Why do some families still not feel like children’s museums are for them?

It’s an important question, because the issue is often not whether a museum cares about belonging, but whether belonging is something visitors can actually feel.

That’s what makes this year’s Association of Children’s Museums theme especially relevant for the work ahead: The Fabric of Belonging: Crafting Spaces for Connection and Resilience. Children’s museums are already doing thoughtful, mission-driven work to create spaces that are welcoming, inclusive, and responsive to their communities. From a design perspective, we see this work come to life through experiences that help children and caregivers recognize themselves, their communities, and their role in the museum.

And while some of these choices may seem small, they can have a big impact. Belonging is built thread by thread, through simple, intentional design choices: authorship, familiarity, comfort, representation, and confidence. When those elements come together, families are more likely to feel that this place was made with them in mind.

Here are five design threads that can help make that happen.

1. The hand of the child is present in the experience.

One of the clearest signals of belonging is evidence that children have shaped the experience in some way. That might mean visible traces of child input, participatory development, prototyping with young audiences, or environments that clearly prioritize making, touching, trying, and revising. The experience carries the marks of use, iteration, and discovery.

This approach captures something essential: children are not just the audience for a museum. They are among the people who help define what it can become. Their perspectives should materially influence the experience. When children can see and feel that a space was shaped with them, not just for them, the museum begins to feel less like a place of instruction and more like a place of co-creation.

Designing for Belonging: Five Design Threads for Children’s Museums

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