Children's Museum Executive Director Jane Werner

As the Pittsburgh region begins to reopen from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are looking forward to visiting our favorite museums and other cultural attractions.

We talk to Children's Museum Executive Director Jane Werner about the museum's full reopening on June 12 and what visitors/members can expect.

The mission of Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is to provide innovative and inclusive museum experiences that inspire kindness, joy, creativity and curiosity for all learners. It forges connections with artists, community partners and neighbors to work on behalf of children, youth and families. The museum's vision is to transform education.

So good afternoon, everyone I know it's Friday, and it's a beautiful day out in Pittsburgh. But I'm pretty stoked to catch up with a dear old friend, I haven't had a chance to connect with. And I don't even know how long it's been. But I'll definitely blame a lot of it on COVID. Because we actually are neighbors. In terms of where we live in our communities, as well as in terms of our work were introduced from one another on the north side, I'll introduce formally, Jane Warner, who's executive director of the Children's Museum and a second, I want to give a big shout out to Huntington bank, for believing in us in every experiment that we do, it's always so much fun to work with them. But more importantly, they're so active in our community and their civic engagement is definitely noteworthy. And if you don't know them, they've been helping large small businesses for for quite a while, but have been really instrumental during COVID. And really helping our business community, make sure that they stay on their feet and get on their feet and move forward. As everyone knows, it's been a tough 16 months for many. But on a good note is Huntington bank supports our community in many, many different ways. So reach out to them 40 by 80, if you see on the screen, that's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh tech Council, that's the longitude and latitude of Pittsburgh. And that's where we focus on all things that are entrepreneurial and development pathways for people that have careers that might not have had access to those career. So stay tuned, we're going to talk more about that at a later date. We have muted your microphones. And we do that each and every day. But we've also have a chat. And the chat section is only to ask our guests questions, it is not to sell your wares, we have plenty of opportunities for people to sell their wares and other times. But today, it's only about the executive director, Jane where Jane and I go back, I think she's one of the few people that I've known for the entire time that I've been in Pittsburgh. And every time we are together, we always think of incredible ideas and ways to transform the city. But more importantly, is that you're going to get a little bit of an inside peek into Jane and the work that she's done and continues to do for our community and her passion around the work of the Children's Museum. This is a relic here in our community, the Children's Museum, but it's uh, it's known around the world. And she might not brag about it, but I am going to brag about it because I always do. She's also opened up a lab over the over the last couple of years and just done one experiment after another which is near and dear to all of us who have lived in tech for a long time. It's really about iterative design. And Jane is the epitome of that. So without any further ado, I'm bringing Jane to the forefront. Thank you so much for taking the time with us. It's Friday. It's a beautiful day in Pittsburgh, and probably in lots of places. But really appreciate it. We are recording today. So just want everyone to know that and we do archive these and they do get shared. So Jane, amazing to see you. I'm giving you a virtual hug. Thank you so much it for joining us. So I really want to first just start out with how are you like how how you know you have some upcoming things. But I want to know how is Jane doing? That's really important to all of us. How are you doing as a leader and as a member of our civic community and all that you have your hands in?

Well, thanks, Jerry. I have to say relic you said relic in there. I'm like oh relic. Is that bad? Is that a bad thing? Makes me feel incredibly old. But yes, and it makes? No, I'm doing fine. I'm doing just fine. It's been. It's been a year, I'll just say it's been a year I learned a lot. We all have. I think we've reprioritize things we've rethought everything, the museum has had to think like a startup all over again. And in some ways that was pretty thrilling. You know, it was it was a nightmare. But at the same time, once I got out of the nightmare mode and thought, you know what, there's some, you know, there, there's some, we have 40 great people left with great talent, we have two incredible facilities. We actually had a little bit of reserve. You know, we we could think differently about who and what the Children's Museum was during the pandemic, and then who and what we were going to become. And so it's been it's been a year of growth. But it takes a while to mourn the death of the Children's Museum The way I was and I will say that there were times that I looked at my retirement account about I don't know, 10 times a day. But I'm over that now. I'm excited to get that.

So funny, I can relate to that. That's great. So but before we even talk a little bit about the Children's Museum and the why, and the legacy, etc, and relic, I mean that in just in terms of permanent, that's really what I meant. I didn't mean it in terms of, of age. Tell her how long have you been there? And where were you before that because you sort of have a very interesting journey. And you actually knew Fred Rogers. And there's, there's all these things that I just would like to highlight.

Yeah, so I have been at the museum, and I can't believe it, since 1991. Yeah, I know. But I've been director since 99. And before that, I actually worked. I had my own little design firm. For just a couple of years before I took the job at the Children's Museum. Because I took the job at the Children's Museum, I already had a one year old, and I was thinking about having another baby. And I thought, this will be easy. I'll do this a couple of years, and then I'll move on. And here I am, all those years, 30 years laters. I decide what the math says, I don't know, something like that. Um, and so before that, I was at the Franklin Institute I was assistant director of at the Franklin Institute. And before that, I actually worked for Carnegie Science Center. And before that, the old planetarium. So and before that, W QED. So it's been kind of and before that I worked at a luggage store.

Wow, that's great. That's great. And you're there because you love the work that you're doing. So I mean, you take in the museum, the museum is how old now?

It'll be it's 38 years old. 38 years.

So start at the same time as the tech Council, Jonathan, and everyone. There must have been something going on there because leadership, Pittsburgh was around that same time. So that was a big inflection point. Yeah, we were 1938 years right now. Right. Jonathan's happening back then. That's kind of cool, man. Cool.

I think we should celebrate our 40th birthday all together. That's a great, that's a great idea.

That's I mean, you know, the Carnegie's and the symphony are doing their 75th thing this year. Let's, let's do this. Let's do 4040 seconds better.

That's better. I love that. We love that. And thank you so much. That's great. So let's talk about let's talk about what's up. What's coming up. I, you know, I, as I heard, and I released want to talk about, that there's an opening on June 12. But you know, what does that mean? Is it another June 12? This one is 19. You know, let's just go back was June 12 1983. When you started? Now, I'm going to go back and, and do some opening.

Yeah, you know, so in 83, we were 5000 square feet in the basement of the old post office building, the old building that we still have. And they saw about, I think it was about 30 40,000 people a year. Now we have, you know, an 80,000 square foot building, plus the museum lab, which is another 45,000 square feet. And we have the public park in front that we did. And we did the theater, we got them on their feet created that separate 501 c three, and now they're kind of on their own. So yeah, it's um, we're opening totally different we see 300. Before before COVID, we saw 320,000 people a year. So yeah, it's it's the growth has been remarkable. I mean, you know, country. Well, you and I were talking back in 2004. When we first expanded. We were seeing about 100,000 a year, and ever since then, the trajectory has just been going up. So it's been, it's been really great. We're hoping to get back to those numbers. We are opening June 12. But we are opening limited tickets and limited capacity, just to see how it goes. kids can't aren't vaccinated. So, you know, we're being very cautious and very careful and putting all protocols in place. So, you know, we're standing with kids, we're all gonna wear masks, you know, even if we're fully vaccinated, because they're not, and they can't get the vaccine. Unless they're 12. Right. This time, you know, we just we just feel that that was the appropriate thing to do for us. We just stayed closed. So we're thrilled about reopening Buy your tickets online. This is an thing for us. We're really kind of excited about all that we completely changed the first floor of the original Children's Museum. We put a new exhibit, we redid our makerspace, we put a new exhibit called kindness where our attic exhibit used to be, and kind of playing off of our work with Fred Rogers. And then our whole new bunch of wonderful exhibits in our garage. And then we open with our Pixar exhibit. That's based on the inside out movie. It's called emotions at play. And that will be in our traveling exhibit. Gallery, and then that will be there until January and then it travels country. We have a number of exhibits that travel the country. That's a huge income stream for us, which is, which is nice. And we really did waterplay. I mean, it's all so it's all fresh and new there. Yeah. And then museum lab also has some some new wonders, including an exhibit on portraiture. And we actually just got this huge new printer where you can design your own fabric and then it will print out your fabric. Yeah, and we have a new area called tech Learning Lab, where we will be doing our work with Pixar, we do a program called Pixar in a box to learn how to Pixar, the Pixar method. So that's actually going to be located there. And then of course, we're opening gymnasium, which is three storey climbing sculpture that was done by Melissa Orlan who is from Slovenia. And her art making is using traditional lace making techniques. So three storeys climbing, looks like doilies. And they're beautiful. And it's it's kind of funny, she got stuck here because she couldn't get back to Slovenia. One of the good things that happened for us. And so she stayed in Pittsburgh, and she just kept nodding. So this whole, this whole three storeys of climbing structure just got better and better. And she put models she actually needed knotted models of the COVID. Oh, yeah. So you can actually go around and find COVID. Wow. So she's still here. Did she go back? She's back because she is soon as she could she get went back to Slovenia. So that was actually in February, that she actually traveled back there. But yeah, so there was some really good things. Really good. So that can only be climbed. Those kids can only claim that right? So adults, it's I just went through on Wednesday. And it's tough. I mean, it's a tough climb. And it's it's Yeah, it's for older kids. Like the young, the young guys have things to do over at the Children's Museum museum lab. It's really for older kids. So, you know, fifth, sixth seventh, kind of up the range from there as well.

So the mission 38 years ago, is it the same mission.

But you know, as a matter of fact, how we spent our COVID time is that we did a deep dive into our mission, our vision, our values, our strategic objectives. And then we actually came up with action plans to meet those. So our new mission is to provide innovative museum innovative and inclusive museum experiences that inspire kindness, joy, creativity, and curiosity for all learners. Oh, I know, nicely. Yeah, I actually I have to tell you, because I'm kind of thrilled with the process that we went through to we decided this was back in April of last year, when we realized that we weren't going to be the same is that we divided the entire staff 45 of us that were left, we used to have a staff 200. And we had to lay people off because we weren't open. So he decided to take the 45 people and divide them into eight task forces that had to do with different aspects of the museum. And those Task Force were led by not me, and not the directors, but actually the associate directors and the senior managers. So the next generation of museum professionals, so they led them and each one of the task forces were was interdepartmental. Like we just mixed everybody up. And in fact, we put the directors in on teams that weren't directly related to their day job. And so the teams work together to look at the mission, to redo the mission, redo all of this, they all came together and kind of work together. It's kind of a cohesive unit after the team's talk. And I have to say it was one of the best experiences. Yeah. So it's, you know, kind of bringing new voices and new ideas to the table. It was it was a great process. And so we have a whole new direction that we're going, in some ways, some way was,

given that you have the Children's Museum, Pittsburgh has been ranked at least one of the top 10 or top five children's museums in the world, right. Am I capturing that? Like, consistently, consistently? Yes, you've received a lot of recognition from them for the lab itself, even though you've been running experiments prior to that. So

yeah, absolutely. Lots of and we just got another award from our industry, which is it's the outstanding practice award. So yeah, but we South by Southwest has given us an award. I mean, it's just been it's been a good, sorry, nice to get recognized. It really is. It really isn't. And

I'm sure that all the other children's museums have struggled from COVID, as well. So you definitely are not alone. So but we're very excited to hear that there's this sort of gradual reopening and engagement, it couldn't come at a better time. And we really need it. I mean, what are we hearing? What are we hearing in terms of, you know, families? I mean, I'm sure that you're pretty close to the communities and you know, you have a kinesthetic kind of high touch engagement environment that, you know, many people bring their kids there on a regular basis. always worry about the kids over the last 16 months and their engagement with new environments and with others, what what have you been hearing? Well, it's

interesting, I worry about, you know, the health of families and children, mental health, families and children. It's been sort of a you know, I think for some families, it's been really good. But for other families, it's been a complete disaster. I think that's kind of the story of COVID. You know, like, there's, there's some good, like, we've reprioritize what's important in our lives, you know, it's made us think that way. And then there's this other, you know, horrible part of it. So it's kind of it's kind of an interesting time, I think, for families, we did do a little experiment, we have been doing these kits. To go out to families. Actually, we did last summer, we did boxes or joy. We did 5000 boxes distributed through the family support centers, to kids who weren't going to have a great summer, you know, and so we wanted to provide them with things to play with. We've been working with the family support centers, again, to do a project with the Allegheny Health Department, where we've been working with getting kids out to the family support centers, and then doing professional development, so that the centers can actually distribute the kits and tell people what to do with them. So we've done gardening and we've done I mean, there's a whole series that was like, six kits, six different months. So we did art we did making gardening, we did all sorts of things like, um, so that's been really interesting. But we did this other experiment, right around Valentine's Day. We did an outdoor event. And never in my wildest dreams did I think anybody was coming to this event last night. And it was snowing and icy. It was like one of those rainy, snowy, icy black, it was so cold, and we were all there. We had the tables really spread out everywhere. And I got there. I don't know, like 15 minutes before the event was supposed to start. And people were queued up to come in. We were trying to keep them socially distance. It was like, Oh, my God, like I thought, oh, because we had done an outdoor event around Halloween 30 people showed up. This was this was a four hour event. And I think we saw I don't know, like 500 800 people so it was raining, it was snowing, it was dark. And there they were with these little kids. And and every everybody had a mask on. I was like so impressed. Everybody had an ascot everybody was very good about social distancing. And, you know, all I kept hearing was thank you for joining us like me. We are desperate like we are desperate to get out. We are desperate to do something with the kids. And so I think there is this real pent up need for us to be together again and to do things for children.

So know from October the darkest days right. So from up Whoever and by the time we get to February, people are we're ready to get out. Oh, all right.

I know, it's just to this day, I just Honest to God, I wouldn't have gotten out with kids. Because it was sort of like, I think we did it from four to eight. Because we wanted to show people had sent artwork their children's artwork in so we wanted to project on the building. And, and it was just so we wanted to do something. And it was we also, I don't know why we decided that we would do this like, over dinner thing. And that's the other part was like, who's coming over dinner?

Yes. So it's, it's you just get this inkling that people just, you know, wanted to do want to get out with their kids, they want their kids to see things, they want their kids to experience things and we want to be there for them.

So well. So imagine what's your sense of like June 12, then is that there's got to be even more pent up demand.

Yeah, I mean, we just started selling tickets. So we've sold how many for June 12. But you know, where there's still room, which is good. And the tickets are now online, which is going to be different for us. And I yeah, I'm now I have been talking to my colleagues across the country who have also opened. And I think that's going to what they've experienced kind of all over the place. Some open, you know, completely booked and then then attendance drops off, I think it's depending on the numbers, the COVID numbers. But again, they were open when vaccines were not as available as they are now. So

so we'll put a link to the tickets in the chat. So if you just tell us what that is, people want the link to this,

just go to our website, www dot Pittsburg kids.org. Okay, you'll see there's a banner that says click here for tickets.

So let's talk a little bit about our conic metals. That's sort of a little bit of my own history. So I'm very interested to see about, you know, what's going on with that. Are there investment in the children's exam?

Yes, when they were, they've actually invested in the Children's Museum quite nicely, I think there's going to be a big announcement about it. And what we've been working with them on. Anyway, they gave the money for April for COVID. It's nothing, right? Oh, yeah, it's always tough. So we've been actually working with them to develop a program in our maker space that is focused on metals. And so with their support, we have actually started to kind of get steeped in metals. So we bought an enameling oven, we actually have been doing a lot of press, so that you can emboss things like teaching kids how to boss, we've been doing welding, and then we're going to try to do welding in a big way shortly. Right now, we've been doing soldering, you know, kind of like all the different properties of metals. So we're pretty excited by what we've been doing with kids to date. And with kind of what we're, what we're doing professional development going forward for teachers. But there's also a camp that we're going to be running this summer, which is pretty exciting, all about metals. It's the only camp that we're running this summer, because we're just kind of easing in to getting back to some semblance of what we did in the past. Right, and to do it better. And we have this big after school program. That's that we've been working with our Manchester active with our kids in Manchester academic charter school. We're in our building with us. And yeah, and so it's just, it's going to be kind of a wonderful way of introducing metals and metalworking, and middle schoolers. So we're thrilled.

Now, talk about an area that doesn't get a lot of attention. And in terms of the opportunities and use, I mean, kids can't get their hands on that material. Nevertheless, understand the uses thereof.

Well, I always think that if you imagine I've maybe I'm just because I'm interested in women. Just imagine if you taught a girl how to weld sound sexist, but I think you could conquer the world like she could conquer the world.

I agree. I always wanted to weld. Right, and always wanted to.

I just think that actually empowering kids early that they can do things gives them the confidence to think that they can do anything else. Right.

So what about This gym lacing Is there anything we talked about that? No?

Yeah, we did we talked about that, right? That's, that's what it's called. It's Yes. So what happened just hurt. Cuz it's an interesting story in the library building the stacks, where they used to keep the books in this one section of the library would have cost us a quarter of a million dollars to take out, because they were structural to the building. So instead, I was like, what could we do instead? And our fabulous exhibit team said, hey, let's do a climbing structure. And that's how it all came about. So yeah.

So what what about outside an outdoor stuff? I mean, you do have a lot of different spaces in terms of what you've taken over. They're going to be opportunities for outdoor exhibits. I'm not trying to put more on you because I know just trying to ramp up and get into where you are. But people have been very receptive to outdoors.

Have yeah.

Oh, yeah. We've actually done a gardening program for years. We have a gardener on staff. So there's a museum garden that you can go through Adria, if you walk over to the Children's Museum, all the vegetables and everything. You have an outdoor classroom, that's part of our project with Pittsburgh public schools. We have a pre k in the building. So they use that space. It's a beautiful space with apple trees, right there in the middle of the city. And then we have kind of a program that we do with Manchester academic charter that's in museum lab, that they're actually growing their own food. So we're doing that, excuse me, we're doing all that. But then, of course, we have the park. Excuse me, computer community park museum that we kind of, we did. And we're doing the summer concert series this year, with the folks from never place. So free concerts on Wednesdays in the park. So come on down.

what time of day, what time of day. It's like Nam. Oh, that's great. That's great. Okay, yeah, we'll share that. So Jane, another thing is you've really seen the transformation of the north side as well. Been there, right? Remember, there used to be a project called the charm bracelet?

Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite things we've ever done. Yeah.

Right. And that was a way of connecting the well, you said, it was the way of what was the vision. So the vision was that we had all these cultural institutions on the north side, and how we were looking at how to connect them through not just a marketing point of view, but from an urban design point of view, and from kind of even a program point of view. And one of the things that we started to do so we started with kind of, you know, we started with the Warhol and with the mattress factory, and the aviary and the Children's Museum. And we invited a team, we had an NEA grant, we invited, I think it's four or five teams, design teams from all over actually the world, we had a designer come in from London. And they looked at the north side, kind of with fresh eyes, and they came up with really interesting ways of connecting all of us. So the hayzlett Theatre is a direct result of that, the Warhol and the Children's Museum went together, raise two and a half million dollars started separate 501 c three, set up a board, hired a director, and then did the renovations. And now that's kind of a thriving organization. So that actually was directly from the charm bracelet project. The other thing that we did was the park, there was this need to redo this kind of sunken Plaza that was all concrete. And so the Children's Museum took that on we actually took the park from the city raised six and a half million dollars to the park and then gave it back to the city. And we still maintain it. We spent we haven't maintenance fund for that. So you know, we were we were looking at what cultural institutions do to kind of rethink their community. And I will say that when Jeremy King, the owner of a place came in right now owns our parking lot. And I said, you can't please don't take away a parking lot because you'll kill us. And he said, we would never do that. Because the reason we're here is that you guys stabilize the neighborhood, we would have never bought no place if not. So this impact that cultural organizations can have and also the impact that you can have when working together. We did so many interesting and fun projects. I think my favorite was we worked with We all work together to do like these programs in the park. And I think it was actually Manchester Crossman's guild that hired this artist with money. We did mini grants that I remember we actually raised a bunch of money. And then we did these mini grants. And we did this. This artists did Chuck shoes. And all of the directors from all the charm bracelet institutions all walked to the park with these chalk shoes on made marks. And people come out and say, like, what are you doing? We were like, oh, we're going to the park. And remarkably, people would come along with us and we had a big party celebration in the park that no one that park is somewhat used by dog walkers but so it would cut the community in the park. And then we had free kayaking lessons. We worked with venture outdoors tent free Kyla lessons on like, Arthur, they're not like Arthur, but it's that little lake in the middle of the night. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all kind of fun. Yeah, it's, and so we, you know, little things still, it was the first example of real networking. I think, among the cultural institutions in Pittsburgh,

you've actually paved the way. And I'm glad, I'm glad that you have a chance to spend 30 Minutes with Us. I'm glad that we're going to have this reopening. I'm glad about everything that you're talking about in the future, think of us and just to wrap it up sort of rhetorically, but definitely meant with some outcomes, how can the tech and business community help during this period of time, and I think that's what you and I will follow up on. But if anyone has ideas and things and ways to participate, you can find Jane through the website that we've posted and know that, you know, she's doing this work. This is a labor of deep love. And she has been an anchor tenant in the revitalization of the north side. And she's just been. Yeah, someone with the story is expiring, inspiring. I was gonna say Jane has been inspiring to me personally, in terms of everything that she's taken on in a very steady hand. And in a way that's that's rooted in deep kindness. So I can't thank you enough, Jane for taking the time with us. We are cheerleaders of yours. And I think everyone and to Friday, it's amazing out in Pittsburgh, I think I had to turn my air conditioning on. And that's what it is. It might snow tomorrow, but it doesn't matter. This is Pittsburgh. So thank you, Jane, thank you to your team. And really appreciate everyone joining us today. I think, Jonathan, what's up for next week?

We are taking Monday off but we'll be back on Tuesday with Senator Bob mentioned talking about the clean infrastructure. So it's always good to get our public policy updates here on business as usual, should be fine. Yeah. Thanks, Jane.

Thanks for asking. This was fun. Good to see you all. Take care. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai