The New Children's Museum

The New Children's Museum integrates current education practices and theory into everything it does. In addition to school visits to the Museum, this includes its exhibitions, studio activities, camps, and workshops. It works closely with schools and educators to provide standards-based curriculum to complement their classwork with students.

The Museum offers options for the nearly 180 different schools that come each year from all over San Diego County, serving many thousands of students/teachers through visits. As described below under Access, about 60% of these school visitors come through the Museum’s Title I program at no cost to them. To complement these visits of for individual use, the Museum posts free art-based lesson plans on its website for teachers to use in the classroom.

Educational practices foundational to the Museum’s full range of activities include a focus on early childhood learning and include:
• Child-directed play
• Open-ended play
• Group and other social play
• Loose parts theory
• Authentic experiences
• Visual literacy skills
• Playwork theory

The Museum presents Educators Night Out every October. It welcomes 250+ teachers and administrators to a free open house where they can explore what the Museum offers as well as visit the booths of 25-30 other organizations and museums who come for the evening. The evening concludes with an optional guest speaker who speaks about a current topic of interest to educators.

Serving the community is a part of The New Children's Museum’s strategic plan. Over the past 12 years, the needs of Hispanic and minority neighborhoods have been continually discussed with stakeholders, and the imperative to meet these needs has long been emphasized by the Board. The Museum has built relationships with hundreds of social service agencies, schools, and community leaders. Fueled by research showing that students from low socio-economic backgrounds who are exposed to the arts make greater academic and professional increases than their more privileged peers, the Museum serves children and family members through robust programs that provide free and discounted entrance.

The Museum’s access programs (with numbers from 2019) include:

• Salute Our Troops – The Museum’s largest access program provides active military visitors a safe place where children and parents can play, away from worries about deployment, budgets, and work. Over 25,000 were served in 2019, including through group visits with USO San Diego, Support The Enlisted Program (STEP), and Museum Pass options.

• School Visits/Title I – Students, teachers, and chaperones came for free or at discounted rates for arts education. Tours and activities emphasized student-centered discussions and visual literacy. Many included art-making activities led by the Museum’s Teaching Artists. Of the 12,607 served in 2019, more than 50% were from Title I schools and Head Start programs.

• Museums For All – This newest program served 11,891 low-income visitors that used EBT card (food benefits/WIC) for $1 admission.

• Check Out The New Children’s Museum – City and County library branches (60+) offer free admission passes that can be checked out for ten days, like a book. This program reached 8,033 visitors in 2019.

• pARTners in Creativity – Served 1,760 children/chaperones from 12 social service agencies working with abuse/neglect, homelessness, low literacy, mental and physical disabilities, substance abuse, and migrant issues. Groups enjoy free visits in a safe environment geared to their needs.

• Accessibility Mornings – 355 children with disabilities and their family/caretakers explored the Museum’s exhibitions/activities in 2019, coming on designated mornings before the noise and crowds.

• Other – Kids Free October, Museum Month in February, cross-membership promotions, and other initiatives provide even more opportunities to visit the Museum for free or nearly free each year.

The New Children’s Museum has grown its community outreach efforts in recent years, including dedicated staff and new programs to engage families and children in creativity. The following outreach programs served 4,745 children and families in 2019, focusing on lower-income, primarily immigrant and Latino neighborhoods.

• Mass Creativity Day and Workshops – Since 2013, this program has impacted more than 20 diverse community groups where Museum artists lead free art-making workshops each spring. In 2019, it included a series of hands-on art making workshops led by professional artists with the assistance of Museum staff at seven community centers in the San Diego region: Barrio Logan College Institute, Barrio Logan; Casa Familiar; San Ysidro; Made in Paradise Hills, Paradise Hills; The San Diego LGBT Community Center, Hillcrest; Solutions for Change, Vista; South Bay Community Services, Chula Vista; and Southern Sudanese Community Center, City Heights. Workshops participants and the public came to the Museum and park on June 22, 2019 for Mass Creativity Day, a free festival of art-making, music, and fun.

• Mass Creativity: Comunidad and Mi Familia, Mi Historia – These newer programs (funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and California Humanities, respectively) strive to deepen community engagement as their primary goals. They help the Museum served many additional families from the underserved, border communities of San Diego.