Innovators LAB

Make your own creation that can illuminate!

Use paper folding methods to create a unique toy.

Behind the glass doors, we have tools, materials, furniture & technology so our older visitors can guide their own making experience. Visitors can design and create unique toys or new inventions using a range of advanced tools and materials.

Create a one-of-a-kind print using different colors of paint.

Create your own personal coat of arms pillow inspired by heraldry.

Learn about native foods and Kumeyaay culture by collecting and coloring connect the dot drawings. Find and complete all 5 drawings in the museum to receive a prize!

A special pop up workshop with artist in residence Rizzhel Javier as part of the People + Places project. Informed by this project, the workshop let participants draw a self-portrait, learn how to sew, and take home a plush mini version of themselves! The workshop created an opportunity to share stories about where people are and the places they live.

Learn how to weave with paper and construct a device for scrambling your own secret messages or images.

Become a code reader and embark on a scavenger hunt throughout the museum.  Learn about and use binary code to get from clue to clue.

Come make your very own superhero figure with us! Launch your superhero from a catapult and see how far it can float or fly!

Channel your inner superhero and create your own emblem. Explore the printing process with our Teaching Artists and create a unique sticker to take home.

Design and build solar cars with your dad for Father’s Day weekend!

Solar Turbines powers the future! In celebration of the Solar Turbines’ 90th year in San Diego, the Museum has partnered with a team of their engineers to design projects that educate families about energy transfer. Don’t miss out on this unique experience to work hands-on with actual engineers in our LAB!

Behind the glass doors, big kids can create anything they like using the materials we have available. We will have Superhero-themed challenge cards created by Teaching Artist Iris to spark their imaginations.

Our beloved Superhero Studio has returned to Innovators LAB. Visitors can create their own Comic-Book Style Superhero in the drop-in art studio outside the glass doors of the LAB. Stop by to Trace, Ink & Color your own Superhero.

Visitors use cardstock paper, scissors, and glue sticks to add to our paper neighborhood display. Behind the glass doors, we’ve added new tools, materials, furniture & technology so our “older” visitors can guide their own making experience. So far, children have created paper toys, stop-motion animation, and are diving into a range of advanced tools and materials.

Visitors aged 6 and up created a mixed-media sculpture on a wooden board. Through this process, they gained experience with a diverse range of tools, from digital cameras and printers to hammers and nails, considering elements of shape, color, and dimension

In the drop-in space, visitors explored these same concepts in a structure created by local architect Miki Iwasaki. Here they manipulated colorful tiles and bright light to create geometric patterns and unusual shadows.

In this round of Innovators LAB, we work with local sculptor Scott Shoemate to explore the art of balance. In the workshop, older visitors use a spinning lathe to carve candles into unique spinning tops. Our younger visitors work with beautifully sculpted blocks of wood to build kinetic balancing sculptures. Toddlers play with balancing organic blocks on top of one another to create structures.

Through their explorations, visitors will gain an intuition for the concept of balance, increase their comfort in working with new tools and materials, and gain confidence in their ability to engineer their own art.

CAN YOU MAKE A HOLIDAY LED CARD?

For this special edition of Innovators LAB, our internal creative team developed a variety of holiday programming. In our workshops, older visitors worked with copper tape, batteries, and LEDs to create light-up cards. They probed the basics of electricity in trying to connect their batteries to the small bulbs that lit up the front of their greeting cards. Our younger innovators worked with a variety of materials to design creative cards and holiday decorations for the home. They used pipe cleaners and straws to engineer 3D structures inspired by traditional Finnish ornaments, and practiced their fine motor skills in tying ribbons to make a forest of pine trees.

CAN YOU MAKE SOMETHING FLOAT?

Fly Together was inspired by local artist Marisol Rendon’s experience with scuba diving. Her explorations of buoyancy led her to wonder: how can we create floating art? In Fly Together’s workshop, older visitors used heat sealers to make unique ‘mylar’ balloons. They formed and tested hypotheses and, through a process of trial and error, played with each balloon’s density to make it float at a specific height.

Our younger visitors formed their own understanding of buoyancy by creating paper parachutes, propellers, and myriad other flying contraptions and testing them in a wind tunnel. They, too, were practicing the scientific method as they refined their designs until they floated, spun, or soared as desired.