Museum inspiring kids with kindness
With COVID-19 creating a new normal of stay-at-home life and Black Lives Matter protests pouring into city streets, the world is a hard place to navigate for adults. For children, it can seem like the world is paved with potholes.
The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh wants to help. The award-winning North Side museum has introduced the newest phase of its Museum at Home program, with a little help from Dormont native Zachary Quinto — a “born-and-bred Yinzer,” as he introduced himself — whose screen roles include Spock in the “Star Trek” films.
In a video during the museum’s virtual Great Night In Gala, Quinto encouraged children and families to share messages of kindness to family, friends, the community and the world.
“Now more than ever, kids need to see examples of love and kindness in the world around them,” Quinto said. “So we are asking kids and families to write letters expressing their feelings about what’s happening in the world today or talk about the joys they feel, or share a story about someone that treated them with extraordinary kindness.”
The new kindness initiative offers a platform to express those feelings in letters or “whatever personal form of expression is chosen,” including photographs, videos, poems, chalked signs, painted rocks, song and dance.
Kids and families can share their words and images of kindness by emailing hi@pittsburghkids.org; via mail to the Children’s Museum, 10 Children’s Way, Pittsburgh, PA, 15212; or by posting on the museum’s Facebook (facebook.com/pittsburghkids) and Twitter and Instagram (@pghkids) accounts.
Submissions will be featured online and displayed in the museum when it reopens. An example is the Neighborhood Sing-along” video, made up of entries performing Fred Rogers’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
Sunday’s entertainmentpacked gala program — available online at https://pittsburghkids.org/support/greatnight-gala-2020 — featured celebrities such as Billy Porter, Conner John Gillooly, Patina Miller, Corey Cott and Katharine McPhee, as well as Steelers great Franco Harris, the Penguins’ Kris Letang and the Pirates’ Josh Bell.
Porter said, “I’m proud to say
that I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, a city that champions the arts and knows its value in the life of every child.” He then introduced one of several young singers studying in the arts here, Jordan McNeal — a Pittsburgh CAPA senior who has been accepted to the Berklee College of Music in Boston — to sing Mr. Porter’s “Kinky Boots” song, “I’m Not My Father’s Son.”
The family-friendly night was part fun and celebration, but also encouraged the discussion of the pressing issues of our times.
The museum is endeavoring to help families “address and have heartfelt discussions about race, equality and social justice, and the events impacting our city, region, nation, and beyond.”
The museum’s mission to inspire “joy, creativity and curiosity” includes partnering with those who work for and on behalf of children. With doors closed for now, the museum continues to reach out with its online programs for those holding down the fort at home.
With it’s kindness initiative, “We want to ensure that our work reaches them, and gives them an outlet for speaking and asking questions, understanding and learning.”