Dana Schloss
Dana is a prototype and exhibit developer for science and children’s museums. They have an MFA in Museum Exhibition Planning and Design and have spent time at museums all over the place. On the side, they work ridiculously hard in both the art and nerd communities, aiming to make things more magical wherever they go, and they have a knack for picking up rad collaborators along the way.
Most of their projects inside and outside of museums are about life-long learning and creating experiences that help people see themselves as more capable than they ever imagined. Their work is based on collaboration and interactivity, but it’s built on trust and respect — trust that a 5-year-old can use real tools to build something, that a 16-year-old can organize an event at a festival, and that no one is too old or too young to see themselves differently or learn new skills if you give them the chance. A few projects they’re proud of: developing and running Open Studio at Telus Spark in Calgary; a making and tinkering exhibition designed to give people the opportunity to gain practical (and not so practical) skills to think of themselves as people who can make things; helping to build Local Library, an all-ages community in Calgary that gave teens a chance to plan shows, exhibitions and workshops; Choose Yer Own Fest, a community curated festival of messy radness that encourages its all-ages participants to plan unpredictable events in unusual venues; co-creating By Heart or By Hearsay, a project where teams re-make DIY-no-budget-cardboard-special-FX versions of movies from their own fuzzy memories of films from their childhoods.
Currently they are at ScienceWorks Museum in Ashland, OR, experimenting with tinkering activities like Long Distance Chain Reactions and possible collaborative reenactments of Star Wars in DaVinci's Garage. Maybe they have a hard time picking because, as much as they like the projects, they're more proud of the people who see them, and use them, and come out learning that the world is full of adventures, and that they’re ready to take them on.
