Comments Off on MCM Roadshow: Monroe Street Farmers Market
October 8, 2023
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9:00 am
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12:00 pm
Join MCM Roadshow at Monroe Street Farmers Market. Get creative at our arts-and-crafts table and fort-building station, then browse local goods next to Edgewood College.
Madison Children’s Museum Roadshow brings mobile exhibits and maker activities to community events in Madison and the surrounding area. Create a miniature work of art to take home and get inventive with creative fort and structure building activities.
Comments Off on MCM Roadshow: Family Frolic with UCP at McGaw Park
September 23, 2023
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4:00 pm
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7:00 pm
Join MCM Roadshow at the Family Frolic with UCP at McGaw Park. This celebration includes free family fun with activities for all abilities. Food is available to purchase. Enjoy a bounce house, ball pit, bubble fun, balloon art, musical entertainment, County Resource Fair, and more!
Madison Children’s Museum Roadshow brings mobile exhibits and maker activities to community events in Madison and the surrounding area. Create a miniature work of art to take home and get inventive with creative fort and structure building activities.
Comments Off on MCM Roadshow: Urban Triage Harvest Festival at the Farley Center
September 16, 2023
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3:30 pm
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6:30 pm
Join MCM Roadshow at the 2nd Annual Urban Harvest Festival. This celebration marks the second year of recognizing Urban Triage’s summer achievements and community impact. Grounded in sustainability and growth, the festival honors the collective efforts of funders, volunteers, and community members in empowering vulnerable individuals in the Greater Dane County Area. Enjoy a wide variety of entertainers and live music, plus free catered food, free wine, free beer, and more.
Madison Children’s Museum Roadshow brings mobile exhibits and maker activities to community events in Madison and the surrounding area. Create a miniature work of art to take home and get inventive with creative fort and structure building activities.
Comments Off on MCM Roadshow: Half Pint Resale at the Mandt Center
September 16, 2023
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11:30 am
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1:30 pm
Join MCM Roadshow at the Half Pint Resale! At the Half-Pint Resale, families can shop for consignment items including clothes, toys, gear, nursery, furniture and more for pregnant mamas and kids ages 0-12.
Madison Children’s Museum Roadshow brings mobile exhibits and maker activities to community events in Madison and the surrounding area. Create a miniature work of art to take home and get inventive with creative fort and structure building activities.
Comments Off on MCM Roadshow: Good Neighbor Gathering at Brittingham Park
September 10, 2023
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12:00 pm
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3:00 pm
Join MCM Roadshow at Madison’s Good Neighbor Gathering (GNG) in Brittingham Park. GNG is an alcohol-free festival that features food, arts, crafts, and entertainment specifically for the enjoyment and education of children and their families. From bounce slides, bubbles, balloons, and bike parades, to environmental education, craft vendors, food carts, art activities, music, dance, and more, children of all ages enjoy this special day. At GNG, kids can be themselves, free to run and play, connect with friends and make new ones, and learn more about their community.
The festival features educational tabling from MCM, environmental groups, local healthcare and public health organizations, area non-profits and schools, voting rights groups, and many youth-oriented organizations. This year, the GNG will be contributing 20% of all proceeds to District 13 neighborhoods with fewer resources (Bayview, Triangle, Baycreek).
Look down. The sidewalk just got a little less pedestrian—and a lot more joyful.
In these times of great stress and isolation, creative, healing play is especially important.
In that spirit Madison Children’s Museum launched Sidewalk Surprises today, in collaboration with the city of Madison.
This community-wide exhibit is enlivening city sidewalks with playful, whimsical, cross-cultural hopscotch challenges, encouraging movement and physical activity. Using dozens of game patterns from around the world, MCM is infusing physical play with citywide math and cultural learning.
Museum staff and local artists are covering sidewalks across Madison and beyond with hundreds of these temporary hopscotch courses, mazes, and labyrinths. Chalk artists are working throughout the week and will complete the courses by Friday, June 26. The spray chalk will last several weeks, depending on the weather, giving many children a chance to enjoy them.
These solo sidewalk games encourage walking—and skipping, hopping, and jumping—through spaces, rather than gathering. The games support social distancing as they create joy. This is especially important since many of children’s most beloved places in the community are currently closed—Madison Children’s Museum among them.
Based on the book Hopscotch Around the World (Mary Lankford), the hopscotch games support cultural and math learning, spatial awareness, small and gross motor skills, and dexterity. They will be spread across the city’s many, diverse neighborhoods and enhanced by online learning resources.
Over thirty different kinds of sidewalk games and activities will be represented. As a group, they include multi-cultural themes, games for younger children, and courses that can be accessed by those with different abilities, including wheelchair users.
An online gallery and map of game locations will be posted at the end of June.
Since closing in mid March, Madison Children’s Museum has produced activity kits and online programs through MCM at Home—that programming continues, but now MCM Roadshow takes center stage. MCM Roadshow is a series of temporary, popup play experiences throughout our community. Sidewalk Surprises is first in the series.
“Kids’ need for open-ended, creative play hasn’t changed. But the opportunities for those rich play experiences have diminished,” says Brenda Baker, director of exhibits for the museum. “We know that plenty of good online resources for kids have sprung up during the pandemic. But parents and caregivers are looking for more opportunities for their kids to play outside. Using sidewalks as our canvas, I think we’ve found a way to recreate some of the museum experience in unexpected places—where kids will practically trip over these invitations to play, move, and learn.”
MCM is partnering with the City of Madison and collaborating with surrounding municipalities, neighborhood centers, neighborhood associations, and local artists. In an attempt to help artists affected by the pandemic, the museum has worked with Karin Wolf, city arts administrator, to enlist community artists. Some of those participating were also involved in the city’s recent downtown mural project.
MCM staff has worked within the City of Madison’s social distancing and sidewalk marking guidelines to ensure safety.
“These playful games and activities, spread throughout the city of Madison, are the work the museum does best—creating joyful, active, play-based learning experiences for our community’s children that reinforce critical educational concepts,” says Baker.
Sidewalk Surprises is a Madison Children’s Museum Roadshow Project, creating temporary public art in collaboration with the City of Madison. The project is joyfully made possible by Madison Community Foundation and Endres Manufacturing Company Foundation.
Sidewalk Surprises is supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding from Alliant Energy Foundation, American Family Insurance Dreams Foundation, US Bank Foundation, Madison Arts Commission, Veridian Homes, Dane Arts, American Transmission Company, and Madison South Rotary.
