addition, we wanted to model
sustainable behavior. We're a children's museum.
We are raising the next generation.
We want kids to realize that
for the Earth and can adjust they, too, have a responsibility
as possible. their behaviors to be as green
health first. In fact, back in the late '90s
when we began as a children's museum to look at being green
and natural, it wasn't that we
planet, it was because we wanted wanted to take care of the
environment for children. And so our exhibit director, who
tended to be very allergic and
allergic to everything, started doing research and discovered
that the typical materials that are used in exhibit design,
think of carpet, Plexiglas, fiber glass, contained many
toxins that were not good for young children's health.
And when you think about little kids, where are they?
On the floor putting things in
Their respiration rate is twice theiours.ths.
Their immune systems are
wanted to build a healthy environment, which, in turn, is
healthy for the environment as
Thinking about local people, as I mentioned, many museums want
that brand name architect,
architects and discovered that but we looked at Wisconsin
town. And so we went with The Kubala
Washatko Architects of
this big blown out space, which Cis our building before wein
started renovating, you can see our architect, Mark Lefebvre, in
the hard hat toward the wall. The Kubala Washatko Architects
are masters at sustainable
go with them because we wanted architecture, and we wanted to
You may be familiar with their the greenest possible building.
renovation of the Unitarian Meeting House right on campus.
They also designed the world's
platinum LEED rated, greenest building,
in Baraboo, Wisconsin. the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center
architect. And so we went with a local
local contractors, specifically But not onlFindorff.e went with
You've seen their cranes all
We worked with them from the over campus.
contract with them along the way beginning and negotiated our
hand in hand with the architect and suggest cost saving measures
as we progressed. Down in the lower picture you
see our local contractors from
installed solar panels on the Maclubhouse on our roof.ho
And throughout, we used only
building. We used many local people as
designers, craftspeople and fabricators.
And this was not such a big stretch for us because unlike
many children's museums, we have
have in-house craftspeople. And so all through our 30-year
history, we have had been designing and making our own
exhibits. Now, moving from an 8,000-square
foot building to a 56,000-square
in-house team could handle. foBut fortunately, they had aur
network and brought in all of their friends who had a
diversity of skills.
craftsman was working on an adobe hut that ended up in our
Wildernest or early learning
Other people laid stone. center.
beautiful mosaics on the floor A mosaic artist who made
Over on the right, this is also using in our "Wildernest" tile.
early learning center,
out of packed Earth and straw. these reading nests were made
our pies. You'll see them again in our pie
shop where we decided we didn't want to use any plastic fruits
or vegetables because all of
lead, and so we contracted with thlocal fiber artists and theyf
went to Goodwill and
and coats and used their skills to craft all of our fruits and
vegetables out of what you're wearing and will eventually give
away. We also worked a lot with local
artists.
more than 120 local artists' In fact, our building represents
And on the left, you see a work.
lobby of our elevator that goes all the way up to the roof, done
by Spring Green native
This is actually a piece of recycled art.
It used to be in the vestibule
And when the condo changed of a downtown condo.
this mural anymore. She donated it to us and donated
it to us in time for us to be able to build the barrel vault
in which the beautiful mural now
It has images of south central sits.
in all four seasons of the year, Wisconsin all the way around it
Bascom Hall, the Red Gym and the and including images from UW,
On the right, you see a Cwonderful sculpture by junke.
artist Dr. Evermor. These are our love birds on our
green roof. Dr. Evermor has a sculpture park
up on Highway 12 across from the
If you've ever been up to Wisconsin Dells, you might have
seen his creations along the
Or you might have seen his birds side of the road.
He has two giant 30-foot birds on Patterson Avenue.
We contracted with Dr. Evermor there.
that's made of all recycled materials from Wisconsin's past.
So the body of the bird is an old cheese kettle.
The beaks are blacksmith tongs. The eyes are surveyors' markers.
And he gave us a list a mile
came from and how they harkened back to Wisconsin's industrial
past. You can see other examples of
artists.
magnet wall. Here on the left, we have a
removable and kids can put them in different positions and then
run balls down those tracks, but
key. each track contains a xylophone
they go down. On the right you see a wonderful
mural by local children's book
Laura Dronzek. author Kevin Henkes and his wife
Purple Plastic Purse" to a niece If you've ever read "Lilly's
And then in front of those green or nephew, this is the artist.
we have two benches that were made for us by the UW graduate
students in woodworking where they were challenged to use
recycled materials to create
The bench under the leaves is one of my favorites because the
top of it is made up of very
was actually recycled from our tightly curled fire hose that
it very, very tightly to make builthe top of the bench.urled
Local employees, and boy we really expanded our staff.
At a time when many businesses
hours of employees, we went from are laying off or reducing the
old building to 68 people on the 30 people on the payroll in our
full-time. payroll now, of which 24 are
except one who worked on the Absolutely every single person
And we are thrilled with our building is from Wisconsin.
because we hire a lot of role in workforce development
High school students, college students, lots of interns.
And think about the wonderful first job experience you'd get
working at a children's museum
somewhere. in contrast to flipping burgers
the Urban League, with So we work with the YWCA, with
and work very hard to build a diverse workforce and to offer
that initial job experience.
more than 111 volunteers. They work in every aspect of our
building from on the floor to behind the scenes.
And these volunteers are the
because as a nonprofit, we would lifeblood of our organization
operation we do without their nwonderful contributions of
service.
remember it was people, Weproducts, and processes, the,
biggest product that we recycled
In fact, the greenest thing you can do is recycle an old
building because think again of that concept of low embodied
energy. If you've got an existing
building as ours was, built in
department store, there's all that cut stone, all of that
concrete, all of that steel, all
If you're able to recycle a building, you don't need to buy
it all over again.
raw materials and mine them all You don't over again.back to the
And we found in our repurposing of this building that we were
actually beneficiaries of a quirk of history.
We think about the economy
economy in 1929, not the best year to open a new business,
Montgomery Ward had the grand idea that they were going to
build four additional stories on
And so they engineered it for four additional stories that,
sadly because of the Great
In our case, we inherited a Dbuilding that was built with
incredible engineering, incredible load-bearing.
And that's the one reason that
accessible green roof on the top we were able to put an
of dirt, full size trees, a bclubhouse, a pond and stream,et
all because of the misfortune of
were not able to expand and we an earlier generation where they
engineering for our advantage. were able to use their
the other side of our building, We also rour log cabin.ilding on
You may have seen it as you've
We really wanted to do something gone down Dayton Street.
our, thinking of an innovation, our education director came in
with a newspaper clipping one day and said, hey, there's a log
cabin for sale in Milwaukee,
a log cabin on site so that we wouldn't can be great if we had
in the 1830s and 1840s when Madison became the territorial
capital?
cabin in Milwaukee didn't work Well, it ended up that that log
very small. outWord got out that we were is
looking for a log cabin and the Nature Conservancy contacted us
because they had property in
house on it. Walworth County that had a big
the house so that she could Anrestore the land to prairie,n
they discovered that the walls
And as they pulled off the sheet were this thick.
on the property had been built rock, they discovered the house
ancestral log cabin. around and entombed the
in this log cabin. And so a family used to live
cabin and late 1830s and 1840s. To our knowledge it's one of the
oldest log cabins in the state. And we contracted with log cabin
restoration experts from
reassembled the cabin log by log Old World Wisconsin and they
And so now we have a wonderful in a very authentic way.
parking lot, and it serves as a great landmark for the museum as
well. As we talk about local products,
we also wanted to emphasize Wisconsin natural resources.
And this is the Wildernest, the area in our building
for kids five and under.
where all of this stuff comes from, but it's all from within
100 miles of Madison. So look at the floor.
You've all heard of the emerald ash borer, I'm sure.
There are private owners of Wisconsin woodlands who had many
mature ash trees. They really didn't want these
ash trees to fall to the emerald
them, donated the trees to the ash borer and so they harvested
We had the trunks locally milled museum.
beautiful ash floor which you andsee in this picture. a
The huts that you have seen in
all made of local clay and this and earlier pictures were
The stone on the side is from Fond du Lac and Door County.
The little goat cart that you see is built on top of an old
baby buggy chassis that we were able to acquire.
The slide that goes down into the space was a hallowed out log
from one of our contractor's
And the list goes on and on. backyards.
100 miles of Madison. BuWe also used a lot ofhin
manufacturers.
Wisconsin manufacturers, is in And the best place to see them,
Company, as in Allen Bradley of ourMilwaukee, specializes inley
reclaimed and recycled bathroom fixtures.
And so all of our stalls are
In fact, every stall represents ma16 milk jugs that were saved.
from landfill.
Kohler in Kohler, Wisconsin, Our fixtures are all made by
toilets. with low flow and dual flush
have photovoltaic panels in the top so that the faucets run by
energy from the lights in the room.
There are no batteries. There are no electrical
hook ups. We have waterless urinals.
And also our fancy hand dryers. We have Dyson hand dryers that
dry your hands in 10 seconds. The kids love them, in fact we
really didn't even need exhibits
their hands. because they just wanted to dry
as I mentioned, a lot of In local products we also used,
This is a view of Possible-opolis, which is our
second floor. You'll remember that in the
Wildernest, our youngest kids area, we used all materials
within 100 miles of Madison.
to use only materials that were recycled, reused or repurposed.
And so when you get to the
you see is the floor which we acquired from a decommissioned
high school in south Milwaukee. And they gave us a call and said
you've got two days to pick up
it. thisSo we got the gym floor,want
beautiful maple floor, pulled out all of the nails and relaid
it in this confetti-like pattern
surface for the kids. You see building materials here,
blocks made out of old street signs, planks made out of
recycled water bottles, giant tinker toys that we crafted in
our own shop. Again, everything from some
place else. And you can see some before and
after pictures here.
woods about 100 miles from We pulled a plane out of the
tinkerer's bench which is a Wwonderful platform for kids tor
take things apart.
do is when we bring out Oold typewriters and we put old
typewriters on the tinkerer's bench and they type away and
think it's the greatest thing in
My own daughter wanted a manual typewriter, and I said, Maggie,
why do you want a typewriter, you've got a computer?
And she said, mom, if you have a
printer. typewriter, you don't need a
So to each his own but great And I was like, okay.
Our climber on the right is a two-story climber and you can
see that one of the globes in this climber used to be a buoy
that we got from Lake Michigan. The black and white globes are
farm turns that are from
green slide going down was agricultural use, and the big
slide that we got from Wisconsin pieces of leftover water park
In our way back machine, there Dells.
materials in this particular are all kinds of reclaimed
as a mad scientist's dream. All different art projects going
down. You can see an x-ray cabinet
from UW.
there. There's a dentist chair in
dial phone. AnNone of our little kids havery
every dialed a rotary dial phone
All fun things, including, on the far left, chemistry
glassware that was blown by the glass blower on campus who does
glassware for all the labs on campus, and he did a wonderful
display of fanciful glass tubes that the kids can bubble air up
through.
all different sources and creating wonderful stories for
parents and grandparents to recognize objects and say, oh,
man, I used to play pinball on
machine, and the wonderful this kind of mechanical pinball
heart-warming. stories that ensue are really
lot of processes that involve We althe local community.use a
And the process represented here
I talk a lot about our bathrooms are artist residencies.
destination bathrooms. because we have eight
each adopt our eight different We had eight different schools
And we had an artist in residence go and work with them
to create ceramic tiles for each
And so each school got a choose ba theme.
The red one that you see there
the kids made beautiful iunder the sea tiles which ared
now permanently mounted in the
Down below, you see the geometric shape bathroom, and
the two images on the right are all of the chairs in our artist
studio. We went to UW SWAP and bought
every hardwood chair we could find and then had an artist in
residence come to our old building and the kids painted
all of the chairs in very fanciful shades.
Here's the finished product of
of those chairs, as well as our ar13,000 bottle caps.ee some
We worked with every single Madison public school in their
art classes and gave them bottle
little pieces of art, the size caps where they could draw tiny
They pasted them in the bottom of a quarter.
hired an artist to fill those ofbottle caps with resin, wewe
sorted them all by color and
School designed murals for us tfrom the columns and the walls
of our art studio.
up 13,000 bottle caps. And volunteers and staff glued
here who actually found her You bottle cap in one of the Zoe
columns.
projects. We engaged local third through
fifth graders to research what
in the 1830s and 1840s life was like for kids their age
And they went to primary sources Wisconsin.
inside of the log cabin should and looked up to see what the
with historians to define what be like so that they could work
people ate, how they lived, and it became a much more meaningful
experience as a result. On the right, you see the
graduate woodworkers at UW
build our benches. working on the class project for
benches, but not only did they We have eight artist-designed
through the whole process of build them, they had to go
it to their professor, being developing a proposal, showing
and then finally following funded if they were good enough,
materials. through, all using reclaimed
collaborations, particularly We did a lot of university
This particular piece, called Rhythm Face, was designed by a
UW professor in musicology who
that recognizes your face, grabs developed a software program
move. onAnd so if you're here in theu
dentist chair, the camera looks at your face, grabs on to your
features and as you make funny
And so as you open your mouth, a faces, it makes sound.
an air raid siren. barking seal might come out or
only that, we have a camera that And the kids love it but not
lobby. takes their image down to their
you see all these people making funny faces on the screen in the
lobby.
to develop 26 letters of the We also worked with 26 artists
and that artist alphabet is throughout the entire building.,
We, as staff, chose 26 quotes about childhood and creativity
and innovation and have those quotes now inscribed all through
our building. We also have a little postcard
book now that has all of the
with it. quotes and the alphabet letters
our favorite exhibits, the human You can see on the right, one of
As you go in our building, kids are going around and around on
this gerbil wheel up above, and the quote below it, I don't know
if you can read it, says fun is good, which was a quote by
Theodor Geisel, or Dr. Seuss. We also collaborated a lot with
volunteer groups. You see on the left, the
three-story atrium in our building where we have Gertrude,
our cow, going up and down. The kids can crank the cow over
the moon and back again.
middle of the building is a beautiful train set that was
donated to us.
railroaders work with us for We had seven retired model
beautiful train set in this over threelobby area.nstall this
And it goes around and around with local photographers' images
behind so that all of the scenes
Wisconsin. that you see are also from
of all of this only local Well, whainitiative?the impact
We've had wonderful, wonderful
As Jeanan mentioned, more than attendance.
and we had 284,000 in our first 300,000 peoplyear.ce we opened,
We expected 130,000.
top. So it really has been over the
memberships, now we have 6500 In our oldmemberships.e had 1900
And so the community response has been fabulous.
Here you see an image of our
We've also had a lot of awards, and I have to smile at this one
because I took this picture in
what, five awards. May of this year and we had,
trophy shelf in the lobby. And that's now up to 14 on our
from our flooring to our Literally awards for everything
But the biggest one that we just rooftop.
on October 25, was the National Medal for Museum Service.
And this is a big deal. It's the Oscar, the Pulitzer
Prize, the Nobel Prize of the museum world.
And you've probably never heard of it before.
It's awarded by the Institute of
federal agency, but the reason Museum a Library Services
no museum in Wisconsin has ever you havebeen awarded it.is that
And while all of the awards that
very meaningful, this one is we've received have been very,
it's about service, and it's not particularly meaningful because
new building but going all the just community service in our
in 1980. way back to when we were founded
conference where we unfurled the And here you see the press
I think the best thing, though, is that our impact has been in
civic pride.
gave something to the new Madison Children's Museum, from
a bottle cap to a million dollars, we have more than
15,000 people who have been involved in this project.
And when you're thinking about
community investment is just going only local, that kind of
We really are a museum, not only incredible.
was built with the community. foWell, all of this makes youat
think about entrepreneurship, and I was flattered and honored
and somewhat perplexed when Jeanan called me and said why
don't you do something on entrepreneurship because I
didn't particularly think of
But it caused me to reflect what ourselves as entrepreneurs.
and how it applies to our entrparticular situation.eans
And I actually had to look it up
And when you look up the to get a good definition, right?
it comes from an old French word definition of entrepreneurship,
And to be entrepreneurial can be that means undertaking.
business. But it usually, especially in
today's vocabulary, has the added umbrella of undertaking a
new business with innovation, with a certain amount of risk,
and with the creation of wealth.
we had done with our only local Ainitiative, certainly a lot oft
what we did was innovative. If you come in and walk under a
cow, it's not without a certain degree of risk.
And creating wealth, well we're a nonprofit.
But I measure our wealth in different ways.
When I think about our
think about the wealth of civic pride, when I think about the
fact that 32,000 people come and
Access for Everyone program where we provide free or reduced
admission, we really have a great deal of wealth but it's
coming back in a different form than what you would typically
think of as profit. What else can we learn from the
museum's story in terms of
As I was thinking about our own elessons learned,
entrepreneurship, for me, arises
pockets. from limited resources, not deep
becoming entrepreneurs, might think I need an angel investor,
I need unlimited funds, I just
out and fail and be able to need to bstart again.y things
All of that is true, but, in our
from limited resources. We actually had our exhibite
budget cut from $3 million to $2 million because construction
costs were coming in high.
we can't buy everything new, why And so we sat down and thought
are recycled or reused? And that was truly the impetus
for going with recycled,
materials because we couldn't rafford everything new.d
But look where it led.
faced with limitations, you're And I think that when you are
entrepreneurial spirit is even innovation and your
have to rise above the obvious further inspired because you
ethic. money can solve anything kind of
entrepreneurship, in thinking about our project, arises from a
team effort and not from an isolated genius.
You think about individual
acting alone. And the reason that I have the
elevator in our museum on the screen is that it is the only
thing I could think of that was my personal idea.
And everything else was somebody
We were debating how to accommodate the fact that we had
to move big exhibits up and down
same time we had to build a thrpassenger elevator, and wethe
couldn't afford both a passenger
And so the old Montgomery Ward elevator and a freight elevator.
elevators side by side, I suggested that maybe we couldr
combine those into one elevator that could serve to move both
freight and people. Well, it was the best thing we
ever did because now we can take
We have another senior program 30 kids up at a time.
early memory loss, and the where we work with adults with
I saw 10 people in wheel chairs elevatorin the elevator.ing and
And it was like, oh, this is
And all became clear that it all great.
couldn't afford two elevators. arose from the fact that we
ever had that came through in But itthe new building.that I
Everything else was everybody else's idea.
And then when we had this elevator, somebody else said,
well, we've got this big of an
entertainment in the elevator? elevator, why don't we provide
see piano students who, on our And so on the lower right you
pieces as people rode up and opening day, were playing piano
live elevator music. down the elevator, and so we had
at an exhibit area in the building, I cannot remember who
thought of any particular thing because it was truly a team
effort with so many different skills coming together.
Truthfully, entrepreneurship
fact. As I mentioned, we were kind of
forced into using reclaimed,
And we always knew in our early learning area that we wanted to
make it out of natural
progressed, we realized that, hey, we're really focusing on
using local materials, local
our theme? people, why don't we make that
using local people and local Why don't we limit ourselves to
And so the realization that we products and local processes?
kind of a theme really came sort were doing something that had
became our brand. And so oftentimes you're doing
something entrepreneurial or
recognize it until later. And now that it's in trying, and
here I have a picture of our
dining counter has been used by Pthe museum for 20 years.t
We have recycled it over and
to a juice caboose, now the oPie in the Sky Diner, and youar
remember I was talking about
pie crusts out of recycled coats making all of those fruits and
young baker down below. But then once you've got it
started, entrepreneurship can become a guiding principle, a
self-perpetuating philosophy. I use the example of our water
spout machine here, which is the
somebody outside of Wisconsin because there's only one person
in the country who designs water
but I think about that every exhibits for children museums,
because kids control jets of morning as I go into work
spout and then to the other and wathen it goes down into thisne
vortex of water and it gets kicked out again and the balls
go over and over and over and recycling all the way through.
And the kids love it. They're mesmerized for hours.
In fact, you may have noticed on
port hole kind of thing, and on tthe second floor you can lookig
down through the floor where
above the vortex so you can see the vortex spinning down in.
And for me, that's kind of
you get an innovative process started, it just keeps going and
just keeps building on itself.
Madison Children's Museum that At this point, there's no way at
outside of Wisconsin. We always think twice whenever
we are purchasing something to
locally first. be sure that we can source it
providers who use local crops. We look for caterers and food
perpetuating itself because what All of this just keeps
a lifestyle, and it's just a started as an innovation became
And finally, excuse me...
I want to underscore that entrepreneurship, even though it
may begin as a local effort has certainly happened for us,
it can have national impact.
national medal because it shines We were just thrilled to win the
people who helped us build the light on all of the 15,000
But we had the challenge, when new children's museum.
us they said, okay, you can come the national government called
choose one community member to to Washington but you have to
been positively impacted by the come with museum.se life has
Just one. I mean, we've served tens of
thousands of children and families.
So I want back to the staff and I asked them to recommend who
they thought would be a good
And one person floated to the top, and you see him pictured.
with me here. His name is Ben Perreth.
Ben was a normal kid
when he had a brain hemorrhage. And his mother came into his
room and saw him in a coma, rushed him to the hospital.
He had brain surgery, multiple
walk and talk three times and ended up without use of one arm.
And so Ben came to us wondering if he could volunteer because he
had taught himself to juggle
So he was our one-armed juggler. with one hand.
events and he loved interacting And we with the kids.mmunity
He had a gift for being with
And finally our visitor services people.
hire him. And so now Ben is on staff as a
visitor services associate. And he wrote the most compelling
story of how the children's museum had changed his life
because up until that point no one would give him a chance
and he had been so depressed, while the children's museum had
given him, not only a volunteer opportunity but then a job.
It was his life's dream.
did have a positive impact on WelBen, but he had an equallyum,
positive impact on us because by
to be sensitive to people with engaging with Ben, he taught us
And since then, our whole special needs program has
blossomed.
how even if entrepreneurial Anefforts start small or startt
local, they can have national impact because on December 5,
Ben and I will be going to
lady and getting the national Wasmedal, and all of that hasrst
terrific impact on the rest of
we've done in little Madison the country as they see what
museum and can think about how with our little children's
locally with local people, local they, themselves, can interact
involve the local community. products and processes that
attention because it's fun for And so I thank you for your
at Madison Children's Museum, and again, I have to underscoree
that I speak on behalf of all of
these volunteers and 30 years of these staff members, all of
building the foundation for the new museum which you can see in
an aerial view here of our
And I want to invite all of you to come because we encourage
adults to come through as well
enjoy the architecture. All you have to do is stop in at
the front desk, introduce yourself, we'll give you a
visitor badge and you can wander
On December 9, we're going to have one our quarterly adult
swim nights, which is 21 and
the building just to adults. over, and that's when we open
sold out with 600 people a piece And the last two ones have been
and bars-- because we have live food
adults like yourselves can enjoy Live bands, food and bars, and
as a kid. So, with that, I'm eager to
answer any questions you might
And I told Ruth that you, of have.
then I hand off the mic. course, put your hands up and
with the fact, Ruth, that the Madison Children's Museum is for
much, much more than just the children in our area.
It is an absolutely awesome space.
And in fact, every time that
with adults, so I'm yet to I've been there it's only been
I'm curious about a couple of actuallthings.a child.
Kind of going all the way back
part of this only local initiative, did you do any kindg
of cost analysis to determine whether or not it was going to
cost more or less to really be
did that impact your decision commwhatever you did learn?d how
We did not do a formal
hearts that it was going to cost analysis, but we knew in our
museum mold of hiring an outside less because in the traditional
build exhibits, there is such a premium on freight, and as we
looked at transportation costs
would be better off in sourcing skyrocketinlocally.ew that we
But since then, the additional
contractors and providers are beneeasily accessible to us. our
You remember I mentioned there
local, our water exhibit was one person who was not
That exhibit has had its designer.
I can't tell you how many times we wished we could have had Tom
come in from San Jose to come fix it but he can't.
In contrast, there are all of our other local contractors not
only are accessible and eager to
get broken, and trust me we have come in and fix whatever might
children's museum, but they want a lot of stuff breaking at a
here and they see it all the it to look good because they're
relatives and colleagues come through and, hey, isn't that
your piece? And they want to make sure that
it's in the top working order.
question, Jeanan, we never did a And so in answer to your
sense, and it continues to make formsense as we've got localmade
contractors and providers standing behind what they
install.
I was kind of wondering what it is you do on more a day-to-day
basis as the director.
day-to-day basis? >> What I >> Yeah.ly do on a
Well, that's a really good
director I have a whole host of qduties but it goes in aboute
roughly half, two halves of my
Half being fundraising and half being management.
We are not a state or city
We're a private nonprofit. supported museum.
every year out of contributions And so we and grants.se $460,000
And that's in addition to all of
admissions and memberships. Essentially every dollar that
comes in the door through admissions and membership, we
have to raise another dollar. And so half of my job is
fundraising.
of a business. And the other half is management
that report to me. I have six people
director of education, our Our director of exhibits,
manager, guest experience manager and finance manager.
And so keeping those departments
other, that's my full-time job. all>> Hi, my name is Rachel.ach
I was just wondering what are some of the future goals for the
museum? >> Future goals, that's a really
good question, and you can see
If you look at this picture and look at the floor right above
the purple sign that says Madison Children's Museum,
we have 8,000 square feet of
And in three years we hope to be unoccupied space.
specifically with interdisciplinary exhibits that
focus on science, so there'll be
specifically for children 9 to a science theme, and
with kids up to 8, 9 and then 1age 10 they start to age out.at
And we know from our feedback from parents that they want
exhibits for older kids so their
and/or so they can bring in kidsfamilies with mixed agedseum
siblings. And knowing the intellectual
power of Madison and the lack of
science center, they really are expecting the children's museum
to pick up the slack in terms of
So we're working on expansion even though we've only been open
a year. >> Hi, I'm Carly.
It's not very important, but I
were saying the alphabet exhibit was just really curious, you
started a saying, and I was wondering what the saying was
for the X.
by Shel Silverstein, you >> For the X, it is from a book
childhood, and the saying pis X is for xylophone becauser
X is always for xylophone.
I just gave a Shel Silverstein book
to my nephew for his first
I'm glad you asked me one I could remember, but it is
distinctive.
not this experience that you've had and that you have been able
to share, obviously on a
it's inspired other museums or national level, if you know if
same? c>> Oh, thank you for askinghe
that. I serve on the board of the
Association of Children's Museums.
There are more than 300 children's museums nationwide
and for the first time, the board, instead of meeting in
Washington, decided to go for regional museums to have their
board meetings. And so we hosted at Madison in
September.
humbled by their response because they came to our museum
and said oh, my gosh, this is different from whatever I've
seen before.
you've been to them, tend to And children's museums, if
over and over again, and I think have kind of the same exhibits
exciting is that Madison what my peers found particularly
reflected our community. Children's Museum truly
back and think differently about And they were inspired to go
products could make their homuseums more distinctive.and
And when you think about
remarkably noncompetitive. children's museums, they're
museums in Wisconsin. They're all about an hour and a
half away from each other because that's about as far as a
kid will ride in the car, and we
collegial, and so parents who go find that we are remarkably
from one children's museum to to children'sother.ms tend to go
They put it on their itinerary
And I think that our experience, when they're traveling.
two awards from the Association of Children's Museums from our
only local initiative, has
look at the treasure trove of retalent and resources within to
their own community.
the Association of Children's Museums, we will be developing
an "only local" website that
shares it with the industry, and documents our experience and
be even more facilitated by that so our national impact will just
Hi, I'm Hannah. I have a question, I think I was
walking past your museum one
was an event, I guess, on the night and I roof.ed that there
I think it was an adult event,
I was wondering if you rent it maybe a party.
Do you make profit? >> Absolutely, yes.
We have a brisk facility rental business, and it's designed for
two reasons.
we're a nonprofit and we use the One is that, as I mentioned,
whole new audience, and as we inare moving forward in ourh a
sustainability goals, we see our
And so we're eager for not just kids to come, but their parents,
their grandparents and adults like you without children so
that they can see how you can take an old building, make it
work and have it operate in the most sustainable way.
So we've had weddings,
parties, board meetings, bar mitzvahs, adult birthday
where companies like American Girl want to get off-site ands
they want to go to a creative place to be able to have their
team meeting. It's really been a wonderful
side business for us and it just
sure that the building is used expands our audience and makes
time frame. outsidGreat question.to 5:00
Yes, sir? >> Hi, Ruth.
I just wanted to ask you how our
political atmosphere affects or sdoes not affect the children'st
museum. >> That's a good question.
The children's museum, by definition, is apolitical.
We intentionally want to stay very neutral because our donors
are from both political persuasions.
It was very interesting to be on
protests of last February and March and how it impacted our
business because initially there
none of the parents anticipated because all the teachers stayedt
home. Well, we had tons of kids coming
in because their parents didn't know what to do with them.
Here they had off of school and they hadn't planned for it.
But then as the protests became more intense and traffic and
parking became at a premium, the
striking and protesting teachers suburban parents stayed home but
them to the capitol. were bringing their kids with
for so long so we see a lot of But the kids could only protest
to the children's museum for a parents bringing their children
capitol for the protests. bWe just had a bin at the fronte
door asking people to deposit their protest signs here before
they went in, and that way we maintained political neutrality.
I guess in terms of the political situation, back with
the former governor when I first
him and we talked about the new archildren's museum which wasth
still a dream in our eye. And Governor Doyle said to me,
said to the group actually, that
always thought about what impact before he made a decision he
our state. it would have on the children of
political persuasion, that has And I think regardless of
me. aBefore making a decision, whatr
impact will it have on the next generation coming up?
And regardless of which side of the political spectrum you're
on, I think that's a really good
Well, I want to thank our students for their very
thoughtful questions, and I know
your marvelous presentation and they an awesome experience.u for
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