Lexington Children's Museum is a 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to create a fun and inclusive learning experience that ignites a community of curious minds!

Lexington Children’s Museum was founded in 1990 through a public-private partnership with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. In 1987, a group of inspired citizens presented the idea of a children’s museum to Lexington Mayor Scotty Baesler and future Mayor Pam Miller. City leaders saw the need to bring education to children through a creative, interactive model. With the assistance of Lord Cultural Resources, a consulting firm in Toronto, the city began serious planning for the Lexington Children’s Museum. The site selection committee considered several sites and chose the current location in The Square. Since its opening, the museum has welcomed millions of visitors.

Lexington Children’s Museum inspires future generations through educational play with museum attendance averaging over 50,000 visitors annually and impacting an additional 10,000 through community outreach activities.

In 2005, Lexington Children’s Museum adopted Explorium of Lexington as a DBA; however, it returned to operating as Lexington Children’s Museum in Spring 2024.

• Arts Education/Youth Arts
• Visual Arts
• Public Art

The Lexington Children's Museum (LCM) requests $2,500 to create a dedicated exhibit area for installations within our Art Lab. Throughout the year, this space will feature 4-6 new art installations created through a variety of arts-centered programming at the museum. The planning and creating of each installation will involve museum staff, patrons, and when possible, local artists! Examples of potential installations are inspired by similar programs at other museums and include ideas like: wire structures that visitors can attach materials to to build collaborative sculptures, a curated collection of fabrics and fibers for artists to weave together into a large tapestry, assorted objects for stamping to create a mural, and 3D structures to display objets d'art made in response to themed prompts. Each installation will be designed to encourage creative play and collaborative engagement that escapes the bounds of a single page of paper.

The Art Lab currently allows visitors to engage in exploration that fosters an appreciation for the arts, and could even inspire them to become professional artists one day. This space includes content about the principals of design and the elements of art. Visitors have access to paint and drawing supplies, paper, craft materials like pipe cleaners and ribbon, scissors and hole punchers, stencils, how-to-draw guides, and more. However, ways to display art in the current Art Lab are limited and center around 2D pieces. Despite our modest display options, we have seen great enthusiasm from patrons for creating and submitting artwork for LCM to showcase. Over the last year, LCM has made a concerted effort to celebrate patron creativity in three primary ways: featuring submissions in our monthly newsletter, guiding art projects in our weekly Art-ventures! program, and participating in the LexArts HOP.

LCM has undergone several enhancements in recent years, nurturing the foundations of success and learning for every generation in our community. In keeping with these efforts, the museum recently harnessed support from LexArts and collaborated with the Station Arts program. The high school students at Station Arts created a whimsical mural for the museum, which helps visitors find the Art Lab more readily, entices them to create, and inspires them to use their imaginations! This work exemplifies ongoing efforts at the museum to enhance what we offer and to include the community in the museum’s evolution. Support for this year’s proposal would continue our artistic vision along that same vein.

Enthusiasm for LCM's recent efforts to encourage art for art's sake signals that it is time to expand the potential of our Art Lab. Carving out an intentional space for installations in the Art Lab would transform the exhibit from a functional space into one that is visually impactful and more immersive. By rotating 4-6 art installations throughout the year, we would garner fresh excitement and expand the forms of art we showcase. This would ensure that the Art Lab has an impact commensurate with the experiences provided in other exhibits, allowing for a more cohesive experience throughout the museum. The art featured in our installations will reflect educational pillars and give patrons real-world examples of how art concepts can be applied. By combining art, play, and learning, we will provide visitors with a space where their creativity can run wild as they gain a deeper appreciation for the principles and concepts that inform art and design.

This grant would help cover the cost of supplies to transform the section of the room where we want to display installations, as well as materials needed to build each pieces. Visitors, including children, who participate in LCM programs, such as Art-ventures! and various camps will help create the installations. We plan to use materials we already have, to secure in-kind donations as each project takes shape (e.g., we already have sources for fabric, old books, cardboard, and more), and to partner with organizations like the Center for Creative Reuse. This approach will allow us to maximize our budget so that we will have approximately $375-$565 to spend on each installation, depending on whether complete 4 or 6 of them.

When opportunities arise to collaborate with professional artists, they will also be included in the process of planning and curating installations. LCM spends considerable time cultivating relationships with artists in the community, so we are confident we will be successful in garnering participation. We also have two professional artists on staff—Jonathan Leach and Sarah Gerrets-Praria—who are enthusiastic to participate. By utilizing our current programming to help source art pieces, inspiration, and participation, LCM demonstrates the creative leadership needed for successful completion of this project.

LCM helps children and families develop foundational skills and lights a creative spark for lifelong learning. In our Art Lab exhibit, we encourage visitors to unleash their imaginations through exploration and artistic expression. Visitors often create beautiful and inspiring examples of this in our space where they learn about the elements of art and design through both structured, museum programming and open-ended play.

Research shows that creating art helps establish foundations for success in children, such as motor skills, healthy decision making, cultural awareness, stress relief, and improved academic performance. The Art Lab is a vital part of our mission at the Lexington Children's Museum to create a fun and inclusive learning experience that ignites a community of curious minds. Enhancing this space with regularly-updated installations that feature a range of artistic mediums will strengthen the impact we have on the children and families we serve in our community.

A new display area dedicated to installations will encourage exploration of a broader range of mediums and perspectives, while also showing patrons real world examples of how artists can collaborate with established organizations in fresh ways. In turn, such collaboration could inspire visitors to pursue their passions or spark new interest in the arts.

This exhibit space would both inspire creativity and allow families and children to be featured in a museum exhibit, demonstrating our dedication to building a communal space where all are encouraged to create and play! LCM will also actively seek participation from local artists who are willing to share their expertise, enthusiasm, and insight with children as each installation is conceived of and constructed. Finally, this project will encourage art for the sake of art. While many children's museum's incorporate art into STEM programs, as do we in almost all of our programs, LCM is also committed to holding space for art and creativity in general, not just as a vehicle for understanding other disciplines.

The Lexington Children's Museum utilizes a range of online and traditional modes of communication and marketing. To properly convey our programming and events to the community we continually add to our email subscribers (now almost 9,000), maintain an engaging social media presence of 14,000+ followers, and maintain an up-to-date website. In addition, we send out a monthly digital newsletter, a year-end letter, an annual report, and event invitations. The museum regularly submits events to local community boards and newsletters, and makes appearances on both television and radio. To ensure we maximize our public relations resources, we receive support and advice from a Marketing Committee comprised of industry experts in marketing and communications, and maintain strong relationships with organizations such as LexArts, VisitLex, Commerce Lexington, and many others throughout the community.

LCM serves the communities of Fayette county, Kentucky, and beyond. Many of our visitors come from the Bluegrass and Appalachia regions, including Fayette, Madison, Franklin, Jessamine, Clark, Scott, and Woodford counties among others. Thousands of students and educators (over 7,000 in FY 2026) visit the Lexington Children's Museum each year, including a large number of field trips from Title 1 schools. In addition to over 53,000 admissions at the museum in FY 2026, we provide play and learning opportunities to another 10,000 people through mobile programs.

LCM strives to provide access to all families and children regardless of socio-economic status, race and ethnicity, ability, or age. While children are our primary audience, we welcome families and adults to join in on the play because research has shown that children learn and develop best when adults engage with them. As with the rest of our programming, this project will be designed to include everyone.

As a whole, the Lexington Children's Museum works to provide a safe and inclusive environment that is accessible to all children and their grown-ups. Our Art Lab is no exception. The range of supplies and relaxed atmosphere invites experimentation, allowing people from all walks of life to share and explore. We also provide easy and comfortable access into the art room with plenty of space. By providing a flexible space and a diverse range of art supplies, patrons can be assured that the art room is not limited by artistic skill level, or any other factors. Installations will also be designed to invite engagement and contributions from a broad range of participants.

LCM has community relationships that spread across arts and non-arts organizations. We cultivate these relationships through programs, special events, and other projects such as the one proposed here. Examples include: engineering academies from Bryan Station and Tate's Creek high schools helping design and build exhibit components, Station Arts creating a mural for the museum, community members serving on committees like our Curation Committee, Valvoline presenting our annual STEM Day, experts from local businesses presenting during our camps, local arts and cultural groups participate in our monthly Community Connections program, the museum participating in the LexArts HOP, local artists being featured at our annual Night for the Museum event, and local students joining our Development and Communications internship program. In addition, LCM will be serving as the Cornerstone Innovation Partner at the University of Kentucky throughout the 2026-2027 academic year.

LCM strives to ignite curiosity and foster lifelong learning. Artistic endeavors are important parts of fostering curiosity and learning, so we are always looking for innovative ways to encourage creative thinking. For this project, our main goal is to create 4-6 art installations in our Art Lab throughout the year. These installations will help us meet four primary objectives:
-Make the Art Lab feel more immersive and visually impactful to inspire visitors,
-Create opportunities for collaborative art pieces,
-Continue to hold space for creating art for art's sake,
-Encourage visitors to consider creative work that is not limited to two-dimensions or the edges of a sheet of paper.

Throughout the year, we will make steady progress on building and revealing the art installations we embark upon, ensuring that we execute at least 4 of them and space them out at regular intervals. Each installation will be promoted via the museum's social media and digital newsletter to garner engagement and invite participation with the creation and curation processes as appropriate. To gauge the impact of the installations on visitors, we will invite patrons to complete surveys about their experiences and reactions to the pieces, as well as to share ideas for works they might like to see or help create in the future. LCM will also track how many children, adults, artists, and staff are engaged throughout the year in the design, creation, and curation of each installation.