Photos by Jill Schramm/MDN ABOVE: Elly DesLauriers, director of marketing & development for the Minot Park District, turns a handle to flip a frog’s pancake in an exhibit inside the Magic City Discovery Center. She is joined by other staff and park board members who toured the center Tuesday.

Members of the Minot Park Board and park staff toured the new Magic City Discovery Center on North Hill Tuesday, examining some of the 150 exhibits being installed in the building.

The children’s science and creativity exhibits are in place in portions of the museum, but many more remain to come.

The tour through the colorful rooms of the center offered a taste of what the public can expect when the center opens sometime in the first part of 2023.

A group of educators and volunteers also were engaged on Tuesday in the first day of a two-day training conducted by Nyssa Buning, Spark!Lab Network manager at the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington, D.C. Buning works with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, which has Spark!Lab as its primary educational program.

Spark!Lab at MCDC will offer invention space for youth up to age 14. The space will have stations that offer the youth different types of challenges, requiring them to use their problem-solving skills and materials provided to find answers. The MCDC Spark!Lab will be the 10th in the country.

Buning said the training provides the educators and volunteers at MCDC with knowledge to facilitate interdisciplinary and inquiry-based learning, encouraging inventive skills such as curiosity and collaboration.

“In doing that, we have lots of great discussions about what Spark!Lab will look like here at Magic CIty Discovery Center and the ability to feature inventors from North Dakota,” Buning said. “My job is supporting and opening Spark!Lab sites in the network in informal learning centers across the country and really adapting invention education to local regions to make it really relevant and accessible.

“The invitation for Magic City Discovery Center is to embed their own activities, to work with the local community to say, “What are the problems facing Minot now?’ Work with schools, work with families, work with local nonprofits to create new invention activities and help develop them with the Smithsonian team,” she added. “Then, part of being with the network is that they’ll have access to all of the other activities developed by other sites.”

In addition to its exhibits, MCDC will have community spaces with spectacular views of the city that eventually will become available for rent for private events and for MCDC’s programmed educational events. Some space will be equipped with audio-visual technology to accommodate meetings.

The center’s educational exhibits will focus on water, light and other aspects of science, and will have Minot and North Dakota themes running through them. 

The center has memberships for sale. An annual family membership is $175, regardless of family size, and entitles the family to unlimited visits. Daily admission will be $10, although Keller noted that low-income individuals with a DBT or SNAP card will be admitted for $1.