What is the NCM?
The New Children’s Museum (NCM) is the only children’s museum in the US with a mission dedicated to commissioning artists to create site-specific installations for an audience of children and families.

What was the inspiration?
NCM was founded as a traditional children’s museum. In the early 1990s, the museum started using contemporary art as its focus, inspired by the work of American artist Alan Kaprow, who saw art as a way to explore the world. Another influence was Victor D’Amico from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He believed children should be allowed to engage in open-ended ways of art to explore their own creativity.

What is the museum’s aim?
Our mission is to inspire creativity, imagination and critical thinking in children and families through contemporary art. Using that inspiration, we aim to help children develop the skills that we believe are important for future productive citizens. We want to give them the ability to collaborate, do general problem solving and look at the world in a slightly different way.

We also want to help people become comfortable with art, so we present it in very non-threatening ways to show it’s there for all of us to enjoy.

What changes have you made?
The major change that we’re in the process of implementing is to focus even more on being child-centric. So, instead of being a contemporary art museum for children and families, we’re a children’s museum that centres on contemporary art.

Another aim is for everything we offer at NCM to be pleasantly frustrating and engagingly compelling, so our visitors want to come back and do it again.

How did you set up the top team?
When I started a year ago there was only one senior staff person – Tomoko – in place. I viewed it as an opportunity to hand-pick the other directors and make sure there was the right chemistry.

The biggest challenge was needing to take the time to find those people without other senior staff in place to support that effort. It just meant it took us a little longer to get going, but we have a great staff in place now and everyone works really well together.

How do you work with the community?
We have a Partner in Creativity programme with Monarch School, which is for homeless children, who can visit the museum for free. We’re expanding that programme to other non-profit social service organisations, such as Voices For Children, which helps with fostering and guides people through the legal system.

We also work with local universities. Undergraduates at San Diego State University built some fantastic cardboard furniture for our lounge area as part of their design course.

What are the highs and lows?
I love going down to the floor of the museum and seeing the children interacting and enjoying the museum and participating in all that we offer. That’s affirmation of everything we do.

One of my saddest moments was seeing a little boy from the Monarch School refusing to get on the bus to go back. It broke my heart because he’d had a great time, but probably wouldn’t get to come again.

What’s your role?
I oversee our membership programme and all the contributed income. That’s our entire fund-raising initiative around corporations, foundations, individuals and government funding.

How is the museum funded?
We receive donations from corporate partners, private and public foundations and individuals. Around 10 per cent of funding comes from government entities.

I don’t oversee rentals (we hire the museum out for corporate events, parties, weddings and school proms) or our fee-based programmes, such as summer camps and teacher-training courses.

How do you keep donations coming in?
Part of it is having an ambitious team; part of it is having a good strategy and a robust calendar for the entire year. We plan ahead and always look for new sources of revenue and opportunities.

What’s your strategy?
Our mission is to inspire creativity and innovation in children and families in San Diego. We seek out the companies and individuals who that message speaks to, build relationships with them and then ask them to help us build relationships with others. I like to call
it friendraising.

What are the main challenges?
2012 was an election year so donations were redirected towards political campaigns. There may be big changes in our tax code in 2013, so people are concerned about how they spend their money. Those are factors I can’t control.

We overcome them by sticking to our plan and communicating how important it is to keep investing in our community and our museum. The resource and the services we provide ensure that San Diego stays competitive in the future.

What do you exhibit?
We don’t present traditional, interactive play pieces. Instead, we commission contemporary artists to create unique art installations that can be played with, crawled on and jumped through.

Our current exhibition is called Trash and covers three floors – 35,000sq ft (3,250sq m) of public gallery space. Twelve contemporary artists considered trash within their work or worked with recycled objects.

We’re working on our exhibition for autumn 2013. It’s called Feast – The Art of Playing With Your Food. It’s focused on food, but we’re not trying to document or explain the process of food production, as we’re not a science museum. We’ve found a number of contemporary artists who either use food as a building material or food in their concepts – the production, transportation or the modification of food.

How do you choose the pieces?
We invite the artist to visit our space. To see children interacting with the artwork is an eye opener for the artist, so we need to make sure this is something they’re comfortable with.

We’ve been in communication with some of the artists since spring 2012. It takes that long to go back and forth to share ideas and make sure everyone’s comfortable. Then there’s a safety check to make sure the artwork is safe for children to play with, which leads to another big conversation. There are certain materials that work and some that won’t withstand the love of the children.

How many exhibitions are there?
Until now we’ve turned the whole museum over to one big exhibition, which runs for two years. We’re now exploring the idea of multiple exhibitions that open at different times and have each exhibition running for about a year to give diversity to our visitors.

What are the museum’s educational elements?
We bring in about 15,000 children from the San Diego area every year and they spend several hours here and get a hands-on component as part of their visit. Public schools in the US are having a tough time with the budget cuts. We try to provide arts education that meets school standards, so children have some exposure to the arts – not just looking at art, but the creative process that’s so stimulating and important for children.

We also have a modest outreach programme for schools, which we’ll be increasing in 2013. The budget constraints on schools has made it difficult for them to come to us. Admission fees for school groups is very minimal and we have a category of schools called Title One. These are located in economically disadvantaged areas. They can visit us for free but it’s expensive to get the school bus to us, so we’re making a concerted effort to provide programming where we send out our trained facilitators into the classroom.

What is the most important part of your job?
There are so many details, evaluations, reports and meetings that must be done, but the most important thing is not to forget the visitor who’s out on the floor touching and feeling all the things that we’ve prepared.

I try to visit the floor every day to talk to people and hear the laughter. Or hear the quiet and do something about that because it shouldn’t be a quiet museum.

What are your future plans?
The NCM has a new thematic exhibition every two years. We’re working on Feast, which will open in October 2013.

We want to keep the museum fresh and exciting, so we’re looking at changing the exhibitions more often and perhaps having more than one at a time.

Who is NCM for?
Toddlers to teens. We have things that appeal to all age levels, but our demographic tends to be people with children under six, while their older siblings are at school. At weekends, the audience is families with children aged 12 and under.

School groups have a range of ages and we tailor the curriculum accordingly.

Our seasonal camps are attended by all ages – preschool through to high-school age. A contemporary artist works with the kids in the camp and they create artwork during the week they’re here.

What marketing and PR do you do?
We have a layered marketing mix, including broadcast, print, online and social media. We take advantage of public relations as much as possible. We can’t afford the kind of exposure I’d love, so we devote a lot of time ensuring we get written about or profiled. For example, we’ve been on the morning news several times where they talk about what we’re doing. We keep our website up-to-date and on listings of what to do in San Diego. We post on Facebook and Twitter daily, respond as quickly as we can and have a lot of dialogue with people.

We’ve just committed to be the sponsor of the family amenities section at one of the local malls, which has a footfall of nine million people a year. We, with a funding partner, are going to be the sponsor and have a huge presence. We’ll have a billboard and be on banners and their electronic communication. We’ll be able to have events and outreach and art-making activities.

How do you market to different audiences?
While we’re always talking to families, we have two key target groups: locals within San Diego, as well as people who are visiting the area. To attract tourists, we’re working with ConVis as well as local hotels and utilising tourism-targeted media.

Our tourism message is a fairly broad one, encouraging them to visit. For locals we’re more specific about what we’re doing – the programmes, the changing art activities, workshops and events.

What are the main challenges?
We’re a new museum, not even five years old, and we’re a new team looking at it with fresh eyes. The key challenge we’re all facing is that there’s so much we want to do, and just not enough time in the day. We’re working on prioritising and laying out our plan for the next few years so we can accomplish our goals.

What are the future plans?
In the future we want the museum to be synonymous with San Diego. We want people to think about The New Children’s Museum when they think of other well-known San Diego destinations, such as SeaWorld, Legoland and the zoo.

What’s your role?
I’m responsible for all the operations of the museum finance, information technology (IT), human resources (HR) and facilities. We’re the behind-the-scenes support for the team. Day to day I manage our finances, make sure our facility is welcoming and safe for visitors and that employees get everything they need to do their job.

How do you juggle the different elements?
The multiple roles can be a challenge from time to time. I look at each separately and plan my day and set my objectives according to the needs of each of those functions.

Finance needs a steady amount of attention because I’m constantly looking at the best way to utilise our assets. I want to make sure we can fund our programmes and the things we want to do at the museum. We also need to get the highest quality information to our stakeholders and the other people we work with. HR is also a fairly constant requirement – it’s important the employees are competitively rewarded and have a positive, supportive work environment. On the IT side, I’m always watching to make sure the communications elements are available and working effectively, that we’re able to get our messages out to the public and that the people behind the scenes can use their computers and other equipment to communicate.

We have a good strategy in place on the IT side and I have a very good facilities manager, so I don’t get involved in these on a day-to-day basis.

What are your future plans?
We have the opportunity to take advantage of technology, both behind the scenes and in our museum. We envision having a highly interactive museum
with handheld devices and looking at things in the museum in a high-technology way. That’s a goal and challenge of mine, both from a technology standpoint and a financial one.

This year we’re hoping to put in a more robust wireless network. By 2015 we want to take the next step and have that higher interactivity within the museum. It’s an exciting development.

How did you get involved with NCM?
A woman I admire was heading up the process to organise the board and raise money to build a place for families to explore creative thinking, play and innovation. Those concepts appealed to me.

Why did you become a board member?
I wanted to be engaged in creating the next generation of innovative thinkers in the San Diego community. Preparing our kids to have critical thinking skills and confidence is important to the business and cultural viability of any city. Plus, being on the board was a great way to ensure that this new model of museum experience became a reality.

What work does the board do?
The board helps support the strategic direction of the museum and its staff. Board members are ambassadors for the museum and we use our network of contacts to spread the vision out among the community and help raise the money needed to sustain the vision. We also serve as a support system for the staff.

What does your role as chair involve?
The role of chair is to be the passionate ambassador for the board in the community, be a liaison between the staff and board, motivate the board, and to always communicate, communicate, communicate!

What are the challenges?
As a non-profit, the challenge is always fundraising. You’re never out of fundraising mode. The board and staff constantly have to be thinking of ways to deliver value and find a role in the community to fill the hole that other groups aren’t filling.

What are your future aims for the NCM?
Keeping the momentum going and having a reach beyond San Diego. We’ve created such a unique model for all kinds of families to learn about the arts. I’d love to see that model repeated around the world.