Due to the Great Recession, Bend’s last brick-and-mortar children’s museum, Working Wonders, closed in 2009, leaving families of young children with few options for indoor, hands-on learning. Children’s Museum of Central Oregon, a nonprofit founded in 2015, is aiming to change that by raising enough money to build a learning center with STEAM-based exhibits, projected to open in 2026.
Originally focusing on a pop-up style children’s museum, the nonprofit offered outdoor education built around summer camps with STEAM-based activities, but the pandemic soon put an end to its programming. Post pandemic, CMCO was lacking direction. That’s when Kenady Wilson, who is now president of CMCO’s board, got involved.
With Central Oregon’s population booming and more and more families moving to the area, Wilson realized there was enough support from the community to build a brick-and-mortar museum. “In terms of the state of Oregon, ours is actually the only region in the entire state that doesn’t have a children’s museum,” explains Wilson.
“We are currently fundraising to support the design and planning phases of the brick-and-mortar space.” The board has raised about half of its $100,000 fundraising goal, allowing them to bring on Gyroscope Incorporated as the museum’s planning firm.
Early in April, the firm came to town and CMCO held a stakeholder meeting in a community forum. “Part of [Gyroscope’s] process is to really engage with the community,” explains Wilson. “We want to be able to incorporate as much input as we can from the larger Central Oregon population, so it’s not just coming from the board members and the museum.”
According to Wilson, Gyroscope will design the visitor experience, including where exhibits go, the flow of the space and what the museum will look like. Once that is complete, it will collaborate with CMCO’s architects to create renderings of the space.
When asked what CMCO hopes to create, Wilson says, “Our big vision is to have roughly a 35,000-square-foot building, which will be a combination of the museum itself as well as programming space.” Additionally, Wilson says the museum would like to have a science lab along with a variety of exhibits in the museum, a small theater space that can be used for children’s theater or be rented by the community and programming classroom space for elementary-aged after school programs and summer camps.
The new brick-and-mortar children’s museum will serve families with children ages zero to fifth grade. However, Wilson says, CMCO is planning to include teen spaces as well. “One bit of feedback we got through the stakeholder community meetings is trying to make it as intergenerational as we can, so that the whole family can actually enjoy the exhibits.”
CMCO has narrowed down the new museum’s address to four potential locations, all of which are spread out around Bend. “We have one on the east side, one on the west side, a location on the north end of town and then one that’s fairly central,” Wilson explains. “Within the next month, my goal is to have us choose a location so that the design team and architects and fundraising will all focus on one location, and we can design for a specific place instead of having an amorphous vision.”
After the design phase, likely in the fall of 2023, CMCO will start a larger multi-million-dollar capital campaign that will hopefully result in a brand-new brick-and-mortar children’s museum ready to open doors in 2026. Families don’t have to wait to enjoy CMCO’s offerings, though, as they plan to start pop ups this year and then plan to launch summer camps in 2024.
Families interested in the process or wanting to find out more about the Children’s Museum of Central Oregon can find them online at: cmcoregon.org.
This article appears in BendNest Summer 2023.
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