Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose

Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose ("the Museum or "cdm") is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation organized in 1982 and incorporated in 1983. The Museum operates a Children's Museum which addresses the educational needs of children, youth, and their families in santa clara county through participatory exhibits and programs that engage the senses and challenge the mind.children's Discovery Museum of San Jose (cdm) has served over 9.8 million adults and children since opening its doors in the spring of 1990. With over 30 years of operation, the Museum and its staff strive to enhance the visitor experience in its 28,000 square feet of indoor exhibition space with 13 dedicated galleries, (continued on schedule o)each housing 8-10 interactive exhibits that address the distinctive need for children to learn through concrete interactions. An adjacent 30,000 square foot outdoor nature education center, bill's backyard: bridge to nature, offers exhibit signage in english, spanish and vietnamese that focuses visitor interactions on the uniqueness of outdoor play, such as build, roll, climb, plant, and observe, to name a few. Ten different local species of animals and insects were cast in bronze and placed appropriately throughout the area to allow children to discover them in their natural habitat. A 7,200-gallon rain-harvest system is used to irrigate the native landscape and to teach visitors about water conservation at the same time. By bringing nature to children, cdm hopes to create a spark so that children will then seek out other outdoor opportunities close to their home, and become environmental stewards as they grow up. The majority of cdm's exhibits are designed for children to age 10 and their parents and caregivers, while the wonder cabinet serves the needs of the Museum's youngest visitors as an early learning environment with exhibits designed to support the cognitive, emotional and social development of infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Whether children are role playing a firefighter on the authentic fire engine in the streets of San Jose exhibit, or using colorful plastic balls to study how water rushes and flows in waterways, they are actively engaged in learning, inspired by their own curiosity to investigate how things work and to understand more about the world in which we live. With sponsorship from cefcu, the amazing airmaze exhibit was installed by mindsplash and stealth enterprise inc. The new exhibit spans two floors inside the Museum and features scarves and yarn balls moving through a series of plexiglass tubes and emerging from one of six exits, much to the delight of Museum visitors. The new potter the otter: a healthy adventure exhibit, sponsored with funding from first 5 santa clara county, re-opened in the Museum's central park space in july, 2021, and is scheduled to begin its 3-year tour in january, 2023. Similar to most Children's museums and many science centers, cdm's exhibits are highly tactile and encourage touching, exploring, manipulating and experimenting, while cutting across the disciplines of art, science and the humanities. Acting with an abundance of caution due to covid-19, the Museum closed to the public on march 5, 2020 and remained closed for 14 months. During that time, Museum staff and its board of directors worked to develop a restoration and revitalization plan. Major facility improvements were made to enhance air filtration and to install touchless plumbing and hydration stations. Current year projects included a major hvac control system upgrade from pneumatic to direct digital controls and a renovation of the cadence amphitheatre by stealth enterprise inc. as the covid-19 pandemic began to wane, the Museum slowly reopened its interior exhibits and relaunched programming. Recognizing that young children (under 5 years) were not eligible for covid-19 vaccinations until mid-june, 2022, and the subsequent time period for full vaccine protection, the Museum chose to follow guidelines established for schools and to require all visitors, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks inside and outside while at the Museum. Museum visitation was defined as "circulation" rather than a "gathering," which exempted cdm from the city ordinance requiring all city-owned venues, with indoor attendance of 50 persons or more, to provide proof of vaccination. In the fall of 2021, the Museum adopted a single 2 hours play session for wednesday through friday and two 2 hour play sessions on saturday, sunday and on holidays. In june, the weekday schedule was increased to two play sessions. Over the fiscal year, the Museum provided a safe and engaging environment for families returning to public activities to 144,000 visitors and members.in early fall of 2021, cdm opened zoom zone, a new educational and interactive play space for very young children around the theme of "things that fly" in terminal b at the mineta San Jose international airport. This new offsite play space was made possible with exhibit funding from zoom video communications, a 5-year donated lease of 600 square feet from the city of San Jose and over $400,000 in pro bono construction support under the direction of hensel phelps construction.progress continues on exploration portal, with a preliminary set of exhibit designs selected from scientific art studio. The space will continue to focus on the intersection of math and nature for its content, providing more places for families to interact with exhibits and the natural world. While the xu family charitable foundation remains the major sponsor for this space, additional funding was secured from first 5 santa clara county and the santa clara valley water district through the safe, clean water and natural flood protection program (measure b november 2012.) Continuing the Museum's board and executive staff focus on operating feasibility in terms of mission and financial liquidity, commitments from the city of San Jose were secured for several future projects, including modernization of the freight elevator; and security measures, which include a specially-designed wall to secure the amphitheatre and additional security cameras, through a special grant from the mayor's office of $175,500. Cdm's sinking fund, a 1-to-1 match with the city, will be utilized to upgrade and make ada accessible the audio, lighting and projection systems in the lee and diane brandenburg theatre in the fall. The Museum's payment protection program second draw was approved by the sba for loan forgiveness in the fall of 2021

The Museum closed the retail space in december 2018 due to the impact from major online retailers. The store is still an active project as a small inventory balance remains. During the year, there were small projects such as pinscreen and gear table sales.

The Museum provides on-site and outreach programs which complement its exhibits and support visitor interactions and learning opportunities. 2021-2022 saw the return of group visits to the Museum, with 5,800 served and an additional 512 served through on-site or virtual programs. The santa clara county office of education sponsored a private use day at cdm in spring of 2022 to accommodate students and their families in the district's special needs programs. In response to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the Museum hosted a total of four pop-up vaccination clinics and, as an incentive, provided free Museum admission, for up to 8 persons, to each family receiving a vaccination. Sponsors stepping forward to support this initiative included the silicon valley community foundation, (continued on schedule o)healthtrust, San Jose councilmember raul peralez, santa clara family health plan, and anthem bluecross. The first three clinics were conducted by the santa clara county public health department, with the stanford flu crew providing vaccines for the 4th clinic. The Museum's mission continues to support a three-pronged approach to the arts: engagement with and viewing the work of professional artists; exploring other Children's art; and creating individual works of art in various formats. The national endowment of the arts awarded cdm a $100,000 grant to re-establish arts programming. With the reopening of the leroy neiman art studio, a new artist-in-residence program was initiated in summer of 2022 with cdm's newly-hired arts program manager. The program will host a professional visual artist for a 3-month residency to lead children in art-making activities and to share their professional talents. The Museum served as an evaluation site for the alegremente! Happy brain traveling exhibit, built by omsi (Oregon Museum of science and industry.) The theme of this bilingual exhibit (english and spanish) is how everyday interactions build social/emotional, language, cognitive and motor skills for a lifetime. The juneteenth celebration was added to cdm's numerous cultural festivals, which offer a means for the local community to participate in various cultural festivals that represent the region's ethnic diversity. The festivals, such as mid-autumn festival, dia de los muertos, diwali, menorahs and miracles, dia de los tres reyes magos, lunar new year, children of the dragon, and proud of my family, featured both onsite and virtual programming. Additional national leadership grant funding from the institute of Museum and library services (imls) in september, 2021, will continue to fund the ongoing work of cdm's cultural competence learning institute (ccli) in collaboration with the association of Children's museums, the association of science and technology centers and the garibay group to work with 15-18 museums from across Museum sectors. The ultimate goal of ccli is to develop, track, promote and sustain organizational change within individual institutions and field-wide in order to build museums' capacity to engage with issues of inclusion and cultural competence. Cdm and its partners believe that ccli's peer-driven approach to diversity and inclusion responds to the need voiced by the broader Museum field and can help to shift decades of conversation about diversity to tangible actions that will empower museums to provide high quality, inclusive experiences that reflect and respond to the needs of their entire community. Cdm entered into year 3 of a 5-year collaboration with the exploratorium to improve stem participation by latinx audiences, leveraging cdm's decade-long ccli planning and implementation with the exploratorium's work to reach latinx audiences. While cohort 1 participants met virtually in year 2, cohort 2 participants gathered in person with 5 teams from across the country attending: new york hall of science (ny), bronx zoo (ny), international Museum of art and science (tx), Children's Museum tucson (az) and the tech interactive (ca). Funding for this initiative was secured from the national science foundation.in partnership with maryam eskandari, miim designs, cdm launched a multi-year initiative about persian culture by exploring how nowruz, the new year celebration occurring on the spring equinox, is celebrated around the world today. Cdm reached out to its supporter base to identify persons willing to serve as cultural ambassadors. These cultural ambassadors are community volunteers who share their personal knowledge, experience and understanding of nowruz with cdm staff. Their role is to provide introductions to other persian community members, who can provide cultural expertise, artistic talent or resources to the project. Over the course of the year, three group meetings were conducted with the cultural ambassadors. Resulting from these sessions, a multi-year road map was developed beginning with building a strong foundation of cultural knowledge, community advocates and potential resources, and culminating in a world-class interactive exhibit for children called nowruz around the world, and an authentic festival celebrated annually at cdm. Cdm continuously strives to understand and to improve its service to its visitors. In 2019, cdm joined the collaboration for ongoing visitor engagement surveys (coves) led by the Museum of science, boston. Participation in this collaborative enables cdm to survey its visitors systematically about their Museum experience, and to garner demographic information about its visitors. During the pandemic, the coves visitor survey was modified to solicit visitor feedback on safety and sanitation issues upon reopening. The information gleaned from these surveys was instrumental in program and facility modifications as cdm gradually reopened its interior spaces. As culmination of the two-year american alliance of Museum's (aam) facing change initiative, the Museum's board's facing change task force participated in an annual retreat of the bay area cohorts. Cdm produced a video documenting its learning and acknowledging aam. Initiative. The focus of cdm's task force was two-fold: create a pipeline of board candidates representing ethnic diversity and working in a field focused on Children's health and development, or representing the social and cultural norms of cdm's audience; and develop ways to engage board members more broadly with Museum staff in order to engender trust and to demystify the board.with support from the david and lucile packard foundation, cdm retained elisa diana huerta, ph.d., to develop a six-month professional development program for staff that will support cdm's goals of identifying and dismantling systems of oppression in its management and operations. Phase 1 included staff interviews and phase ii provided training workshops. Looking forward, the Museum will continue to restore programs, which were ceased due to covid-19, and to embrace new program opportunities. With covd-19 vaccines now available for children 6 months and older, the Museum will continue to work the stanford flu crew to provide vaccination clinics prior to the ending of the federal government's subsidy in february, 2023. The Museum will also restore its play your way evening, a small event to which families with children on the autism spectrum are welcomed into the Museum. New programs include the return of great big family fun day, which will be hosted inside of the Museum, rather than in the park. Over 2,000 attendees are anticipated to visit on that single day, and a reading festival in summer of 2023. The reading festival will be a collaboration with kristi yamaguchi's always dream foundation and the San Jose public libraries, which will culminate in a day-long reading festival for the public featuring community officials and celebrities.the current timeline for construction of the new outdoor exploration portal calls for groundbreaking in late spring of 2023 and public opening in 2024.