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The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Two awe-inspiring experiences full of history, inspiration and
unforgettable storytelling
Founded in 1925, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (known regionally as TCM) is the largest children’s museum in the world, serving over 1.2 million visitors annually at their five-story, 225-square-foot building and surrounding 7.5-acre campus. Over the years, TCM has become much more than a children’s museum, exhibiting art, history, culture, and natural history for a global audience of all ages.
In 2021, the museum turned to Dimensional Innovations to help bring two important all-encompassing, educational experiences to life through spectacular exhibit design. These two extraordinary additions, Malala’s World and Giants of the Jurassic, transport visitors to other worlds through the magic of light, sound, and immersive storytelling.
*Key partners include the TCM team, Schuler Shook, Evolution Audio.
Testimonials
The DI team did a tremendous amount of work to understand who we are. We quickly felt like we had an extension of our team here.
TCM Director of Exhibits and Interactive Media, Monica Ramsey
Malala’s World
When the museum decided to create an unforgettable experience to honor Malala Yousafzai’s world-changing fight for girls’ education inside The Power of Children® exhibit series, they chose DI as the content creation and experiential design expert.
To tell her story, DI worked alongside distinguished professional partners and museum staff to create a rich and colorful, immersive sound and light show called Malala’s World. The show features original illustrations and animations based on the book Malala’s Magic Pencil, as well as powerful voiceover narratives, sound and light design, and international media footage of Malala’s remarkable young life.
This exhibit takes visitors on Malala’s journey from her home in the Swat Valley of Pakistan to her tireless global crusade for the right of all girls to have an education, despite harsh Taliban threats and repressive retaliation. The immersive show tells her inspiring story of perseverance and courage in the face of life-threatening opposition and eventual triumph as the youngest person to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. In the spirit of Malala’s powerful message of inclusive education for all, the show deftly utilizes inclusive design techniques and closed captioning.
Malala’s World is a potent story about the power of one voice and one pencil – no less in the hand of one child. Serving as a humbling and inspirational experience for all ages, the exhibit leaves visitors with a final question, “How can you support the power of education and make a difference?”
130 million
Young girls out of school due to gender discrimination, poverty and more
17
Age Malala won the Noble Peace Prize
Giants of the Jurassic
The museum is known for keeping science and history alive through engaging, awe-inspiring, and imaginative scholarly exhibits for all curious young minds to learn from and enjoy. Giants of the Jurassic is no exception.
DI worked alongside incredible partners to create an engaging and wondrous expedition that transports visitors to a land before time through immersive storytelling. Two projected sound and light shows bring the prehistoric to present day, focusing on a pair of Sauropod fossils discovered by the museum’s own paleontologists.
Visitors enter the theater greeted by two giant Diplodocid fossils poised at the edge of a Jurassic flood plain. Through the use of roaring sound design and custom-animated illustrations projected on a 35-by-65-foot mega mural, visitors get a sense of what life was like in the Jurassic period for these colossal creatures.
A special live, interpretive performance stars paleontologists from the past and present, who engage directly with the crowd to share more about these massive creatures and demonstrate how much our knowledge has grown. With inclusivity as a key goal, DI provided closed captioning, utilized inclusive design techniques and added ASL interpretation.
Giants of the Jurassic is a fascinating expedition, full of deeply scientific stories that invite all young scientists to explore some of the largest creatures to ever walk the planet.
Now that’s what we call a dino-mite experience.
1 square mile
Size of TCM’s dig site in Wyoming
Learn more about Brand Storytelling, Children's Educational Spaces, Exhibit Planning and Design, and Video Design and Production.
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Carole Hollman
Practice Director - Cultural
With over 13 years of experience in the museum design/build world, Carole has successfully led and facilitated large-scale exhibit and interpretive projects of national importance around the country for over a decade. Carole’s passion... more about Carole Hollman
