Partners and Stakeholders

The successes of this project were in part due to unique collaboratations between stakeholders around the country. Although the principal stakeholders on the project were St. Louis Science Center and the Science Museum of Minnesota, community partners and five museum partners that joined the project in the last year of funding, were integral to implementation and creation of Learning Places.

• The St. Louis Science Center
• Science Museum of Minnesota

Key Community Partners

The St.Louis Science Center and the Science Museum of Minnesota both established key partnerships with organizations in their community where they were then able to develop Learning Places. These partners include:

The St. Louis Science Center

• Girls Incorporated
• Gateway Homeless Shelter
• Grace Hill Head Start
• Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club-Grand
• Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club-Adams

The Science Museum of Minnesota

• Commonbond Communities—Torre Advantage Center
• Commonbond Communities—Skyline Tower Advantage Center
• Commonbond Communities—Westminster Advantage Center
• Commonbond Communities—Cathedral Hill Homes Advantage Center

Five Museum Partners

During the fourth year of the project the work expanded to five additional cities (Learning Places Partner Museums—LPPM) where smaller scale learning places projects were implemented. Each LPPM was given $10,000 and one year to implement a project that met specific criterion, requiring that the project outcome advance a sustainable partnership between LPPM and an underserved community.

While the resources dedicated to the LPPM projects were far less than those allotted to the pilot site projects it was considered appropriate and important to disseminate in this way as the LPPM sites represent a broad range of possibility for science center/community collaborations. These LPPM sites represent a diversity in institution size, geography, levels of existing community relationships and audience demographics. It is the hope that by choosing such diverse LPPM sites there will be some general lessons learned about successful, effective science center/community collaborations that can apply across the field.

The LPPMs include:

• Explora—Albuquerque, NM
• Lower Hudson Valley Challenger Center—Ithaca, NY
• Headwaters Science Center—Bemidji, MN
• Pacific Science Center—Seattle, WA
• Sci–Port Discovery Center—Shreveport, LA

Learn more about St. Louis Science Center's YES program, and the Science Museum of Minnesota's Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center