Atiba Edwards has been the executive vice president and COO of Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) since February 2019. The world’s first children’s museum, it dates back to 1899 and is on a mission to ignite curiosity, celebrate identity and cultivate joyful learning through a range of fun, inclusive and hands-on experiences.
Blooloop spoke to Edwards to find out more about this unique museum and its work with the local community, as well as the impact of the pandemic and the museum’s plans for the future.
Where art and engineering meet
Edwards has a slightly unusual double major, graduating from the University of Michigan in 2006 with a BSE and BA in Industrial Operations Engineering and General Studies with a focus in Poetry and Musicology. However, the links between the two disciplines are clear to him, as he explains:
“I always loved technology and engineering, and I’ve always loved the arts. Art was a key part of my upbringing.
“At University, I started FOKUS, a not-for-profit arts organization using arts to combine and connect people. When I was on the engineering campus, I’d be thinking about all the art things I needed to do when I got back to central campus. But, for whatever reason, most people in engineering don’t explicitly gravitate toward the arts.
“Those degrees always made sense in my head because I think art is a science and art is engineering, and then engineering is also an art and a science. So, to me, they are one and the same, but over time we have, as a society, diverged the two.
“If you think back to the likes of Michelangelo and DaVinci, there is an engineering background to some of their works and their designs and inventions, but they were also artists.”
Atiba Edwards and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Following his time at college, Edwards initially worked in investment banking, before freelancing for a few years, doing some teaching and some financial consulting, all while running FOKUS, his arts not-for-profit organization. He then went on to spend six years as director of operations at a charter school, before stepping into his current role with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
“The job opened up here about three years ago,” he says, “And it was a place I grew up coming to as a child. Plus, I taught art class here six years ago to their teens. I taught a 10-week art residency about art and activism. So, it seemed like a no brainer.”
“The museum has this light tunnel. The building was built in 1975 as the first children’s museum and it went through two architectural expansions, but the tunnel has stayed there forever. It’s a rainbow tunnel that has a water stream that runs down, and I remember as a child just running through it up and down, up and down, having a blast.
“One of the things I love so much about it, which kind of dovetails back to my two degrees, is that matters the most is a personal experience. So, while folks say, ‘your degrees don’t make much sense to me,’ I think, that’s ok – they’re not yours. They’re mine, and to me it makes sense.”
A unique city
Speaking about the uniqueness of the city where Brooklyn Museum is located, Edwards says:
“There are so many different communities, experiences and audiences you can be around in New York. And one of the things I always love about Brooklyn Children’s Museum is the diversity of experiences, people and cultures.
“We plan about 12 to 14 festivals a year and each festival celebrates a different culture. So, we do lunar new year, we celebrate the Caribbean, we did something for Juneteenth, something for Pride and for Diwali. Our visitors appreciate that aspect where they come here, and they can learn something different.”
“Another thing that really stands out to me as a New Yorker here is that we allow you to be a child meaning you get to run and to touch everything. You can experience everything in the way that feels right to you. In some ways that has parallels with growing up in New York. There are so many things you can do. You choose your own path. Like the classic ‘choose your own adventure’ style books.
“It mimics New York in that it’s a self-guided choose your own adventure.”
The impact of COVID-19
Edwards had been in his role for around a year when the COVID-19 crisis began to unfold. The museum closed temporarily in response to the pandemic on 13 March 2020.
“We made a tough call to close fully. We had to reduce our staff significantly, which was a hard decision, but we weren’t sure when to open back up. One of the things that I’m happy, proud of, and excited about is that during that time we were forced to rethink everything we did.
“We wanted to open back up as quickly as possible. Our location is in central Brooklyn, we’re in a neighbourhood that wanted to come here, but couldn’t, so we had to figure out how to reopen as quickly as we could, in a safe manner.”
“So, we did some programming on our rooftop. We have an amazing team here that helps orchestrate all the public programming activities. Mid October 2020, we did some public programming on our roof for indigenous peoples. We partnered with the Smithsonian Museum because they had some activities planned that suddenly couldn’t happen. That’s a takeaway from this past year, we’ve partnered with so many artists and organizations.
“We have a 20,000 square foot rooftop where we can socially distance about 75 to a hundred people. That meant that we were able to partner with our community and give them a space so that our visiting community could come and enjoy art. We’ve always used it for events. But this allowed us to use it in ways we had never thought of.”
The visitor experience evolves
The museum initially reopened on 24 October 2020 as a dry run and then opened for Halloween that same year, testing out a reduced capacity.
“We said, ‘Hey, let’s think about how we can provide this joyous moment for the city, when Halloween is shut down across Brooklyn, across New York City, you can’t go trick or treating. I was running to stores for decorations and fog machines and giant spiders. We redecorated the entire museum to have a Halloween experience.”
“All our staff dressed up and we had buckets of candy. We were able to allow people to come inside and trick or treat and people loved it.
“Going forward, we rejigged the entire visitor experience as well, encouraging people to pre-book. We still keep about 5% of our capacity for walk-ins because there’s an equity and accessibility aspect. Not everybody can go online. Not everybody has the internet.
“We also redid our exhibits. We rejigged everything we did from a customer service standpoint, thinking about how to help make this time as easy as possible for visitors.”
Currently, BCM is open four days a week.
Hands-on experiences in the post-COVID era
A visit to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum is, usually, a hands-on experience. Edwards explains some of the changes that have had to be put in place post-COVID:
“I learned so much about air filtration, cleaners of different types, what works well, what needs to be wiped, what would need to be air-dried. Our first step was that we upgraded all our filters to a level above the requirement.
“Then, we also took away all the things that we felt we couldn’t clean. We also recreated our visitor experience role. Normally the visitor experience role is a couple of people at the desk and some people who float through the museum, but we created this role called play facilitator.”
“We have about seven exhibit zones. Play facilitators are in each zone so that they can interact with the guests. Everybody, from myself, all the way down, is equipped with cleaning solution too.
“Then there’s a handful of props where we have multiple batches of props and exhibit materials. We can pull those out, send them to wash or clean, and put in a new set.
“We moved to as cashless as possible. But we still take cash, and we keep change at the front because we want to be accessible. Timed ticketing was one of the biggest changes for everybody, even our members.”
Reaching wider audiences
Edwards says that during the pandemic “everything in person stopped.”
In the same vein as the museum’s philosophy around not having a lot of screens inside the venue, they also didn’t go down the route of moving a huge amount of the museum’s content online. Instead, the team worked on putting together and sharing activities that people could do from home. This program was called ‘BCM and You’.
“Our team dug through the collection, and we created these arts and craft projects. For the first couple of weeks in April, May and June 2020, we were putting out two or three a week. We wanted to give people something to do at home. For the most part, it was set up so that you can do these with materials in your house.”
“We actually did some kits as well, so we had a grant that helped support that. We gave out somewhere around 2000 to 3000 art kits. That is because, for us, it’s always about making sure accessibility is prominent. If we move everything online, like the rest of the world was doing, some people are forgotten about.
“It’s great that the internet has become so commonplace, but there’s a large group of people, relatively speaking, who just don’t either have access at all or who don’t have dedicated access because they share a screen with the rest of the household.
‘We partnered with three community-based organizations we’ve worked with in the past and said, ‘Hey, we have activity kits that include model magic, crayons, papers, etc. so a family can take this and do this kit step-by-step together, away from the screen. And that’s been a hit.
“It really was a special thing because it carries through to who we are. Everything is touch and tactile and tangible-based.”
Exploring the Brooklyn Children’s Museum
The footprint of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum is around a hundred thousand square feet, and it has multiple levels
“We have a ground floor level, which has some of our science and that’s what we call the beach. And then you move to sort of mid-level one, which is World Brooklyn and some other exhibits. The street level has Totally Tots as well as our office space and our mezzanine. And then the second floor has our art studio, our rooftop, and the big visiting exhibits gallery.
“So, all in all, it’s about a hundred thousand square feet of a lot of small pockets.”
In a normal year, the museum will bring in a new exhibit at least once every 12 months. While the pandemic truncated the run of two interactive exhibits called ‘Survival of the Slowest’, featuring sloths, hedgehogs and other animals, and ‘Under the Canopy’, which explored creatures that call the rainforest home, BCM is now planning ahead and looking forward to bringing in more temporary exhibits.
Currently, visitors can discover A-MAZE-D. This includes a maze created from corrugated cardboard boxes for a full-body experience against an NYC backdrop. The exhibition was created in partnership with artist and puzzle maker Dave Phillips.
Accessibility is key
Brooklyn Children’s Museum has a whole area, the sensory room, designed with children on the autism spectrum in mind. Being a small room, able to hold only around six to 10 people at a time, the pandemic meant that the museum had to temporarily close this particular space.
However, Edwards says, the team has viewed this as an opportunity to think about how to increase accessibility throughout the entire venue.
“We’ve thought about some things that are helpful and beneficial, that we can just add in. For instance, tactile is important for development needs. So, we tried to make sure we have increased the amount of tactile stuff. We know it comes at a cost, but it’s important for the young people who lost this room to still be able to learn and grow and enjoy the museum as best as possible.”
“We’ve really been thinking it through as we open back up. This means we are rethinking some things, bringing new exhibits and new activities and new props. We are making sure there’s a clear lens towards accessibility.
“Right now, we’re working on plans for a 25,000 square foot garden. That’s probably five years away, but there are many things to consider. For instance, looking at people with cochlear implants, you can’t have a metal slide because it’s a problem. So, we can put in a stone slide.
“We are working with a lot of designers for the garden. It’s a few years away. But in terms of the day-to-day of the museum, our team always thinks about how we can make our museum as accessible as possible.”
Future plans at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum
The garden itself will be an earth science garden:
“There isn’t an earth science garden in Brooklyn at large. You have to go pretty far out to get that kind of experience. And what’s cool with it is that we can use it as an informal way to teach our guests the history of Brooklyn.”
In terms of future developments, the museum also hopes to open a 180-seat auditorium, which will also include wheelchair seats.
The thing that has me super excited about these coming months and years is that we’re able to really turn Brooklyn Children’s Museum as a site into a real cultural hub
“That creates a space for us to do stage readings, programs and plays. It can also be used as a movie theatre. Where we’re located, the nearest movie theatre is probably a mile and change away.
“We also partnered with Brooklyn Public Library. They had a library branch three blocks away from the museum that closed at the end of last year. So, we’re in the process of building a library branch in the museum.
“The thing that has me super excited about these coming months and years is that we’re able to really turn Brooklyn Children’s Museum as a site into a real cultural hub.”
The joy of children-led experiences
Brooklyn Children’s Museum is on a mission to celebrate identity, ignite curiosity, and cultivate joyful learning.
“That mission is part of our strategic plan which launched at the end of 2019. To me, BCM is a place where you can come and just be yourself. But you can also learn about somebody who is different from you. And the diversity of Brooklyn is really captured here. You can have two people who look the same but are culturally different. Or, you have people who look completely opposite but are culturally similar.”
“One of the key parts of our experience is that it is children-led. You’re able to see humanity at its peak essence of amazingness where kids are just coming together. They’re sharing and they’re playing and they’re making music together. They’ve never met each other, but they’re there banging on drums.
“To me, that’s really the awesome thing that embodies the mission: children can showcase their curiosity. It’s a child-led experience. So, they’re able to learn from and teach the children they’re around, and teach the families that they’re with.
“One of the unique things about our space is there are a lot of families. Usually, I’m in the lobby, I do a good morning speech to the visitors before we start doing tickets. One guy walked in, he had a three- or four-year-old son. And he was so excited. He’s like, ‘oh my God, I haven’t been here in so long.’
“And that’s the joy, we have this intergenerational fun experience that is passed down and it means something to people.”
Top image: photo by Diane Bondareff, courtesy of Brooklyn Children’s Museum under Creative Commons
