The Children's Museum of Greater Fall River held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 29, 2023, for its new "Forest Adventure Room" exhibit. Melissa Cardelli, President of the board of directors, welcomed attendees including Mayor Coogan, representatives from the Fall River Women's Union and Bristol County Savings Bank, and artist Erica Johnson. Cardelli highlighted the museum's mission to inspire a love for learning in a safe space and thanked Bristol County Savings Bank and the Fall River Women's Union for their generous grants, which funded the exhibit's materials. She also acknowledged Erica Johnson for her murals and 3D artwork, and Hetzler Contracting for donating wood cutouts. Mayor Coogan spoke about the museum's importance to the children of Fall River and congratulated the team on the new addition. The Forest Adventure Room is designed for children aged one to five, though it can engage children up to ten, aiming to inspire imagination, enhance social skills, and encourage family interaction by simulating a safe camping experience. Cardelli also discussed the museum's commitment to accessibility, offering passes at the library, discounts for EBT recipients through the Museums for All program, military discounts, and weekday specials. She emphasized the need for continued community support through fundraising and grants to maintain these accessible programs. Looking back, Cardelli reflected on the museum's journey from a traveling exhibit to its current permanent home, fulfilling the vision of founding members like Joanne Sprigga and Odette Amarillo. She also shared future goals, including plans for a "water room" and other new exhibits, with a focus on supporting children's social-emotional development. The ceremony concluded with the official ribbon cutting, declaring the Forest Adventure Room open.
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good morning everyone my name is Melissa cardelli I'm the president of the board of directors here at the Children's Museum of Greater Fall River I'd like to welcome everyone to our forest Adventure room exhibit grand opening I want to particularly welcome a few specific guests that are here today mayor krugin thank you for coming the Fall River women's Union Bonnie Davis Mendes and
0:21Jennifer Bogan thank you for coming Bristol County Savings Bank Jeff Bradley and fabric Northrup representative for Carol Fiola we have Tyra Leeds Patty Rigo and Nolan are here to represent Senator Mike rodericks thank you for coming also our board member Odette Amarillo who is here our Museum staff our members and our patrons and of course our artist that is here today Erica Johnson
0:48at the Museum our mission is to really inspire a love for learning by creating a safe and supportive space for children to learn and interact with their family and friends the materials that make up this beautiful exhibit that you see here today were made possible by the generous grants that we received from Bristol County Savings Bank and from the Fall River women's Union we'd like to thank them tremendously for
1:10their support in being able to create this exhibit we'd also like to thank our artist Erica Johnson that created the beautiful murals the 3D artwork that you see around the sculptures her artwork has truly made this exhibit come to life thank you also to Meredith that's representing hetzler Contracting for the donation of the wood cutouts so those are the different bushes that you see around the room
1:32and finally we'd like to thank our director Kelly rose who stands behind me here our floor manager Katie Pascal who's out on the floor as well as the support of all of our staff for their vision and creation of this exhibit it was truly a collaborative effort um and I'm sure you can see that it's just a wonderful product of that finally our vision for this music for this particular exhibit was to inspire
1:56children to use their imagination to enhance communication and social skills and to encourage families to interact with each other and I firmly believe that this exhibit will do just that and so much more ask mayor Coogan to please come forward to say a few words before our official ribbon Vine cutting thank you um obviously it's very special to come down to the children's museum this is a key piece in all of the
2:23children in the city of Farmers they grow up they almost all pass through here at one time or another and this room is just another nice addition I've worked with Bristol County Savings they are tremendously committed to our community and obviously the Women's Center also to help fund operations like this beautiful room and Erica you did a great job on it looks great but with that being said I'm sure people are
2:46going to want to come down here enjoy the venue have some laughs play with some other kids school's coming back so we're going to have everybody in here hopefully through the year and again my congratulations go out to the whole team here at the Children's Museum they do great work and we want them to keep it going and thanks for coming out today this particular room is geared for our younger population of one to
3:13five-year-olds I would say even older can participate there's lots of different materials in here that would allow for children up through the ages of 10 to engage as well all the materials are very supportive and therefore can adhere to the wide range of children that we would service so you talk to me about some of the funding the vision uh could have been any kind of a room right so the funding
3:37um came from Bristol County Savings and the Fall River women's Union a combination of the two grants from them is what paid for all of the materials that you see here in the room uh the inspiration for the room came Kelly and I were having conversations about what could we you know we just celebrated our 10-year anniversary what could we do in this particular room um and I honestly that little Mushroom
3:58House over there was kind of on my bucket list of things that I wanted at some point in my life so um we thought what could we do with that and then we've had a few children that have come through and they've talked about their experiences this summer about going camping and things like that and some of them weren't so successful in the experience and so we thought well could we give a room that would allow
4:18children to kind of experience in a nice safe spot where they get to practice those skills going in a tent pretending to sit around a fire you know cooking out in the open that kind of stuff seeing the animals and different things and could be support them that way and so that's how the room kind of developed
4:40sure tell me too about um you know it's so important that we have a facility such as this right in Fall River so that families don't have to either make it lead to Providence or pay those higher ticket prices and I know they even have tickets available at the library um so speak to us about that home it's important that we have this gem right here right so the museum really offers a
5:03lot to the community because we do provide a very safe clean space for children to get to back to the basics of play which all leads to learning all play leads to learning um at whatever age even as adults we all come in here and play and do different things and that's what helps Inspire how we interact with our children so it's important to not only instill that love of learning very early on but also to
5:25keep it going for all of us adults so that way we always see the value of play and how that's important for children here at Bristol um sorry I work at Bristol too so um talk to remember what role I'm in uh here at the Museum we also provide lots of opportunities for families to participate in the museum in a variety of ways so you mentioned we have passes
5:45at the library which we do we also are part of the museums for all programs where families that are receiving EBT benefits can come for three dollars a person for up to four people in their party we have military discounts we have discounts during the week after three it's only three dollars specials on different days we try as often as possible to really reach out to the community and offer the museum at a
6:10discounted price as much as possible but that requires funding so we implore that we you know we reach out to the community as well to say we want to keep doing that we want to make sure that you know the museum is open to all and so because of that we we need support as well so um we are you know doing fundraising and writing grants and things like that and are just
6:29appreciative of the community here in Fall River many of us can remember decades Decades of break is big and we're traveling Museum what's it like to finally have four nice walls around you historic walls so I was part of the traveling Museum as well so I do remember those days of lugging all the stuff from here to there and everywhere and I think having these four walls really represents that Vision that Joanne
6:56sprigga had as well as all of the founding members oh Dad I don't know where to talk off to but um Odette amaralo as well our board member a founding member and that Vision was to have a space here in Fall River to offer to the greater Fall River Community a place where children could come and play with their families and engage with them and have those experiences that create those lasting memories
7:17um that you know when they grow up and have their own children they think oh you know we went to the children's museum let's go back and create those memories for ourselves any future goals future goals yes we have a few different exhibits in the works that we're thinking of we have a water room that we're going to be raising money for as well as a few other different exhibits
7:36that we'd like to change up as I had mentioned earlier we've been here 10 years now so now I start to look around and start changing up the exhibits to meet the needs of the community around us to support um you know we know that our children are really suffering in terms of social emotional skills and things like that we really need to work on those and support them in engaging with others and so
7:55we're looking at lots of different ways to support that here at the Museum so now for the vine cutting sponsors yeah I think
8:15perfect yes
8:33Forest room is officially open yeah thank you everyone