HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — After more than 6 months of work, which included planning and design meetings, interviews with community members and museum visitors, and a significant amount of market analysis, the EarlyWorks Family of Museums team is ready to show the community what it has planned for the future of hands-on learning in North Alabama.
The Think Big - Play Big plan will not only be transformational for EarlyWorks but will have a tremendous impact on the learning opportunities offered to the youngest members in our community. If Huntsville and Madison County can bring about innovation on a worldwide level, then the children and families of this technology savvy community certainly deserve a place to Think Big - Play Big. Our children deserve a children’s museum that embraces kids natural curiousity and encourages them to ask why and how; a place that celebrates a child’s innate creative mindset, allowing their originality to shine; a place that nurtures young creatives, so that they embrace innovative thinking and create possibilities. We believe that place is within our grasp, and we’d like to show you and tell you about it.
In the spring of 2022, Gyroscope Inc. an award-winning, museum planning, architecture, and design firm that specializes in emerging museums and cultural organizations undergoing change was selected by the EarlyWorks Board of Directors to lead the master planning process. Gyroscope has built a reputation as a highly- imaginative firm with projects spanning a wide spectrum of internationally respected museums and science centers. Gyroscope has completed projects with clients, such as Explore & More Children’s Museum, Buffalo, NY; Louisiana Children’s Museum; Thinkery, Austin, TX; Minnesota Children’s Museum, and MOXI: The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, Santa Barbara, CA. They are known for pushing the envelope and have won awards for both design excellence and family learning.
As the planning process began, Gyroscope met with community leaders, corporate partners, the EarlyWorks employee team and Board of Directors and the most important group… EarlyWorks museum visitors. Through months of hard work, data gathering and visioning activities the result is a plan that calls for a state-of-the-art regional children’s museum that on its completion will rival any other children’s museum in the southeast.