Spark!Lab, the Center’s premier educational program, engages and empowers families to participate in the invention process through outreach initiatives at the museum, nationally, and internationally.
Draper Spark!Lab
Draper Spark!Lab at NMAH welcomed more than 220,000 visitors in 2019 to explore, create, collaborate, and invent. Activities are designed around family-friendly themes that connect to museum collections and change every four months, ensuring Spark!Lab visitors have something new to experience each time they visit.
In 2019, Spark!Lab inventors explored the themes of ADAPT, BUILD, and PRODUCE, using their creativity to construct solutions to different challenges, environments, needs, and purposes, and to tweak existing inventions for more than one use.
Spark!Lab Dr. InBae Yoon Invent It Challenge Celebration
The Invent It Challenge is an annual competition that inspires students ages 5-18 around the world to unleash their inner inventor. Students document their use of the Spark!Lab invention process to brainstorm new inventions that solve global problems. For the 2019 Dr. InBae Yoon Challenge, participants focused their minds and talent on generating inventions that enhance and improve the daily lives and activities of older adults.
Thanks to the generosity of the Yoon family, US-based winners traveled to Washington, DC, with chaperones for special workshops and tours from June 27–29.
Spark!Lab National Network
The Spark!Lab National Network currently encompasses nine locations across the United States:
- The Children’s Museum of the Upstate (Greenville, South Carolina)
- Edison and Ford Winter Estates (Fort Myers, Florida)
- Holland Museum (Holland, Michigan)
- Irving Archives and Museum (Irving, TX)
- Michigan Science Center (Detroit, Michigan)
- Midland Center for the Arts (Midland, Michigan)
- Springfield Museums (Springfield, Massachusetts)
- Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum (Reno, Nevada)
- US Space and Rocket Center (Huntsville, Alabama)
In 2019, these nine sites served over 357,000 visitors and developed more than 25 new programs and activities to engage the public in the invention process.