DENVER — Coloradans love learning about the world around them, if the numbers can tell us anything. Thousands of guests visit the Denver Museum of Nature and Science each month, and attendance is up about 10 percent this summer compared to last summer, according to data compiled by the museum.
Still, the team at the museum is aware that not everyone can make the trek to see its exhibits in person. That’s why, for the last year, it’s been putting lessons on wheels and hitting the road.
Zack Garvin, a community events specialist at the museum, is one of the educators and drivers of the “Curiosity Cruiser,” a brightly-colored trailer equipped with materials for several scientific lessons. Several times per week, Garvin and his teammates choose a scientific topic, and identify a Colorado community to visit.
“We want to make sure we’re serving the greatest amount of underserved community members and partners that we can,” Garvin said as he loaded Friday’s lesson materials into the trailer.
The lesson of the day was “flavorology,” as the team calls it — a deep dive into the ability of taste, and how genetics can influence our perception of foods. That made the venue of the Huerta Urbana Farmers Market particularly appropriate. The market is a pay-what-you-can model, giving people in the Globeville area access to fresh foods regardless of their ability to pay.
The Curiosity Cruiser, for its part, represents the Denver Museum of Nature and Science’s attempt to grapple with the barriers that some of our neighbors face accessing learning opportunities. Colorado state testing in 2019 showed about 36 percent of fifth graders met or exceeded expectations in science, while only about 18 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch received the same scores.
“The reason that it is so important to bring this around is to really demystify some of the concepts behind science [and] scientists,” Garvin said. “It is something that people do every day, on a daily basis. If you brew coffee, you’re doing chemistry. If you are eating something, your brain is using its own processes, its own biological processes to taste things — and maybe even genetics to taste things a little bit differently than the next folks. And we’re surrounded by incredible nature here in this amazing state, in my personal opinion, that really through a little bit of critical thinking you can not only appreciate but understand.”
While the concept of the Curiosity Cruiser has been years in the making at the museum, it was launched in its current form last year — with the trials and lessons of the pandemic to better shape its mission. It has traveled from Boulder to Brighton and beyond, with the team continually eyeing new spots and opportunities to share their knowledge and love of science.
“The mission statement of the museum is to be the spark that ignites the curiosity in our community,” Garvin said. “And if I can do that by coming to someone’s backyard — and the museum supports this — then we should be doing that.”
You can find the schedule for upcoming Curiosity Cruiser visits here.
