Grant to cover Amazeum admission for Northwest Arkansas students

Miller Rawn, 5, takes a look at a model of the Amazeum’s discovery cente during the groundbreaking in April 2014 in Bentonville.
Miller Rawn, 5, takes a look at a model of the Amazeum’s discovery cente during the groundbreaking in April 2014 in Bentonville.

BENTONVILLE -- A grant from the Walmart Foundation will provide free admission to the Scott Family Amazeum for Northwest Arkansas students on school field trips during the 2015-16 school year, officials said Wednesday.

The grant of $327,144 covers admission for students from schools in Benton and Washington counties, said Molly Rawn, the Amazeum's director of development and communications. Any school in the area will qualify for the admission waiver. About 20,000 students are expected to benefit from the grant, Rawn said.

Amazeum

The Scott Family Amazeum will open at 10 a.m. July 15 at 1009 Museum Way in Bentonville. The nearly 50,000-square-foot facility is next door to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and across the street from Orchards Park. The Amazeum will open with about 15 full-time staff members and between 30 and 40 part-time staff members, according to Dana Engelbert, marketing manager.

Source: Staff report

Admission normally will be $9.50 per person and free for children younger than 2, said Sam Dean, museum director. The museum, which is geared toward children and families, opens July 15. It's at the intersection of Northeast J Street and Museum Way, next to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Amazeum officials applied for the grant and were informed last month they received it.

"One of our motivations for doing this is we know a field trip here would not be possible for some schools without this funding," Rawn said.

The Walmart Foundation seeks to enhance the quality of life in Northwest Arkansas by increasing access to the arts and recreational programs, said Tricia Moriarty, global responsibility communications director at Walmart.

"A great example of fulfilling that strategy is to bring the enriching experience of the Amazeum to more children in the community," Moriarty wrote in an email.

The grant is only for the coming school year. It's unclear whether the admission aid will continue after that, but Dean said the museum will look for ways to make that possible.

The museum will begin accepting field trip reservations in August and start hosting those trips Oct. 5, said Mindy Porter, director of education. Students from Bentonville's Willowbrook Elementary School will visit in September and serve as a kind of test run for field trips.

Most students coming to the museum on field trips will be first- through fourth-graders, Porter said.

Museum officials have adopted the term "un-field trip" -- coined by a Fayetteville teacher -- because they believe a visit to the Amazeum will differ from what people typically perceive field trips to be, Porter said.

"Sometimes a field trip has a negative connotation. You're on a tight, fixed schedule that's really guided," Porter said. "Teachers wanted to see more flexibility, more time to explore, time to discover. We're not going to rush the process."

So, if a student wants to spend two hours at one exhibit, that's a possibility. The museum's education staff members will be on hand to facilitate learning at the various exhibits, Porter said.

Museum officials would like teachers and students to take what they learn at the Amazeum back to their classrooms, develop projects based on those things, and share them with the museum. In that way they envision a cyclical relationship with the schools in which students contribute back to the museum. Dean called it "a continual dialogue" that's uncommon among other museums like Amazeum.

Ashley Siwiec, director of communications for the Rogers School District, was glad to hear about the grant.

"Every child needs to have an adventure in science at the Amazeum," Siwiec wrote in an email. "But often the cost of such a field trip is too much for parents or the school to fund. This grant is a wish come true."

Michael Poore, Bentonville schools superintendent, said the School District has formed a partnership with the museum in part because the two organizations' missions are intertwined.

"What we love about Amazeum is it's about energizing the mind and allowing kids to be creative and solution-oriented and collaborative. That's why we partner with Amazeum all over the place," Poore said.

Parents may not necessarily understand what the Amazeum is all about, but they will once their kids come back from a field trip, Poore said.

"(The students) are going to be so excited, they're going to be begging their parents to take them back," he said.

The museum's field trip announcement is reminiscent of what neighbor Crystal Bridges announced shortly before that museum opened in 2011. The Willard and Pat Walker Charitable Foundation donated $10 million for an endowment schools could draw upon to pay for field trips to Crystal Bridges. That program is ongoing.

NW News on 06/25/2015

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