Kidzone Museum
Cambio expanded our vision of STEM from the narrow to the infinite—rooted in play, culture, and community. We’ve learned that our role is to listen, co-create, and grow with our families, with more awareness, understanding, and heart.
Kidzone Museum
Annual operating budget: Less than $1 million
Total number of employees: 9–10
Annual visitorship: 30,000
**Numbers as of 2025
Our plan: Building on our strengths
Rooted in our mission to inspire learning through creative play and discovery, KidZone Museum embarked on a transformative journey, delving deep into STEAM education through our participation in Cambio. This was our chance to celebrate work we were already doing, to continue nurturing our commitment to Latino families, to reimagine what STEAM looks like at our museum, and to better communicate the STEAM concepts that were already present in the Kidzone experience.
This entailed bringing our programming to Latino families in their communities when they couldn’t come to us. Our scholarship program ensured families could visit the museum on their own terms. We strengthened our bond with the community by providing information and flyers in Spanish, advocating for families in their native language, and connecting them to essential resources. But true inclusion means more than just translation, it means understanding ourselves and our community better.
Our projects: Reflection followed by action
We took time to reflect on how we could more fully integrate STEAM principles and Latino culture into our existing initiatives. This involved slow and steady change, ensuring that we understood and reflected the values of our Latino community in our work. This led to impactful changes such as creating bilingual signage for new exhibits and conducting listening sessions to better understand the needs and aspirations of community members.
We learned from listening to our community that the term STEM didn’t resonate with them, but ciencia did. Based on the concept that science belongs to everyone, which surfaced in conversations within our Cambio cohort, we shifted from offering a silo’ed science room to a more integrated “Science is Everywhere” approach that better affirmed our mission.
Additionally, we expanded our outreach efforts, attending parent support groups, teen council meetings, workshops, and more to hear directly from our community. We also intensified our focus on data capture, enabling us to gather insights and assess our impact more effectively, guiding us in making informed decisions that align with the diverse needs and preferences of Truckee residents.
Our takeaways: Strengthen existing STEAM connections
Cambio expanded our vision of STEM from the narrow to the infinite—rooted in play, culture, and community. We’ve learned that our role is to listen, co-create, and grow with our families, with more awareness, understanding, and heart. We realized:
- STEAM isn’t just an academic concept— it’s deeply woven into our community fabric
- Latino culture already intersects with STEAM in myriad ways
- Families deserve deep engagement via meaningful connections, authentic communication, and exciting activities
By celebrating how STEAM is already part of our Latino community—empowering our staff to share this knowledge with families—we will continue to champion innovation and exploration, shaping a world where curiosity knows no bounds.
To read other museums’ stories of change, visit our Cambio Stories page.
