by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
In the immortal, lip-synched words of Milli Vanilli, “Blame it on the rain.” The 12th installment of St. Augustine’s Ancient City Kids Day was cancelled last weekend when mid-morning downpours made a massive mud puddle of Francis Field. The rain was a bummer for many families, mine included, but also for exhibitors who hoped to share their goods and services with area parents and their little ones. But a little precipitation is not going dampen the spirits of Kathy Weed and Wendy Philcox, the daring mommy duo behind the Children’s Museum of St. Johns (or CMSJ), a brand new non-profit that was set to debut at the annual family festival. EU recently spoke with Philcox about their big idea, how they plan to implement it and what you can do to help.
The idea behind CMSJ was born when Weed and Philcox, mothers of three and one respectively, attended a child’s birthday party earlier this year and began talking about an award-winning hands-on learning center in South Carolina.
“Kathy Weed and I had been, on separate occasions, to a relatively new museum in Charleston called the Children’s Museum of the Low Country and both had kind of this revelation: we need something like this in our community because it’s just a wonderful resource,” said Philcox. “We just had this chance conversation… and that was it, we just said let’s try to do something like that here.”
Since then, the two have been hard at work, making contacts, working with the Association of Children’s Museums and meeting with members of the community to figure out what to put in their museum once they get the idea off the ground.
“We have had a community roundtable and plan to host more of them in all of the different sectors of St. Johns County…” Philcox explained. “We just wanted to get feedback from the community and you always get better ideas when you get a group process going, kind of a think-tank.”
Some ideas tossed around so far include a railroad exhibit that honors one of Henry Flagler’s contributions to the area, an archeological dig site, kid-sized replicas of Old St. Augustine including the Castillo de San Marcos and Old Village houses, and a room dedicated to aquatic ecosystems.
“We’re wide open to possibilities,” Philcox said. “The main thing to keep in mind is that every children’s museum is going to be unique to its community. Ultimately our exhibits are going to reflect the unique history of this area- social history, cultural history, natural history, our coastal environment and things like that.”
CMJS is still in its infancy, with a fully operational permanent site still three years away, maybe longer. But area families will get a sneak peek of what’s in store much sooner when CMJS satellite exhibits begin popping up all over town.
“One thing that emerging museums do is you’re basically a museum without walls until you have the site and the space,” explained Philcox. “You can take the exhibits and take them to schools. The St. Johns County library system has been very helpful to us and friendly. Potentially we could take an exhibit and schedule it to go and rotate to all of the branch libraries. That’s something that we’ll definitely be doing next year quite a lot because it certainly creates awareness, it creates desire for the museum.”
Their first “museum without walls” experiment was “Walk like a Timucua,” their booth at the ill-fate Ancient City Kids Day. It’s an exhibit that they still plan to implement when the festival is rescheduled or perhaps even sooner.
“It focuses on something that’s unique to our environment and that’s the Timucua, the first inhabitants of the area,” said Philcox. “We have a designer who developed a mask; basically a warrior’s mask that’s like a panther head… That’s what the kids will do is put these together and they can dress like a Timucua Indian. So they get to do the things they like to do- paste and dress up- but in the process of doing that they’re going to learn about the Timucua, some of their culture.”
So what can you do to help bring this incredible idea to life?
“It’s all about fundraising at this point because mission equals money,” said Philcox. “Nothing can happen without the funds behind it and unfortunately right now the State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs just froze all of their cultural facilities funding, so funding is very tough right now for cultural organizations. It’s really going to be up to the private sector to fund things that they think need to happen and then we’ll be working on lobbying the state and the county for funding. Life or death for not-for-profit organizations is funding.”
Learn more about the Children’s Museum of St. Johns at their website, explorecmsj.org. There you can read about their vision, sign up for the e-newsletter, play the “Dig It! Adventures in Archaeology” game and discover how you can become a member of CMJS.
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