Discovery Lab (Tulsa Children's Museum)

Museums, Historical Sites, and ZoosUnited States51-200 Employees

Discovery Lab has been igniting the curiosity of children since 2007, initially as a museum without walls. In May 2013, Discovery Lab opened their first walls in the Owen Park Recreation Center--seeing over 130,000 children and families each year including nearly 30,000 through outreach. In early 2022, the museum opened a 57,000-square-foot world-class facility adjacent to Gathering Place park. The museum projects to impact over 300,000 children and families each year at the new site furthering its mission to inspire children, connect families, and build community through exploration, exhibits, programming, and play.

Discovery Lab is an educational resource for Tulsa providing outreach museum classes to area schools and organizations, and as a field trip destination as a partner with Tulsa Public Schools as its Center for STEAM Education. Exhibits and programming encourage the development of executive function and process skills, including critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, and innovation. Educational content focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM), and health and wellness, and complements and supplements current school curriculum. Studies show that hands-on, informal learning experiences, like those delivered by Discovery Lab, impact reading readiness and school success. Discovery Lab is a community hub that appeals to families regardless of income, education, or ethnicity, and impacts underserved children in many of Tulsa’s Title I schools. More than 25 percent of the students that visit on field trips and 40 percent of outreach programming are delivered at a free or reduced rate. 

Discovery Lab is a member of the Oklahoma Museum Network, the Oklahoma Museum Association, the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the Association of Children’s Museums, the American Alliance of Museums, and Arts Alliance Tulsa.

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