The Bay Area Discovery Museum is designed to ignite creative thinking in children. 7.5 acres of natural beauty inspires families to engage in a world of possibilities. Framed by the majestic backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, the museum is a space for imaginations to run wild. Every curated detail of our exhibits brings creative thinking to life for all stages of childhood. Navigate winding tunnels to develop physical and intellectual risk-taking skills. Feel the rush of cold-water tide pools that surprise and awaken curiosity. Imagine new worlds by transforming into a spider, a ship captain, or a bridge builder. At every turn is a new opportunity to challenge the boundaries of creativity.

Now we are taking these experiences beyond our physical location. We launched the Center for Childhood Creativity in 2011 to pioneer new research, thought-leadership, and teacher training programs that advance creative thinking in all children—extending our impact beyond the Museum.

Our mission: To ignite and advance creative thinking for all children.

Activities that support our mission include:

• Museum speaker series
• Family Classes
• Drop-in & pop-up programming
• Not-A-School (creative enrichment drop-off program)
• Self-guided and Enriched school visits
• Performances & festivals
• Teacher training
• Outreach to subsidized pre-schools in Contra Costa, Marin and San Francisco Counties
• Exhibits, both indoor and outdoor
• Staff that are experts in early childhood learning and development
• Our educational philosophy of open-ended, child-directed learning
• Museum’s Center for Childhood Creativity

Project description:

Problem: Lack of clear data for positioning existing and planned paid programming. Data is important for revenue projections & long-term planning for Museum, Center for Childhood Creativity and Brick Building.

Goals/deliverables: A bottom up analysis of all of our existing and planned paid programming.  To include benchmarking, revenue modeling and suggested price ranges.  The benchmarking to include not only the programs and program fees at comparable institutions but also some idea of their classroom/dedicated program space (for example, the new Exploratorium has 6000 sq. ft. of classroom space) and the breakdown of paid vs. unpaid programming.

This information is critical not only in positioning our programs well with visitors and other users of such programs, but is important for maximizing revenue which in turn supports our outreach efforts and free programming.  We are in a time of significant growth, not only significantly expanding the Museum’s onsite offerings but through our newest and largest effort, our Center for Childhood Creativity where we are adding more trainings and programs that are a new direction for the Museum.