Creating the Materials Library
The exhibits team at Boston Children's Museum commissioned youth and staff from YouthBuild Boston (YBB) to create four panels for our exhibit, Dream it! Build it!, that would encourage children and families to explore a diverse range of materials that are used in designing and building.
Concept development
After learning about the goals of the project, two teams of YBB youth spent time digging through Boston Building Resources (BBR), a non-profit store and community resource, to learn about different building materials and how they are used.
Then, each team picked photographs of places in Boston that they felt represented the heart and soul of the city. They used the shapes, textures, and colors of each of the images as inspiration to select material samples for their designs. Importantly, the youth also thought carefully of ways to make the variety of samples—fabric, carpet, wood, stone, plastic, and glass—fun, durable, and safe for the Museum's young visitors to touch.
Fabrication
YBB instructors tested different fabrication methods for the panels and frames, and experimented with ways to attach the material samples securely to the panels. They met with Museum staff to share ideas and problem-solve together.
YBB youth worked alongside their instructors to create each of the four finished panels. They cut samples to specific sizes, smoothed sharp edges and corners, and glued each piece to a specific place in the panels to complete the designs.
