Hi, you're listening to Cultivate
Curiosity, a podcast
that inspires the next generation to stay
curious.
Cultivate Curiosity is brought to you by
the Emerald Coast Science Center, a
nonprofit interactive science museum and
STEAM educational facility in Fort Walton
Beach, Florida.
This podcast is perfect for anyone
curious
about the world we live in, because
you never know what we'll talk about
next!
Hi, everyone. I'm Jacie, the social media
coordinator at the science center.
Hi, I'm Diane, the Director.
And.
Hi, I'm Harley. I'm the community affairs
coordinator and educator at the Science
Center.
And today's episode is going to be
all about pie in the sky dreams
we have for the Science Center. So
who wants to start?
Lots of them.
Yes.
So many. So shall we go in?
What's coming up next? What do we
think the most attainable is if you're
looking at your calendar? Because I know
I think probably the first thing that's
going to be coming up is the
soft launch of our new soundscape
experience. That's
going to be in February at.
Our Members Only event, members Only in.
February, and to the general public in
March.
Yeah.
So Fast is going to be a
program that we offer in our mobile
planetarium. And the planetarium people
probably know more.
About it than I. Yeah, I know.
It's going to be covering basically the
sounds of the world. It's going to
be about, I think, 30 to 45
minutes showings kind of like our
planetarium usually is. But it's really
cool because Soundscape is actually
putting together the script for it and
as a video element, lots of really
cool stuff that's just going to be
all about sounds in our world.
Energy and the energy behind Sound. And
actually it's an IMAX
theater movie is what it is. And
we just purchased a licensing agreement
for it for the next three years.
And we did that about a month
ago. So right now we're in the
stages of trying to get it in
the right format for it to be shown inside the Planetarium Dome, getting the
speakers so that we can hear it
really well.
There's, I think seven or eight clips,
video clips, but then there's
opportunities in between the clips for
some interactive discussions with the
educator and the audience. So we're really
excited about it. The first time. We've
never done anything in our planetarium
zone. They have not been planetarium
shows. So if this all goes well,
then this hopefully might be the first
of several other types of programs that
we offer inside the Dome.
When they were working on it, I
went in there and I think Kali
and Maddie had, like, the horror up.
And so it was kind of diving
into wildlife there, and I just went.
Laid on the ground and they saved
it.
And it was like so immersive.
It was really cool.
And we didn't even have the cool
speakers of that.
Yeah.
So I think even with the speakers,
you'll really be able to hear the
different sounds that the video is trying
to portray and hear them at different
moments too. So that'll be really cool.
But yeah, that's coming up soon.
Like a planetary 180 degrees. So we
have been able to get the video.
So you're surrounded. So it was completely
immersive. And the interesting thing about
that was there was a session at
the ASTC conference this year talking
about Immersive experiences and how
they're becoming like the new trends. And
they call it a black box room
where you have this Immersive experience
in this space. I try to think
about what do we have here that
would be considered an Immersive
experience. And I think definitely the
small ad site had experience. Even
something like the boating exhibit is
immersive experience because you're
inside at that little place that bubble
that feels like you're on the ocean
forest or an ocean
could almost put some music or.
Audio back there that sounds like some
corals popping. You'd be like in the
water.
But I think that this planetarium is
a new movie. And the licensee agreement
we have gives us another opportunity to
offer some other types of Immersive
experience in the future. So we're very
excited about that.
Are we going to eventually do that
for the schools and stuff like that
too? Do you think?
Operates everything nailed down. It will
be a program that will be offering
as an outreach, we can take the
planetarium. We can tie it into their
energy type standards.
And talking about sound energy.
Yeah. So you could potentially go more
than once to a soul. And for
the actual planetarium space show and then
soundscape.
So if you're a member February 27
yes.
For that you'll get to see the
first live showing of it. Yeah.
The other thing we're hopefully going to
be working on, I guess maybe looking.
To aim towards March or April, is.
To host a home school science fair.
So one of the home school parents
brought it up to me that she
thought that it would be awesome and
that she would help us kind of
put it all together. And who doesn't
love free help? So we're going to
chat with her and kind of see
what we can do about getting a
home school science fair together,
figuring out judges, figuring out eight
grades, figuring out cost, all that fun
stuff. But I don't think they really
have any sort of thing like that
in the area. So if we can
host something like that, get more
home school kids in here, then I think
that would be a really fun idea
and event.
And it'll be for both our home
school people and then just anyone.
It doesn't have to be anyone that.
Come here or anything, depending on the.
Age range, which we haven't defined yet.
I think that'll be fun, that'll be
able to have the science there because
that was something like in middle school
and even high school that I did
got you to. Yeah, exactly.
That because they host those for public.
Schools that I get to private schools.
Too, but not really anything for parents
or the people of the community to
help host one.
Again, I think science, too, is one
of those topics that's harder for maybe
home school families to do as immersively
as you might get in a public
school setting because they just don't
have the equipment.
Yeah.
And we don't have access to the
materials and supplies like we have or
a place like a public school house.
So I think anytime that we can
offer science in a way that is
available to
them, we can even as we talk
about creating the home school program, if
they need to come here and work
on their experiments or something like
that, offer that opportunity as well.
Yeah. Or like rent out equipment that
they have to bring back or something
if they're going to need a couple
of weeks to use it.
Absolutely.
Do they need a microscope for a
week or something to help with there?
Yeah. Do they need test tunes or
who knows what they would do they
want.
To base their science project also
something here.
Yeah.
I think the next one, if we're
going in order, would be my chemical
cocktail. Yeah.
We did this as a fundraiser. Were
you here?
Yes, we did it 2016. I didn't
go. And then I think we tried
2017, but it didn't work out very
well.
Right.
So we did it 2016. That was
a cocktail competition. We did it at
what was in the Ramada, now the
Island Hotel. And we had three or
four different bars that made some sort
of, like, cool, density based dry eyes
or some sort of kind of cool,
fun cocktail. And we had a great
time. We thought it was a great
event. We tried to do it again
the next year. We just couldn't get
enough traction to move forward with it.
But we are looking to develop our
own branded fundraiser. That is an event
that we do every single year that
is associated with us. The microwave
cocktail is sort of fun because it
also sort of speaks to our mission.
We're very excited this year to relaunch
that. And that date is May 13,
which is, I think, International Cocktail Day. It's tied in somehow. Yes.
And it's not something that we can
do on our own. So we are
thankfully working with the Francis Roy
Agency to help us put the event
on. So go ahead and write your
calendars. It should be really fun. I
have no idea what it's going to
look like, where it's going to be,
but the pie is in the sky.
I'm sure it'll be much better than
if we try to do it by
ourselves. That's why we reached out to
somebody that tested those types of events
and does them very well. Forces the
franchise for an agency so we're very
excited about working with them.
And so that will hopefully be an
annual thing we do to raise funds
for new exhibits or just anything worth
thinking about that year, possibly to
implement in the summer or the fall
time.
Right. So timing wise, it's really good
to maybe get some new program equipment
for the summer, for summer camp or
maybe even, depending on the money raised,
get a new exhibit for the fall
for when the school field trips come
back. That's sort of our thinking behind
the tiny and what those funds might
be used for. So really excited about
that. We haven't done something like that
in a number of years.
Speaking of fundraising goals, do you want
to talk about the planetarium building?
So this is our probably biggest pie
in the sky and it sort of
just goes back to what we were
talking about with this soundscape. We
offer our planetarium shows once or twice
a month, depending on what time of
year it is. But in order to
be able to do that in house,
we have to do it after hours
because we have to push exhibits out
of the way. The main gallery space
and our ceiling is only 10ft tall.
Well, we got a brand new planetarium
earlier this year and the brand new
dome needs a 13.5 foot ceiling, so
we can't even use the brand new
dome. Right now we're using the old
dome and even the old dome that
we have is pushed in the ten
foot ceiling. So our biggest pie in
the sky dream is to have an
additional multipurpose building in the
backyard and have a 14 foot ceiling,
have it be large enough
to where we could inflate the planetarium
dome completely and fully. And then also
we could run that program any time.
So if there's a class that comes
on a field trip here and for
their field trip, listen, they want to
do a planetarium lesson or they want
to use Soundscape like an energy lesson,
we could do that because it would
be in its own place, in its
own space. Same holds true for the
summertime gifts or even Saturday gifts
that come in or any time. We
could constantly have that as a
completely added exhibit. We can also
still take it out of the community
like we currently do. We take it
to school. We talked about the martial
arts program and they have the big
places that we take the planetarium to.
And their ceilings are so high, we
can completely inflate it down there, but
we can't even do it in house.
And it's such a great program and
such unique, wonderful, sticky kind of a
way to talk about
space, to talk about the Soundscape
program, and we can't even
utilize it as much as we could
and that is heartbreaking. So we are
trying to, when we get back from
the Christmas break and going to really
sit down and start putting together quotes
to figure out what would something like
this cost? Who might be community partners
that would be willing to kind of
succeed on.
Pieces and parts of it.
Maybe sponsors.
Maybe sponsors. There's always naming
rights for something like this.
Your name on the building.
But if you think about it we're
currently trying to raise the Artemis
generation and we're in this process right
now. They just have the first
rocket go up and come back successfully.
And these are the kids that need
to be exposed to the type of
programs that we run in the Planetary.
These are the kids that could go
to Mars or beyond or these are
the kids that could create a spacecraft
that lands on a meteor and collects
rare earth elements that we need to
power the next new energy or the
next new technology or something like
that. And the planetarium is such a
great way to be able to expose
kids to this. And it's not just
like looking at the planets. I mean,
we can talk about so many different
topics inside of the planetarium. The
great thing about The Planetary we've
never been to a planetarium show is
that it's all educator driven. So it's
not something that we just plug in
and just listen to some recorded voice.
It's completely interactive. It's a
conversation that you have between an
educator and the audience.
So every show is a little bit.
Different depending on what the questions
are that are generated inside of the
planetarium. We do all sorts of specialty
shows. We do the Sorted Secret shows
which are 21 and over because we
talk about the stories behind the
constellations and if you talk about myths
and legends and Jupiter's they are modeling
a genius story. We do special shows,
we talk about the different cultures in
the night sky touching on some of
those extinctions, the Greek and Roman
legends but also not getting too wrong
to your society. Different cultures look
at consolations differently.
There's lots of really cool stories behind
each of those cultures and their stories.
When I think it's so much about
cultural history our cultural literacy is
based on those myths and stories that
were first put into the night sky.
And I think it's incredible. If you
think about some shepherd 2000 years ago
in Greece that looked at the nice
guy and we're still telling the same
stories that he learned. That's like a
through line which
directly connects us to every single
culture that's been on the planet because
we're still looking at the night's day
and we're still telling the same stories
that they self told. I think that's
incredible and that's why the whole
planetarian thing is just so important to
me because we don't have the opportunity
to use it enough in the current
building formula that we have.
I think it would bring something
completely unique to our area. Completely
so much needed. Again, we're talking about
inspiring art in this generation and all
of the things that we're talking about
going to space and putting into space.
Well, you have to have a really
good understanding of space. And how do
we inspire and engage kids in that?
I think the planetarian is just like
a great gateway to the whole idea
of space exploration for these
kids in our area.
And having another additional building to
add to our square footage is always
beneficial.
Yeah. And our goal is to create
the building. And I think realistically,
we're probably looking at a metal building
and we have a concrete slab we'd
like to rough in the plumbing so
that we could create a nice bathroom
in there. We also would like to
have one washer and dryer and dryer
because we rotate taking home all the
animal bedding and stuff like that every
so often. So that would be really
nice to have. If it's got a
nice tall ceiling later on, we might
be able to put a little bit
of a loft in there with some
storage space, which is something is very
lacking here. It's something that would
just really, again, be one of those
transformative things for the Science
Center, but not just for the Science
Center, but for the community at large,
because there's nothing else like that.
Nobody else is offering that. And we
have the capabilities to do it. We
just can't do it enough.
Renew that building.
I just need $150,000. This
is also the same place, right?
Yes.
It's a lot of parts, but that's
going to be our focus, to really
be able to get that together so
that we can take ourselves to the
next level, but also our community as
well. That's my big pie in the
sky. What's? Your pie in the sky?
Not as. Tons of pies are in
the sky for me. For here. I
think there's little ones that kind of
float up and then they come back
down and get eaten and then.
They go back up and get one.
The one I want to finish working
on, hopefully next week, is a nature
weave exhibit out in the backyard. Just
something else to add on, something new
for people to see. Diane and I
went to the ASTC
conference and saw lots of cool things.
We were taking lots of pictures for
lots of ideas. And this is one
that we saw at one of the
museums and they eventually just had a
huge loom that was like 6ft by
10ft and you could come up and
just weep different pieces of nature into
it. And we have an amphitheater outback
that would be perfect place for that.
So me and some two of our
volunteers hanging Ted are working on
that. So hopefully by the
end of December.
January, it'll be all done.
Ready to go out there and be
in the weed. We're calling it the
wild leave.
I know what Jacie's pie in the sky is. She's been working on it diligently over the past couple of weeks and getting close and comparing options.
Hopefully by now, it will already be
a thing, but I am looking into
digital membership cards in December just
because it's something that gives us a
little edge tech wise. And then also
for all of our members, it'll be
on your phone. You don't have to
get a card printed. And also with
it being integrated with Salesforce, it'll
be automatically updated. So as soon as
you renew your membership, it'll show that
on your card once you refresh it,
or the same day.
Basically, it's also more environmentally friendly.
Exactly. You aren't constantly having to print them on paper. So that would be completely done with. So you would just
have the one I think we're going
to go with either has an app
or you can just have it on
your Apple Wallet or your Google Pay,
and that's how you would view it.
And you could show it to us.
And then you can also show that
to your ASTC Passport program museums,
which I guess we don't talk about
it enough because not everyone knows about
the ASTC Passport program. But basically
there's about 300 museums worldwide that
you can also go to, that for
the most part, it's free admission for
whoever is a member in your membership,
or it's discounted admission. I think
there's probably more of them are free
admission, but we say it's either free
or discounted for that. So that's
something that's really awesome. And we'll
have that on the back of your
card so you can know and look
up who is a museum in there,
because, Diane, you've been to a couple
of different museums with it.
Whenever I travel, I always use my
membership card and go to visit other
museums. I went to Boston, my daughter
was graduating from a Master's program at
BU, and we went, three of us,
and it's $25 a person. And so
I just showed our membership card from
here and all three of us got
in for free.
Yeah, so that's going to be great.
You guys will
be able to have those cards pretty
quickly. It'll basically send you out one
to whatever email that you have on
Salesforce, and it'll just go to you
and you can use it for ever.
Basically, it'll automatically renew and
everything. So that'll be great. It'll
take a little bit off of my
plate as well, which will be nice.
Sometimes we get returns because maybe the
address wasn't in it. Usually the email
address is always correct. Sometimes the
mailing address isn't correct or people
have moved or something has happened.
We'll get some of them back in
the mail a couple of times, and.
We were having those issues, too, with
printing them. Sometimes once it goes
through the mail, sometimes mail is
spoofed and compressed and unfortunately,
the entire card won't say anything anymore
about you because the ink has came
off of it. So this will limit
that, any issues with that, and then
be eco friendly like Harley said, too.
So that's great.
From a Cost perspective, looking at Quick
applications organizations that run the
digital membership card. The cost is equal
to doing exactly
Emergency and Bailey and the time that
it takes to put all the membership
packages together. So I think it's going
to be fantastic. Very excited about that
and looking forward to it. We didn't
talk about the mural.
That's right. So Sebastian and Wolfgang,
which if you don't know Wolfgang, is
our new tortoise. That's the neighbor to
Sebastian. So by this
time, we probably are close to figuring
out who the artists are going to
be for it. And so we are
going to have two murals, one on
each of their houses that are going
to be musical themed because they're named
after musicians. And so we're going to
see what people start submitting in. We
have one submission so far, but we're
hoping for a couple more just to
see who would want to paint a
mural for a Sebastian.
Wolfgang there's also some funding through
a cultural arts league that is going
to allow us to put some murals
on the outside of the building as
well. And that funding is available now.
It's just on us to get everything
figured out.
Figured out.
And those spaces on the wall, pressure
wash and things like that. So
hopefully we'll get those done in the
near term future and have some really
cool murals on the outside of the
building in the yard area. So that's
another vehicle that we have this year.
Yeah, I think Sebastian and Oak Gangs
are kind of like just a tester
to see who's going to be interested
in painting for us because, yeah, the
artist will be paid through that money.
So that way you guys will get
something as well. And everyone will get
to see your art when they come
to the science center.
Too kind of to go off of
the painting too.
We are still hoping to finish painting.
The building, updating some painting on
our roundabouts right here in the front
of the center. So if you're looking
for anyways to help us achieve those
goals, volunteering to help us paint,
pressure wash, do all that stuff is
always helpful. It's cold right now, so
it might be a little bit better
to do.
It now than when it's hot.
So if you have some free time,
that's always helpful painting.
We just got a great brand new
pressure washer. I'm so excited about the
pressure. 3000 PSI. I thought you were going to say $3,000. No! No.
I waited, black friday sales, before buying it. I'm very excited about the new pressure washer because one
of the things that we saw in
Pittsburgh was this really cool sidewalk.
We saw them, they're really cool. And
they had these like little affirmations.
They're just funky designs basically on
the sidewalk outside of the Totems Museum
of Pittsburgh. And they love Mr. Rogers
because Mr. Rogers was from Pittsburgh.
But they're all really kind, sweet little
things incorporating these really cool
artsy backgrounds. So we definitely took a
ton of pictures of those, and we'd
like to also bring that here. I
think that's pretty attainable.
Yeah.
Pressure watch and find somebody that's
willing to probably us.
Right?
Yeah, we might actually be able to.
Do our the ideas are in the
brain, but the execution is not always
what I picture.
But if someone else does it, it's
great. Sometimes collectively, they mean
better than what that's true. One of
the other pies I just thought of
was when we saw in.
Pittsburgh, and that was the cryptid
creature wall. So we have
our one printed outside.
Your favorite, the skull game.
So we want to kind of do
a couple more, but also tie them
maybe into cryptid creatures within our
area. So, like sea monster, so to
say. But we're hoping to kind of
make that like a little scavenger hunt.
So we would have those cryptid creatures
outside, maybe even some inside, not sure
yet. And you could kind of go
find those cryptids and kind of read
a little bit about them, but that
was.
What we saw, that we really just
were like, yeah, we're already started. I
think the great thing about it is
when Harley and I come back from
something like this, and we have, like,
bazillion ideas and so many pictures on
our phones, but we sort of filter
through what can we do ourselves, and
what would we have to find an
outside partner or outside funding to help
us do? But I think we sit
down together as a team. And how
big is our staff now?
12, 13.
That's a little bit bigger than that
now, maybe.
I think 15.
Okay, so we'll all sit down. Carly
and I will do this brain dump,
and somebody goes, oh, that sounds really
cool. They're like, all right, there you
go.
You're good to do it.
You think the Christmas is cool, girls?
There you go.
Got your fun.
But I think that that's great because
then that sort of takes the pressure
off of Harley and I for trying
to execute the project. But then also
it brings, like, an entirely new set
of eyes and a new set of
fresh ideas that all create and implement
it. And then it's not just one
person's vision when you walk in here.
It's like 15 people's vision. And not
even it's more than that, because
everybody that's worked here has done
something. At least the history has left
something, has created something, whether
it was a program or a lesson
or an exhibit or a work of
art or everybody has left an idea
here that we'll just continue to engage
and inspire science learners for as long
as we're still here. So I think
that that's probably one of the other
really unique and cool things about us
is relative to some other museums that
I can't use the word corporate feel,
but it's the same exhibit. There's just
very few exhibit makers for science museum
exhibits, and they are all you probably
can't. $15,000 is about the bottom, the
cheapest thing you can get in the
science museum. So you will see a
lot of the same exhibits everywhere,
different museums. We see the same
exhibits. But I think if you come
here, you will. Maybe some of them,
but they'll look a little bit different
because they were made in house. But
I think that's the other thing is
that you see the personality of the
person whose idea was or who created
it. That will come through.
I was looking at you, Jacie. And
thinking about this footprint jimmy and
Calli did in the animal room. And
so we were just like, what could
we add to the animal room that
was kind of fun and funky? And
let's put footprints in here, run our
second iteration of them because they got
worn down.
I think they look a little bit
better this time around, too. The wording.
Yeah, we changed the fonts to people
and made them bigger so you can.
See them, but the amount of people
that see those, even on field trips
last week when I was doing the
animal field trip, that station, all the
kids were like, asking me if the
bearded dragon footprint was down there.
No, we should probably add it because
they were asking me about why her
toes
were so long and her nails and
all that.
But yeah, they love it. It's all the
kids look at it and they
just want their footprints there.
Yeah, well, they are. We have a
human, male and female, at the beginning and
the end.
That's true. I've seen people walk through
there and specifically put their foot
right on yeah. Human footprints in there.
So, yeah, I think that's all of
our prime the skies real quick, a
couple of ways that you can help
us achieve our goals is, as Harley
mentioned, become a volunteer. We got
group volunteering or individual group
volunteering as well.
To do that, email volunteer@ecscience.org.
Yes.
And I'll get back to you.
You can also become a member here
at the science center. And we just
talked about the amazing ASTC program that
you'll be a part of. And you
can do that by either coming in
and purchasing one or going to our
website, ecscience.org/membership. And you
can do it that way. Or if
you want to be a sponsor or
a donor or something like that, we
got events, programs, and even our animal
ambassadors that you can sponsor as well.
In our next episode, we're actually going to
be talking all about our animal ambassadors,
so stay tuned for that.
Stay tuned for some fun animal stories.
Yes, and how many times have I
gotten peed on or pooped on? All
right, so we'll see you guys next
episode.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's
episode of Cultivating curiosity.
If you have any questions, feel free
to email us at socialmedia@ecscience.org.
Tune in for our next episode in two weeks!