Collegiate Times

A volunteer at the Children's Museum watches as a boy works on a craft. The Children's Museum set up a booth Summer Solstice Fest last Saturday.

Local citizen of Blacksburg Janine Kniola aspires to open a children’s museum within the next five years, if all goes well with fundraising.

The Blacksburg Children’s Museum will focus on art, science, technology and regional heritage. All components of art, like drama and music, will be included. Regional heritage will educate children about the local Southwestern Virgina region and the history of area, among other things.

The future museum will serve families across the entire New River Valley and surrounding regions from ages 0-12.The pre-school age is most popular but will still attract other kids in the 0-12 range.

“I have an 11- and 8-year-old, and even now they like to go to museums. I’ve been to several around the country so having a resource like a museum in the New River Valley would be great,” said Lori Greiner, a local supporter of the museum.

Kniola said the the idea came about between she and some friends a couple of years ago at one of their children’s birthday parties.

“Most of us had relocated from other areas that had children’s museums and that’s how we came up with it,” Kniola said.  “Once you’ve taken your children to a kid’s museum, they want to go to more, either the same or a different one. That will be the exact thing that we’re hoping for. We hope to drive business to more programs.”

The community gave Kniola feedback on the museum and the general consensus is to support her and the volunteers. The only opposition heard thus far is the concern for competition among other programs.

“We dont want to be in competition,” Kniola said. “We want to colloborate with whoever we can. There’s always more we can offer to our community and we wouldn’t want to take away from anyone’s program.”

The future children’s museum hopes to work with Virginia Tech in addition to other organizations.

The civil and environmental engineering department brought the idea of their research on oil spills to the Children’s Museum of Blacksburg’s booth at the Summer Solstice festival last Saturday. The kids were taught about oil spills and how to clean up after them.

“One kid enjoyed it so much, he came back several times and with great questions. That’s whay we really hope to do – have more exhibits like that that,” Kniola said.

The museum’s planning does not have direct exhibit ideas. Instead, there’s a call for exhibit application that’s on the website so people in the community can share their ideas of potential exhibits. The board will review each application on a rolling basis and if the idea is accepted, they will partner with the person  credited with the idea to discuss future plans.

“I think it’s great what they’ve been doing with the traveling exhibits but having a permanent location somewhere with rotating exhibitis would be great,” Greiner said.

The future museum still needs to find a place, a search that has not narrowed down very much as of yet. Kniola said she and several others want to have it in Blacksburg, near Virginia Tech and the downtown area. According to Kniola, if the musuem were to open in the downtown area, it would drive people to come to the museum for the day and then stay for lunch or dinner and it would be part of the downtown revitalization.

“In talking to town council, we’ve spoken to them about the museum as an economic driver,” Kniola said. “It would boost other retail spaces.”

Also, students would be able to engage with the museum by volunteering or doing an internship since it would be a non-profit organization.

“Certainly seeing how enthusiastic the kids are has been the most rewarding,” Kniola said.

A version of this article appeared in the Jun 23 issue of the Collegiate Times.