The Waterloo Regional Children's Museum is a place where art and technology meet to stimulate creativity and motivate learning. Visitors reveal their artistic imagination to reveal the unexpected, unconventional, and even incongruous possibilities of technology.

Vision

The Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum is housed in Canada’s Technological Triangle. Its exhibit programme reflects the convergence of art and technology, showcasing local technology and research while exploring the building blocks of science. The exhibits are conceived as open-ended discoveries using art as the vehicle of exploration and will provide the opportunity to manipulate technology and simultaneously encourage creativity. Children will learn intuitively through play and experimentation.

The interactive exhibits will be attractive to children as genuinely fun games to play. However, their foundation will be based upon scientific principles that can be explored further through interaction. Invention, the creative force behind both art and technology, is an important aspect of the exhibit design.

The Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum will foster the love of learning and an understanding of art and technology by encouraging hands-on exploration, creativity, expression and discovery. Children of all ages and abilities will be able to enjoy and learn from the exhibits, as the Museum will be fully accessible. The Museum is designed to provide hands-on learning opportunities for students in Waterloo Region and beyond.

Artifact Collection Policy

The Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum actively collects artifacts that complement its educational and exhibit programs and relate to the following themes:

• Mathematics and patterning
• Mechanics and hydraulics
• Energy and Waves
• Communications

All objects proposed for acquisition are evaluated based on condition, documentation of authenticity and relevance to the Museum’s permanent collection.

To find out more about how you can donate to the Museum, contact Leanne Vanderhout Manager of Programs and Collections (519) 749-9387 #226.

Exhibit Designer – Kathryn Saunders.

Architects –
Architects, Jana Levitt and Marko Lavrisa of Levitt Goodman Architects Ltd., an award-winning Toronto based firm, were awarded the contract to transform the Goudies building into the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum in April 2000 after a national architectural competition. Their extensive experience and sensitivity to detail have shaped what was once an abandoned building into a dynamic environment that is conducive to creativity and learning for children.