Explorado

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The EXPLORADO Children's Museum in the inner harbor of Duisburg offers a large interactive exhibition for children between four and twelve years of age. Visitors of all ages can learn and research in a playful way on 3,000 square meters and 3 floors.

concept

In the EXPLORADO, young visitors have the opportunity to actively deal with their living environment and to explore everyday phenomena. In this way, it deliberately stands out from classic museums and instead orientates itself on the American children's museums with their principles: hands on, hearts on, minds on.

  • Hands on (based on experience): The children can discover and learn through physical experience. Due to the child-friendly design, they play and have a lot of fun.
  • Hearts on (due to emotion): The children feel accepted because the exhibition was created for them and responds to their wishes and needs.
  • Minds on (due to learning): Children recognize that there are complex relationships in their environment that interlink many aspects. You will learn that behind things that are taken for granted, there is a lot of technology and energy.

The three principles are clearly illustrated for children by the EXPLORADO characters hand, heart and mind.

history

A first model experiment to establish this concept in Germany started in the 1990s on the site of the Zeche Carl , a socio-cultural center in Essen . The Carloseum opened its doors from 1996 to 1999 with the declared aim of determining the needs of children and young people. The operation was made possible by funding from the GÖS program and the German Federal Environment Foundation . As part of the project, the concept of a hands-on construction site was developed that should enable children to do everything that they can otherwise only see through a hole in the site fence.

As part of the 1997 International Building Exhibition , Prof. Ganser and Minister Brusis made the offer to build the children's museum in Duisburg, as the city of Essen showed no interest in continuing the Carloseum. For this purpose the association Kindermuseum Innenhafen Duisburg eV was founded, which was supposed to promote the ATLANTIS project in Duisburg.

During the summer months of 2000 and 2002, the hands-on construction site was operated extremely successfully twice in the Duisburg inner harbor, and in 2004 the Atlantis Children's Museum finally opened .

After more than three years of operation at the site, the Atlantis had to be closed on November 4, 2007 for financial reasons. In the following years, the Legoland Discovery Center moved to the Werhahnspeicher, which, however, turned its back on Duisburg after only a few years and moved to Oberhausen. The original idea of ​​a children's museum was then taken up again and after a short renovation phase, the EXPLORADO celebrated its opening on June 8, 2013. Since then, the range has been continuously expanded and expanded.

Werhahnmühle

The home of the EXPLORADO Children's Museum is the western part of the Werhahnmühle . This was converted into an exhibition and office complex in 2001 and 2002. The children's museum occupies the entire former storage building as well as several floors of the silo area behind.

The listed beam construction paired with modern exhibition technology ensures a unique atmosphere inside. In addition, visitors have a good view of Duisburg's inner harbor from all floors.

exhibition

The exhibition was created especially for children and offers enough space for research and discovery on a total of three floors and 3,000 square meters. In various subject areas, children can playfully explore their living environment and its secrets and gain insights that are often denied to them in everyday life.

In the TechnikTester area, the young visitors are brought closer to the world of construction and transport. Equipped in proper style with a hard hat and gloves, walls can be pulled up and houses built. In the EXPLORADO driving school, even the youngest visitors get a driver's license and then do a few laps on the course.

A large barge on the ground floor with the adjacent mill also creates a historical and cultural connection to the Werhahnspeicher and Duisburg's inner harbor. In the role play, the barge is unloaded and the sacks of grain brought ashore are transported to the adjacent mill by means of a cart . There the steps of grain processing are shown clearly and comprehensibly for the children. According to the concept, the children themselves become actors and not only observe, but also set the mill in motion themselves using levers and rotating wheels.

In mid-2014, EXPLORADO also set the world record for the longest marble run in Duisburg. The bullets are shot under the roof with air pressure and from there go on a 1288.58 m long journey to the cellar of the Werhahnspeicher. Of course, visitors have the opportunity to follow the path of the balls.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/duisburg/neues-kindermuseum-im-innenhafen-aid-1.3402939
  2. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/duisburg/neues-kindermuseum-explorado-eroeffnet-am-samstag-id8033731.html
  3. ↑ http://ruhrpottkids.com/archiv/laengste-kugelbahn/
  4. ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/duisburg/kugelbahn-mit-neuem-weltrekord-aid-1.4327276

Web link

Explorado Duisburg - official website of the operator Explorado Operations GmbH , Cologne

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 26 "  N , 6 ° 46 ′ 14.4"  E