Children's Museum of Phoenix

The Children's Museum of Phoenix mission is to engage the minds, muscles, and imaginations of children and the grown-ups who care about them. With a focus on early childhood education and development for children birth to ten years, the Museum provides hands-on exhibits and programs that encourage physical, emotional, and cognitive development. To ensure that all children in our community have the opportunity to visit the Museum, our every child program provided free or reduced admission to over 46,000 children and families this year. In july of 2021, we were happy to have reopened the inside of the Museum for our visitors to once again enjoy our exhibits, programs and activities after a 7-month closure due to the pandemic. Our first traveling exhibit, very eric carle, was in its fourth week of exhibition. This play-and-learn exhibit allowed visitors to step into the pages of eric carle's colorful picture books from his classic "very" series. Over 74,000 families experienced the joy, wonder, and art of this beloved Children's book author and illustrator for the 3-month exhibit. On november 6, 2021, we hosted our 13th annual fundraising gala, retro recess. Nearly 200 guests spent the evening enjoying cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, a live auction and dinner under the stars, in support of our every child program while celebrating that play is back! This event raised $258,000.in fy22, the Museum proudly launched the inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (idea) fellows program to mold a workforce reflective of diverse backgrounds. This program intentionally seeks candidates in post-secondary in addition to exceptional high school seniors who are impacted by systemic barriers and provides semester-long, paid fellowship opportunities in finance/administration, marketing, development, and educational programming. The fellowship's overarching objectives are to impact the individual students through a meaningful, supportive work experience and extensive networking opportunities and to benefit the Museum and the communities we serve through their diverse perspectives. In its first year, the Museum welcomed four fellows: 2 in our education department, 1 in our exhibits department and 1 in our visitor experience department.also aligned with our commitment to idea, the Museum was overjoyed to feature artists, such as fiesta mexicana dancers and etsitty group pow wow dancers to celebrate diverse cultures with our guests. In partnership with local artists, we featured art in the monroe each month. Several highlights included exhibitions by aaron allen marner for black history month, gennaro garcia celebrating hispanic heritage month, nancy chong and michael kong for asian american/pacific islander heritage month, and artists griselda avalos, angela cazel-jahn, heidi dauphin, sava elder, alyssa mehlhorn, regina pashcal dandrea, andrea perusquia, and catie raya for women's history month.fy22 welcomed more than 248,000 visitors to the Children's Museum of Phoenix. Over 33,000 of these visitors were through our every child program. We are grateful to our donors who make this program possible so all children, no matter their circumstance, can experience the joy of play.