Today’s Guest Post is by Rebecca Shulman Herz, Director of the Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum in Peoria, Illinois, USA, and Margaret LeJeune, an image-maker, curator, and educator from Rochester, New York. 

The Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum is a 3-year-old museum located in Central Illinois, USA. Our mission is to help children become explorers and creators of the world. Our small exhibit space (8,000 square feet) holds six exhibits, including “The Sand Porch,” a glassed in area of the museum’s porch holding a sand table filled with kinetic sand.

In December 2017, we began talking to a local art professor, Margaret LeJeune, who teaches a class at Bradley University entitled “Art and The Environment.” The class engages students with historical and contemporary environmental issues as the framework for all of the projects.  With an emphasis on conceptual ideas over formal concerns and collaborative production over solo endeavors, creative production often focuses…