Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
Why Failure in Making?
We lost nearly all of our Maker Educators during pandemic layoffs. In efforts to rebuild internal capacity, there was a lot of trying to re-establish “maker mindsets” among the staff — getting them to realize and honor differences in learning, be comfortable with prototyping and trying new things, and facilitating productive experimentation and “failure” in our visitors — understanding what was a real barrier to “success” and what was a perceived barrier, and pushing visitors towards their zone of proximal development!
I really enjoyed it [the video recording and reflection on practice]. I thought it was very scary at first just because I think everybody’s knee jerk reaction to failure is embarrassment and vulnerability and the idea of being observed by your peers and we’re all talking about it and discussing how do we fail or what can we do better and different was scary, but it’s been 100% a positive experience. Even just opening up those channels of communication with my colleagues, it’s provided more outlets for encouragement, recognition of, oh, I like what that person is doing. I want to do that too. (Educator, Year 3)
What is Failure
For visitors/ kids/ guests, it’s a constant re-assessment of expectations. Trying something and having it “not work” the way they want it to. Needing to adjust and evaluate, change and try again. For staff, we are designing for inclusive, engaging, scaffolded experiences that meet our learning practices, so a “failure” (learning opportunity!) would be a program that does not appropriately meet visitors’ needs, or creates unnecessary barriers to participation and engagement.
failure-based activity
As a team, we discussed camps that would be good for this project. One activity was a shoe box dollhouse room. In this failure-based activity, learners transformed a shoebox into a miniature room, complete with furniture and décor. It supports spatial reasoning, measurement skills, and creative problem-solving while engaging students in the design process.
one failure moment or challenge
One challenge we encountered during the professional development process was scheduling. Coordinating meeting times — especially over the summer — proved to be a significant hurdle. Additionally, we learned that not all educators initially identified as “makers,” which made conversations about failure in making an important focal point.
We identified a core group of educators to start with, and did our best to align their schedules where possible, including providing pizza and holding meetings after the usual work day. Of course, it meant everybody was tired from a busy day leading camps or facilitating visitors, but the conversations were still invigorating.
In the future, I think that while discussing summer camps as failure-rich spaces was a great idea, it would have made things much easier if we were able to capture moments from camps and discuss in the early fall. Since this project, we’ve had camp schedules where we didn’t offer full camp during the week of July 4th. Finding moments like a “day off” from camps where we could make more time in the schedule would’ve made finding time to talk much easier.
What did We learn?
Providing the time, space, and opportunity to discuss failure is such a great way not only to grow capacity in staff, but to show that we are invested in them as an organization. While professional development and learning opportunities can be difficult to schedule and cost staff time to run, the sense of community formed by talking about failure is so rich, and the learning that happens feels immensely worthwhile.
one insight or practice We Continue
As we have continued to grow back our capacity post-COVID closure and try out different staffing models, the emphasis on trying new things is critical – at both an organizational level as well as an individual staff level. Making time and space to discuss how visitors are approaching activities and where we see opportunities for failure (and therefore growth) within our audience makes us all better facilitators and activity designers.
About us
The mission of Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is to provide innovative and inclusive museum experiences that inspire kindness, creativity, curiosity and joy for all learners.