Doors Open to Discovery at the Highlands Museum
Gwen Akers
The Ashland Beacon
A community effort has finally come to fruition with the Highlands Museum opening its new Clark Family Discovery Center.
Sprawling the entire 2nd floor of the museum, the new discovery center features 15 interactive exhibits with even more improvements on the way.
“I'm hoping that it brings something to our community for our children. Previously, before this opened, you had to travel two plus hours to receive the same experience at Cincinnati Children's Museum or COSI or somewhere like that, and so it [The Clark Family Discovery Center] brings it closer to home so it's more accessible to more of our local population, but then it'll also bring in people from further out,” expressed Chelsey Mayo, who is the Director of the Clark Family Discovery Center and Education.
The Clark Family Discovery Center has been in the works since its reveal at the 2019 Dancing with Our Stars fundraiser hosted by the museum. Since then, the museum has been working diligently with community partners, donors, and others to bring this dream to light. Several exhibits have been sponsored by their respective companies, and the goal is to encourage children to learn about their heritage, local traditions, and simply what makes Ashland so bright.
“There have been really generous and private individuals who have helped us,” said Kim Jenkins, Director of the museum.
The crowd for the opening on Saturday was filled with smiles, as so many loves to support the museum and the opportunities it presents for our children.
“Well, we love that there is a place in the community to bring families together, contribute to the history of Appalachia and highlight a lot of the interesting history of the area, yet also be a place for kids to have a creative outlet,” expressed parent, Jamie Lima.
Updates are still being made to the Clark Family Discovery Center, as new grants such as the Abandoned Mine Lands Economic Revitalization (AMLER) grant will provide updates to new exhibitions and two interactive classrooms on the 2nd floor. This will enable the museum to move forward on projects such as developing the third floor, a climate-controlled storage space for museum artifacts and a second functional elevator.
The Clark Family Discovery Center will also be evolving, changing monthly to keep the exhibits fresh and exciting.
“You will have changing exhibits monthly, and then we have tons of other features in our Discovery Center that are made to be changing whether it's weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, just so that it stays fresh for all of our local visitors to where we hope they come back every week,” detailed Mayo.
With a huge thank you to all of their donors, sponsors and the community, the museum hopes to move forward with new plans and additions into 2024.
“I’m over the moon,” detailed Jenkins. “I know Chelsey is just going to do a spectacular job. She's a wizard, and so naturally gifted at what we need to do for kids to keep them engaged and help them remember how to play and really make this their place.”
The Clark Family Discovery Center is open now. Go and see it for yourself!