KidsQuest, the children’s museum at the Factoria Mall in Bellevue, is a wonderland of exhibits and activities that can keep children engrossed for hours! Children are encouraged to give free rein to their imagination and creativity. The treehouse, the backyard, the waterway – offer delightful opportunities for children to ‘explore, play and learn’, which is the aim of the museum.
“I want kids to find the joy in learning and the more invisible you make it the better it is”, says Putter Bert, President, and CEO of KidsQuest.
KidsQuest would like the museum to be a slice of the education pie and make learning fun, exciting, and intriguing, for instance trying to get the kids to look at STEAM in different ways. Putter has added Art to the traditional STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) as she believes that “you cannot have art without science and science without art!” And at KidsQuest art and science are brought together in a perfect blend of innovation and creativity. Putter showed us how kids are using a salad spinner to create paintings – how amazing is that!
Interestingly, there are over 400 children’s museums in the country, according to Putter, but they are perceived as a daycare and people don’t see the educational content. “People think of the museum as a nice place to visit and our goal is to change the ‘nice’ to ‘necessary’,” she says.
Putter is appreciative of the support that KidsQuest has received from being a partner with Eastside Pathways. Eastside Pathways follows the collective impact approach to mobilize the community around common goals, measurements, and strategies to support every child, from cradle to career. It focuses on bringing together organizations to work together for a bigger and better impact.
“Eastside Pathways helped us get to know other organizations; what we do and what we can do together as a group. They helped us be smart collaborators”, acknowledges Putter. “We learned how to work with each other and how to make it much more effective.” At her first community meeting, organized by Eastside Pathways, Putter was able to show and share KidsQuest’s work. “Now people respect what we were doing in terms of early learning.”
Following that, in May as part of the Summer Extended Learning Program, KidsQuest partnered with the City of Bellevue’s Parks Department to put up Pop Up Museums in the parks so that more children and families could learn about its activities and learning programs.
“Eastside Pathways facilitated the creation of relationships between various organizations. It has helped people see that organizations have amazing amenities and services to really help families be successful from cradle to career.”
Putter believes that collective impact is not about “what can we get out of it”, but “what can we add” and “where can it go”. And she follows that same approach at KidsQuest. Everybody’s voice is critical and they all work together to make it a great place. Currently, they are excited about the new museum and are trying to figure out what it will be like.
“It’s been a great opportunity to have Eastside Pathways developing in our community. Eastside Pathways has been very open in listening to us and that is going to make us better. It’s always good to keep learning,” signs off Putter, with a smile.
Article written by Sujata Agrawal, communications strategist and storyteller, and volunteer writer for Eastside Pathways