Inside the World Awareness Children’s Museum | Buying Local #73

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Speaker 1
Welcome everyone to buying Local. I’m your host, Mike Nelson from Five Towers Media, joined today by Bethany Musker Lawrence from World Awareness Children’s Museum.

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Speaker 1
Bethany, thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me. I’m very happy to be here.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I got to ask, I bet you’ve been on other podcasts.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, I’ve done a lot of these kinds of things before, but I. Yeah, lots of great information to share. And I’m happy to talk to anybody who will listen.

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Speaker 1
Very nice. Yeah. Awesome. You know, it’s, it’s very exciting to see all the local podcasts that are popping up. I think we’ve written articles about it before. Like, I think everybody should have a podcast. Whether you only have three listeners, doesn’t matter. Like everybody should have one. It’s just such, such a great, format for media and to be able to create content.

00;00;51;29 – 00;01;23;10
Speaker 1
So it’s, it’s very exciting. So, so, Bethany, just in case and I, I find it very hard to believe that people at this point would not know, about the World Awareness Children’s Museum. You guys have been around. God, I don’t even know how long it’s been. I mean, I can remember when Jackie Tube, had, like, the set up back and Bruce Moskowitz building on Glen Street probably 20 years ago, I think maybe 15 before you guys moved over to, to Warren Street.

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Speaker 1
But just in case, for the two people on the planet that don’t know who you guys are or what you guys do, maybe, give us a little rundown about it.

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Speaker 2
Right? So we have actually been in business for 31 years. Really? That it on 31 years? Yeah. Well, we got our official charter from New York State Department of Education in 1995. So, yeah, we’ve been all over Glens Falls and we have our, our home here that we’ve been in on Warren Street since, we’ve on the building since about 2008.

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Speaker 2
So we’ve been here for that long. Yeah. But everything that we do at the World Awareness Children’s Museum comes back to our mission of bringing our diverse world to children. That means teaching kids about international cultures and the different cultures around the United States. Through imaginative play, through workshops and artmaking. And we do outreach programs in schools all about diversity and cultural awareness and cultural understanding.

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Speaker 2
But that’s what we do here at the Museum. That’s we have a hands on space for kids to explore. So you can come in during our regular open hours and, you pay a little bit of admission and you get to explore just like any other children’s museum. It’s all hands on. But our mission is rooted in cultural and, understanding and, art making.

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Speaker 2
And what we do revolves around art and culture. Whereas a lot of children’s museums are more focused on the general Stem part of of childhood development. And you love Stem, but our focus is more on arts and culture.

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Speaker 1
And arts and culture. Yeah. And it’s I mean, I, you know, I’ve got four kids and, all of them have been to the museum, on more than a few occasions, whether through preschool and kindergarten. And what what are the average age ranges, do you think, for most of the kids that you have come through the museum.

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Speaker 2
The we have stuff for kids ages 0 to 12 and even older, if you know you’re coming with little kids and some older siblings, they’ll find something to enjoy here, even if they’re a little bit older. In fact, we just last week hosted the delegation from Saga City, the Glens Falls. That’s your city group came from Japan, to Glens Falls to spend a week learning about American culture.

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Speaker 2
And they did stop by here at the Children’s Museum. And it was middle schoolers and high schoolers, so ages 13 to 17, and they played and had a grand time. They had a great time playing, and they were older. So even if your kids are a little bit older to stop in, you can come in when, during one of our free days and, you know, check it out low risk.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Low risk. Exactly. And, and I should ask Bethany, how long have you been with the museum?

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Speaker 2
Well, I’ve been working here since March of 2018, and I’ve been the executive director executive director since November 2019. So just before the pandemic, I was kind of thrown to the fire like everybody.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I bet that was a wild ride. I know it was, very interesting for everybody, going through that from a business standpoint, what, how did you are you from the Glens Falls area? You’re are you from around?

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Speaker 2
No, I’m not, so I’m from northern new Jersey, about 30 minutes outside of New York City. And I, have a little bit of, random experience in this area, though I spent my summers growing up at a sleepaway summer camp in Corinth. But I had no plans to really move here until my husband, he got a, a job at at our next studios.

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Speaker 2
And so we moved up here from where we were living in Nashville.

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Speaker 1
Very cool. Oh, you came from Nashville,

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Speaker 2
Yeah, we were living in Nashville. I was teaching, elementary school, and my husband was working. And, you know, he and I are both not from the southeast. He’s from Pennsylvania. But we both had, you know, it was we had the option to move up here. And I love this area. Just for my summers being here, kid.

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Speaker 2
But I’m so glad that we moved. I really have come to love this area. And especially Glens Falls. It’s just such a great city to be part of.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, it’s, I mean, we talk about it all the time with guests on the show about the the community that we have here. You know, whether it’s Glens Falls, Queensbury, Saratoga, like essentially that whole Warren, Washington, Saratoga County, footprint just has such a great, closely knit community and so much going on. And, I mean, you know, this is where people come for vacations, right?

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Speaker 1
It’s it’s pretty beautiful here. And, awesome. And so so you took the job in 2018, and then I assume that opportunity came available for you to become the executive director. So you you jumped at the chance?

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Speaker 2
Yes. I was very nervous, and I remember thinking in November 2019, my husband and I had just gotten married, come back from our honeymoon, and the director at the time said, I didn’t want to stress you out while you were, you know, planning your wedding and all of that. But I’m retiring, and I’m recommending you for the position of executive director.

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Speaker 2
And so I kind of, you know, I was very excited to do it. Very nervous. And I, like I said, I, I remember thinking, okay, 2019 was a great year, 2020, I’ll just kind of be along for the ride. I’ll see how everything goes. And of course, that was very different than what I expected. And I had to do lots of different things to keep the museum going during the pandemic.

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Speaker 2
But, you know, it was trial by fire.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. For sure.

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Speaker 2
We came out stronger on the other side, though.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, it definitely it it presented a lot of business challenges and, and that’s.

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Speaker 2
And opportunities.

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Speaker 1
And.

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Speaker 2
Opportunities are just opportunities to die.

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Speaker 1
Solutely. Absolutely. That’s and you know it’s interesting I, I had never really thought about it until I had Phil from lyric on the podcast.

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
I want to say it was last maybe about a year ago. And you know, we’re just having this conversation and one thing that I had never considered, which is kind of funny, but he really brought to light, was the fact that just because you’re running a, nonprofit or not for profit, organization, it still is a business, and you still have all the challenges that any entrepreneur or small business owner has, and probably even more so.

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Speaker 1
Right, because you’re I don’t know if you guys, get into, like, you know, grants and, you know, getting money sometimes from the state or from the federal government, but that’s a whole set of problems. And so I say that because I’m just curious, you know, as you stepped into that executive role, like from a running the business standpoint, what kind of challenges do you see?

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Speaker 1
With the museum?

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Speaker 2
Well, our challenges in 2019 and 2020 were very different than they are now. Obviously 2020 was just get through it. You know, be how we can survive. And if we can thrive a little bit, then we’ll take it, you know, but currently, our challenges are just like any other business, right? We need money to to pay our staff and to keep our business going.

00;08;34;25 – 00;08;58;16
Speaker 2
How we get that money is obviously different from a for profit institution. So as a not for profit, we rely heavily on the generosity of our community and, and the people who love what we do and love our museum. So a lot of our income comes from individual donors, obviously, the museum admission that people pay when they come in, we try to keep it as low as possible.

00;08;58;18 – 00;09;23;17
Speaker 2
But it does help us keep things afloat and keep our lights on. But to that point, you know, we have our general admission, which is $7 per person. Kids under one year old are always free, so, you know, they can come in with their grownups and they’re free because they’re not really doing much yet. Then we offer monthly free days that are generally support, generously supported by Stewart and Stewart’s holiday match.

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Speaker 2
So if you supported Serious Holiday, that’s a portion of that is supporting the Children’s Museum in the greater community. So thanks. If you donated to them. But we have those monthly free days where anybody can come in once a month on that designated day totally for free. And if they like it, hopefully they’ll come back and support us in different ways.

00;09;43;23 – 00;10;09;24
Speaker 2
We also offer, low cost admission for people who are on, Snap benefits or having EBT card or use which that we try to support the community as much as the community supports us by offering really free and low cost, opportunities for people who need them. So we get admission, you know, we sell some things in our gift shop and that helps support us.

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Speaker 2
But really, our biggest supporters are the individual donors. We do, you know, seek out grants, and they’re mostly local grants. We’re not really at this point approaching state and federal. They’re, you know, the federal grants of this time, if you talk to any nonprofit, you’ll probably hear that currently, federal grants are really tricky. Just because of the current administration’s priorities.

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Speaker 2
No, they’re not really something that we’re applying for at this time. So we focus mainly on local grants, local support from businesses and, individuals.

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Speaker 1
Awesome. And, you know, I’m curious as as you were talking, I was thinking about the fact that, you were a school teacher in Tennessee. And now you’re running a business. Was that did you ever think that that’s what you’d be doing at some point was, was running a business?

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Speaker 2
I always thought I’d be in leadership in some way. I just have that. I I’m I like being a leader, obviously. Well, I am still the oldest of seven children in my family, of six younger siblings. And so I’ve always been in that leadership position. I’ve been fortunate.

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Speaker 1
To, by farm.

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Speaker 2
And after being a teacher in the leadership position, I was a teacher for elementary, and at the time in Nashville, I was teaching preschool. And, I always talk about how my management skills and, my management, like procedures and the way that I approach people is very similar to how you approach children, you know, giving everybody a voice, letting them have their opinion and their thoughts and giving them space to express them.

00;11;52;21 – 00;12;09;12
Speaker 2
But then often managing people is just like many managing children. So it doesn’t there’s not much different. And of course, I’m now looking at a lot of the financial side as well. But managing people, managing children is very similar.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, it’s it’s interesting because, I have a very new not I shouldn’t say newfound, but, my respect for teachers has grown exponentially in the last year. We’re homeschooling our kindergartner, and I’m just like, I don’t know how people do this when 20 kids in the class or whatever it is, I’m like, I’m I’m struggling with just one.

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Speaker 1
So.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a really hard job. And I’m so grateful to all the teachers that are still in it. It’s it equals job sometimes. And, I think that people, underestimate how much patience you need when you’re teaching. You know, I remember this is just a little funny aside, but I would sometimes go into my closet and just silently scream in my closet and then, you know, take a couple deep breaths and walk back out.

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Speaker 2
And then I was fine now, but it’s it takes a lot of work to manage kids, and to be a teacher. But, you know, so I don’t do much teaching currently, but I do get to teach the kids downstairs every once in a while, and I still love to do it. I’m just grateful that, now I’m managing adults and they.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s I guess, on some level, maybe, maybe it’s easier. I don’t know, I, I’m not sure about that, but, so I know we’re going to talk about the kind of the things you have coming up at the museum. But before we do that, I wanted to, backtrack a little bit and, you know, just talk about the the ongoing programs that you have at the at the museum itself.

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Speaker 1
Right. So obviously, you kind of have the, the open hours where anyone can just come in and use the facilities and explore and play and, you know, I think it’s probably been about a year since I’ve been there last. However, I like I said earlier, my all my kids love it, right. Like the, the ability to go in the different, the I don’t want say displays, but the little different areas that you have around the museum are just are so much fun and, and they all love that, you work a lot with schools like you have, like.

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Speaker 1
I mean, I know that I’ve been there on more than a few occasions through my kids schools. Is that, is that you do a lot of that kind of stuff?

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Speaker 2
Yes, we do. So we send programs into schools, like into your kid’s classroom, for instance. And our educators goes there and, and we’ll teach on a specific topic. And so we do that very often. And then we also have schools come to us on field trip. And those are really fun as well. So I think that’s what you’re talking about.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. And especially in May and June, once the school year is almost over and the teachers are like looking for any opportunity to get their class out of the school and into a different location. That’s when a lot of them come to us and we love it.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. And do you deal with pretty much all the local schools in the area?

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Speaker 2
We do. Yeah, most of the local schools participate in our programs in one way or another. And like I said, we love our school programs. We love, partnering with schools and creating relationships with those school teachers. And often we get them back year after year after year because it is such a valuable experience for the kids.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. It’s like I said, I mean, it was just fun, even for the adults, you know, because of course we go there without weather, especially like the preschool age kids. Right? You’re, or your pre-K kids. You’re going there with your children. They’re all doing their things. And, you end up getting getting roped into playing with sushi or corn or whatever.

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Speaker 1
Whatever’s in the displays, the little thing on.

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Speaker 2
It gives us adults a chance to use our imagination.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, it’s a lot of fun. So let’s talk about what’s coming up. So I know tell me about the gala that’s coming up. That’s every year.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. So we’re in our 36th year of this particular fundraiser. It’s the International Cuisine Dinner and Auction. And this year it’s held at the Queensbury Hotel on May 17th. And it’s that’s a Sunday. So May 17th, 430 to 8 p.m. at the Queensbury Hotel. And this fundraiser helps. That’s raised money for all of our programs. So whether it’s our outreach programs, our workshops, it really it just helps us raise money to, support the museum and support the work that we do with, the community.

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Speaker 2
Last year we raised just over $50,000. And this year, our goal that we’re shooting for is 60,000. So I hope people can come and support us. It’s a really great event. We have, food donated from restaurants all over the area. Really wonderful food. The entree this year is plated and served, which is a little bit elevated, from last year, where it was a buffet.

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Speaker 2
So we’re hoping that people will enjoy that. And the theme is Brazilian Carnival. So you can expect some Brazilian inspired entertainment and food.

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Speaker 1
Very fun. So, as far as the entertainment, help me understand that. What does that mean? Like, there’s dancing and all sort.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. So we haven’t finalized all of the entertainment for this year, but I can tell you that typically we have live music and dancing. Sometimes some demonstrations of different things. But it’s a lot of fun. There is, a silent auction, a live auction, a raffle, and good food. I mean, what else can you ask for?

00;17;25;27 – 00;17;35;26
Speaker 1
Yeah, right. What? As far as the silent auction goes, how do you guys typically run that? Is that do you get are there organizations locally that are donating items for the silent auction?

00;17;35;28 – 00;17;49;24
Speaker 2
Yeah. We get a lot of donations from local businesses. And you know just like with anything we build relationships with them and they donate year after year. So we can always expect some great stuff. So it’s, you know, stuff but also experiences.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. And if if local businesses do you have everybody you need for the silent auction right now. Are you still looking for.

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Speaker 2
We’re certainly still looking. So we’ve thought about a month and a half left planning for this event, and then it’ll happen in a month and a half. But we’re certainly still accepting items from local businesses and sponsorships from local businesses. We currently have 13 sponsors, and we’d love to get up to 20 if possible. So if people are interested in sponsoring, it’s a great way to get your your business name out there.

00;18;23;12 – 00;18;38;08
Speaker 2
And showing that you support the kids in our community and the work that we’re doing here at the museum. So it’s a great opportunity to support the Children’s Museum. And also, can I give your business a little lift in the community, too?

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Is there any certain kind of items that you would like to have? Is silent item, silent auction items that you don’t have yet?

00;18;46;18 – 00;19;07;29
Speaker 2
Well, we love gift baskets. But we also can take gift cards, you know, service donations. If you own a business where you do a service, you know, we would love to offer that as an auction item. You know, sometimes people do like one free car clean, you know, you know, detailing on your car or something like that.

00;19;08;02 – 00;19;29;29
Speaker 2
We love those opportunities. But we love test items. If you’ve got items you want to donate, like, if you’re a retail store, we’ll take some of your, you know, donations of, of stuff from your store or, you know, free manicure for about a year or, you know, that kind of thing. But we’ll take anything and we’ll put it together in a package and make it look really great.

00;19;30;01 – 00;19;39;14
Speaker 1
So very cool. I’ll, I would just I made me think of a couple of businesses that I know that I think would be a good fit. So I’ll reach out to them and see if I can.

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Speaker 2
Something if I can.

00;19;40;11 – 00;19;41;28
Speaker 1
Rope them in.

00;19;42;00 – 00;19;45;02
Speaker 2
Yeah. We’re always looking for more people to help rope people in.

00;19;45;02 – 00;20;06;15
Speaker 1
That’s right, that’s right. And so after the gala, which I had, I can’t even imagine, I feel like I’m so fortunate that I don’t have to plan events like that because anyone I talk to, like the amount of planning, logistics and leading up to. And nothing ever goes to plan. Right. And then you get this sigh, big sigh of relief after the events over.

00;20;06;17 – 00;20;19;13
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a big undertaking. But I have a really great team of volunteers and staff that help me put it together every year. And really, I couldn’t do without them. So I’m grateful for them and their help. And. And they make it easy.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So after after the gala. What what comes next? What do you guys have coming up for the summer lineup?

00;20;27;23 – 00;20;52;03
Speaker 2
Right. So summer is coming up really fast. And, you know, I’m sitting here on March 30th a first, right? Is that the 31st already? And, I’m already thinking well into April, May and June. So my mind is always a bunch of months ahead. But for starting in June, we’re open seven days a week for the summertime, and that goes from end of June to labor Day.

00;20;52;05 – 00;21;15;26
Speaker 2
We’re open every single day except for July 4th, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and we have tons of visitors that come in every single day during the summer, we get tons of visitors from out of state. People who are here visiting Lake George and Saratoga will always come to the museum as well. We’re lucky in that we’re one of the only children’s activities that you can do that is not weather dependent, you know?

00;21;15;26 – 00;21;46;21
Speaker 2
So when it’s raining and the theme park is closed or it’s, you know, not as fun for the kids because it’s pouring, they’ll come here and hang out with us all day. Yeah. So we’ve got our summer hours coming up in June, and then in August we have our annual summer camps, our museum, summer camps. So we’ve got sessions for ages or for grade levels, pre-K through second grade, so that two of those sessions this summer, one is messy art camp and one is pirate adventure can’t.

00;21;46;26 – 00;22;11;08
Speaker 2
And those are so much fun. They’re three hours for the littlest kids and I think we’re one of the only, groups that offers little kids summer camps. A lot of them, you know, are for old elementary school and beyond. Yeah. So we offer that, but then we also have programs for third year sixth graders. We’ve got a music and movement class for them where they’ll drum and learn music and things from international cultures.

00;22;11;10 – 00;22;33;22
Speaker 2
And then we have Urban Explorer Camp, which is the camp that I lead each year. And it’s six hours, for five days, so many through Friday. And, and that when we go around to all the arts organizations or a lot of them in Glens Falls, we walk from the museum every day downtown. Sometimes we go to the Hyde, which is opposite of downtown.

00;22;33;24 – 00;22;58;02
Speaker 2
We’ll go to the Chapman Museum. We’ll go to the shirt factory. And one of the theaters is either the Parks Theater or the Woods Theater. We go to the library and we really talk about arts as a whole. So like literary arts, theatrical arts, two dimensional art, three dimensional art, textile arts, street art, you know, so we talk about every piece of art, well, every type of art you could imagine.

00;22;58;04 – 00;23;32;24
Speaker 2
And we, we talk a lot about what the arts organizations in town are doing. To enhance the arts in once falls. So hopefully once the kids leave Urban Explorer camp, they will tell their parents all about what they learned. And then the goal is to have them return to these arts organizations that participate in our program every summer, and hopefully feel more confident going into the Chatman, for example, or the Hyde or LeFrak and knowing what they’re going into, and then they can kind of share that information with their grownups.

00;23;32;27 – 00;23;54;01
Speaker 2
So it’s a wonderful program. They leave with the kids at summer camp, leave with a whole notebook or binder or packet, you know, whatever that session calls for. They leave with a ton of good stuff to take home with them. All the programs are run by adults. Me and the other staff, people. We’re all over 18.

00;23;54;01 – 00;24;16;16
Speaker 2
I know a lot of the summer camp programs locally have teenagers working, which is great. The like we’re all adults taking care of your kids, so I hope that lends a different level of trust. For us, and it’s just there’s so much fun. And they are really, they have a lot of value. And, so we hope that people will check us out for summer camps, too.

00;24;16;19 – 00;24;20;16
Speaker 1
Yeah. And are all the summer camps, five days?

00;24;20;18 – 00;24;31;14
Speaker 2
Yep. They’re all Monday through Friday. So one week, one week in August for each one. The one. So it’s every week in August. Has a summer camp session going on.

00;24;31;16 – 00;24;46;19
Speaker 1
Fun, fun, fun. And now I know you said there was a couple of different kinds. Are there like, could it sounds like there’s different age groups for a couple of them so you wouldn’t want. Yeah, like your six year olds not going to go to all four of them. But there might.

00;24;46;20 – 00;24;56;13
Speaker 2
That’s correct. Yeah. So we have there’s two weeks for the little kids, pre-K through second grade a two. It’s for the older kids, three through sixth grade.

00;24;56;19 – 00;25;07;06
Speaker 1
Okay. That’s fun. I’m sure the older kids appreciate the the age. Sorry. Yeah. The little kids would love to be grouped to the big kids, but that’s true.

00;25;07;08 – 00;25;44;10
Speaker 2
But we had a lot of fun during the summer. And like I said, we try to pack in as much value for the kids and the parents as well as we can, because we know that when it comes to, you know, tough economy, tough economic times, the first thing to go are leisure activities and self-care as, as much as we can, whether it’s here at, you know, at the museum for on site like workshops and art programs and things, or it’s, summer camp or any of our outreach programs, we try to pack in as much value as possible because we know that people’s money, you know, is is not nothing.

00;25;44;10 – 00;26;08;13
Speaker 2
You know, it’s important. And we want to have, that consistent, reputation of being worth the cost, you know, so we try to do that as much as possible, because all of us here, we all understand what it’s like to, have a smaller paycheck than you’d like. You know, that’s just nonprofit work. We do it because we love it, and not because we’re making millions of dollars.

00;26;08;15 – 00;26;19;16
Speaker 2
Oh, so we would like to see value, and we hope that everybody sees value in what we do. And and the, you know, it’s, sees us as, like I said, worth the cost.

00;26;19;19 – 00;26;26;15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, 31 years, running here, I’m sure people must see the value if you’ve made it that long, right?

00;26;26;16 – 00;26;42;19
Speaker 2
Yes. Oh, yeah. But we’re always looking for people to get involved in new ways and, for new people to get involved. So, you know, if anybody’s listening and they’re interested in, and coming in and seeing what we’re doing is like a behind the scenes tour, please reach out. And I’d love to show you.

00;26;42;21 – 00;26;48;11
Speaker 1
Yeah. And what does that typically look like for people? If they want to volunteer and they want to help, is it.

00;26;48;13 – 00;27;09;03
Speaker 2
Yeah. We have different things to volunteer at. So we have event specific volunteers, whether it’s joining an event committee, or helping out, for instance, at the balloon festival where we run the bouncy House village every September. So, you know, event specific. But there’s also ways to get involved that are more long term. Whether it’s in our art collection.

00;27;09;09 – 00;27;24;21
Speaker 2
I have even told you about the art collection. I’ll tell you, or getting involved in our education programs and, you know, leading some educational opportunities. There’s many ways to get involved, but, the art collection.

00;27;24;24 – 00;27;26;00
Speaker 1
Yeah. Tell me about the art.

00;27;26;02 – 00;27;56;20
Speaker 2
How important part of what we do. So, we have a collection of over 8000 pieces of international child made artwork. So youth from four years old up to 1890 years old, have created artwork, from all over the world. And we have, you know, all of that, so this collection dates back to 1988 and, it features over about 100 countries.

00;27;56;20 – 00;28;25;19
Speaker 2
Our represented in this collection. And it is the largest collection of international youth artwork on the East Coast and the second largest in the country. So everything that we do here is inspired by the artwork that we have in our collection. So obviously our mission is what grounds it all together. Bringing our diverse world to children. And the way that we do that is through, like, you know, the hands on space for children, the outreach programs, the workshops and things.

00;28;25;22 – 00;28;52;11
Speaker 2
But it all really is tied together by the art collection. So the, the exhibits that you see in the museum are inspired by art in our collection. And the programs that we offer use art from the collection as an educational tool. And the way that we talk about it, and we tell people what the art is really for, obviously it’s things to look at because some of these kids are incredibly talented, and you would not think that a kid did them.

00;28;52;13 – 00;29;21;13
Speaker 2
But, the real thing that we use this art for is really seeing the world through the eyes of children, and so that kids can see the world through the perspective of other kids, just like them, but from a different country or a different place. So it’s an educational tool. They are historical documents really capturing a moment in time, sometimes of a specific historical event or sometimes of just a day in the life.

00;29;21;15 – 00;29;35;07
Speaker 2
So they’re educational, they’re artistic and they’re historical. And I hope that, you know, if you come and visit the children’s museum, take a look on the walls and you’ll see the art from our collection. Not all of it. But some of it.

00;29;35;10 – 00;29;52;27
Speaker 1
But some of it. Yeah, I, I was going to ask, do you have. Because I didn’t remember seeing, like, a gallery, I guess, you know or I know that there’s, you know, there’s stuff everywhere, but do you essentially just have most of that in storage and you pull it out when you kind of move things around or or how did that.

00;29;53;05 – 00;30;12;06
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s that’s mostly how it works at this point. We don’t have a designated gallery space just because we don’t have the space. We’re all packed full right now. So we do have a lot of the art in storage, but we try to take it out and rotate the pieces that are hanging up in the museum at least once or twice a year.

00;30;12;08 – 00;30;36;29
Speaker 2
We also have an exhibit at the mall at Aviation Mall right now by target. We have a store front that we, you know, showcase some things. And so you can always see us there. But we’re looking right now for places to loan our exhibitions. So we do have that option if there are businesses or, you know, sometimes doctor’s offices will rent an exhibition from us for a year.

00;30;37;02 – 00;30;40;06
Speaker 2
We’re happy to talk to anybody about that as well.

00;30;40;08 – 00;30;53;04
Speaker 1
Okay. Fun. So, Bethany, if people want to learn more about the museum, who you are, what you do, get involved. More information on galas and summer camps. How do they find you guys?

00;30;53;06 – 00;30;57;28
Speaker 2
You can find us online at World Children’s museum.org.

00;30;58;00 – 00;31;03;20
Speaker 1
Perfect. And, are you guys on the on the social medias these days? You do all that stuff? Yeah.

00;31;03;20 – 00;31;13;19
Speaker 2
Yes we are. Yeah. You’ll find us on Facebook. Instagram. We’re all awareness children’s museum, LinkedIn as well. So check us out wherever you feel like going.

00;31;13;22 – 00;31;15;08
Speaker 1
Awesome. Like and subscribe.

00;31;15;13 – 00;31;16;07
Speaker 2
Exactly.

00;31;16;07 – 00;31;26;14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, Bethany, thank you so much for coming on the show and spending a little time with our listeners and our viewers and our readers. Really appreciate you taking the time.

00;31;26;16 – 00;31;33;26
Speaker 2
Yeah. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I’m, you know, had, like I said, happy to talk to everybody and anybody I can about what we do here.

00;31;33;29 – 00;32;00;13
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Sounds good. Well thanks so much. And of course, thanks everybody for listening and watching and for reading. For those of you that pick up the print publication as well, each month, you can find, podcasts on Spotify, Rumble, YouTube and Apple Podcasts, of course. And then our website is buying local that us you can find, not only this podcast, but all the other ones we’ve done as well, and some of the other, media offerings that we have.

00;32;00;13 – 00;32;04;02
Speaker 1
So check us out and you’ll hear from us next week, everybody. Thanks.