Planning for interactive spaces to engage young minds and bodies are coming to the North Carolina Transportation Museum and Tryon Palace thanks to a generous $115,000 grant from the Charles A. Cannon Charitable Trusts to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (NCDNCR).
"We strive to make our sites destinations of choice for visitors and families," said NCDNCR Secretary Susan Kluttz. "I am thankful and appreciative to the Cannon Trusts for the opportunity this grant gives us to enhance these experiences for our guests."
The planning grant will bring together early childhood education experts, landscape architects, developers, museum professionals and other stakeholders to identify educational goals, community needs and best practices during a three-day planning meeting this spring.
Numerous studies document the negative consequences of children not spending enough time outdoors - including attention disorders, obesity, anxiety, depression, weaker immune systems and compromised academic performance. As a result museums, parks, historic sites, zoos and other informal educational institutions are seeking to better capture the attention of families while providing more outdoor, nature-based, interactive learning experiences for young children.
The North Carolina Zoo and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences are among NCDNCR venues that already incorporate outdoor play spaces to engage the youngest visitors, and this grant will enable the department to build interactive spaces at the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer and Tryon Palace in New Bern.
Recommendations from the spring planning meeting will allow development of a schematic designs by year's end. Funding will pay the honorarium and travel costs for national experts, pay for all meeting costs and retain a design team to develop the schematic plan and preliminary site preparation.