Max Skaggs interacts with an exhibit at a Museum Without Walls event. Courtesy Fairbanks Children's Museum
Adrienne Clayton, 6, and Esha Hullavarad, 5, paint their faces at a Museum Without Walls exhibit. The fourth museum happens Saturday. Courtesy Fairbanks Children's Museum
Madison Wert, 4, and Tessa Wert, 8, play with shaving cream at a Museum Without Walls event. Courtesy Fairbanks Children's Museum
At least that’s what Brenda Riley and Heather Lambert think. This place, a children’s museum, will have large foam blocks for building castles, a light table with translucent magnetic tiles and a Bernoulli Blower, which is like a leaf blower in a box and a fun way to demonstrate to children the principles of flight.
“It’s a place where children can go and play to the limits of their imagination,” Riley said. “It’s all about learning through play. The messier, the better.”
For years, the two mothers have pursued the idea of opening a children’s museum, a place where children can learn through sensory exhibits. In recent months, their idea has started to take off. Riley, Lambert and their supporters are holding their fourth Museum Without Walls — sort of a minimuseum — Saturday at Ryan
Middle School. Last summer, the Internal Revenue Service approved their request for tax-exempt status as a nonprofit, the Fairbanks Children’s Museum. A $5,000 grant from the Langston Family Foundation followed. The museum’s board of directors, of which Lambert is the president and Riley is the vice president, includes Gretchen Nolan, Jenn Wagaman and Barbara Carlin, Lambert’s mother. The board hired Information Insights to make recommendations for how big the museum should be and whether it makes more sense to remodel a building or construct one. The board is also in negotiations to hire a museum consultant.
The Museums Without Walls — more of them will follow in the next few months — help raise money for a permanent museum and introduce the community to the concept of a children’s museum, Riley said.
The effort started about 10 years ago. Riley bought a book about how to open a children’s museum. She met regularly with Lambert to discuss the idea. “It was like a book club,” said Lambert, a 39-year-old real estate agent and mother of two. “I never thought that I was going to be a really fun mom or a PTA person. I just slipped into it.”
Lambert, whose stepmother runs a children’s museum in Washington state, did not have her own copy of the book so she photocopied pages. They began meeting at a wine bar after a mutual friend, knowing that they both think Fairbanks needs a children’s museum, introduced them. But work, school and family responsibilities kept getting in the way. Sometimes a year would pass before one or the other would pick up a phone and propose something to keep the ball rolling.
“I would lie in bed at night, and if I thought about the museum, I couldn’t fall asleep,” Riley said.
The first Museum Without Walls was held at the Artisan’s Courtyard in June, and more than 300 children attended. Lambert and Riley were awed.
“I almost cried,” said Riley, a 35-year-old mother of three.
About 700 children and families have attended the Museums Without Walls in Fairbanks. Lambert and Riley think a permanent children’s museum would succeed in Fairbanks partly because of the long winters and stretches of frigid cold that make outdoor play forbidding. School children could visit the museum on field trips. And they would keep the Museum Without Walls program going in communities along the road system, they said.
They estimate opening the museum will cost $3 million to $5 million, and they hope to pay for it through private donations, grants and corporate sponsorships.
The Fairbanks Children’s Museum has a yearly membership program costing $50 for families with two children and $65 for families with three or more children.
Members can attend the Museums Without Walls for free. About 50 families have joined so far.
Lambert and Riley said they have each spent thousands of dollars of their own money to establish the museum. If they manage to open it, the Fairbanks Children’s Museum will be the second of its kind in Alaska. The Anchorage Museum hosts the Imaginarium Discovery Center for children.
“This is our passion,” Lambert said.
Amanda Bohman is a freelance writer living in Fairbanks. She can be reached at aknewsgirl@gmail.com.
IF YOU GO
What: Museum Without Walls
When: 11 a.m.- 2 p.m.
Saturday
Where: Ryan Middle School
Tickets: $5 per child or $15 per family
Information: www.
fairbankschildrensmuseum .com
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