Children’s Creativity Museum
221 4th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States
The Children’s Creativity Museum is an interactive children’s museum located in Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco , California, near Wikia ‘s headquarters. It offers workshops and exhibitions that enable children to produce their own media through various interactive, creative processes: stop motion animation, robot programming, music video production, design challenges, art projects, and more. The Children’s Creativity Museum is a 501(c)(3 ) non-profit organization with an annual revenue of approximately $2.1 million (as of 2016/17), including $600,000 in funding from the City of San Francisco.
The Children’s Creativity Museum opened as Zeum on October 31, 1998 as part of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency ‘s major 87-acre (350,000 m2) urban renewal project in the South Market Area. It is housed in a two-storey building, built on the top of the Moscone Convention Center, which includes a 200-seat theater and 3,000 square feet of exhibition space. The museum includes a carousel by Charles I. D. Looff in 1906.
Zeum changed its name to Children’s Creativity Museum in 2011 to raise awareness of the purpose of the museum. In a press release announcing a change of name, it stated: “Although the name Zeum sounded fun, it did not give parents any clues as to what they and their children would experience. With that understanding, our verbal branding team identified two primary objectives that the new name needed to achieve: it had to be descriptive enough to indicate who it was for, but also suggestive enough to match it. After getting over 200 names with Zeum leadership, it was agreed that the name “Children’s Creativity Museum” accomplished both goals.”
The Community Lab was transformed into Sketch Town on the first floor. This interactive exhibition allows visitors to draw, scan and interact with buildings and vehicles as they populate a virtual city spanning a vast projection surface.
Sketch Town is a fun way to talk about building communities, city living, transportation, and technology. The added benefit of using art to foster discussion makes this a great STEAM experience.
Build, sculpt, perform, and free your imagination. The Imagination Lab serves as an introduction to our educational approach by inspiring visitors to IMAGINE, CREATE and SHARE. Here, the youngest visitors are encouraged to IMAGINE in our interactive hands-on environment, to CREATE something original in the various studio spaces, and then to SHARE what they have created with their friends and families, or to be shown in the museum in our DIY Cloud Gallery.
In the Animation Studio, children and adults learn the basic skills of stop-motion animation, first by creating their own clay characters and then bringing them to life on screen. Our staff are always available to answer questions and provide support. All the materials you need to create an original animated film are provided, the only thing you need to bring is your imagination!
Visitors are encouraged to spend as long as they want to experiment with different techniques to make a film. When you’re done, your animation can be saved and emailed to share with your family , friends, and maybe even the Oscar Committee.
