Parenting 101: Montréal Science Centre’s Mini Mondo exhibition wins a prize for excellence | Parenting 101

A little over a year after its launch, the Mini Mondo exhibition at the Montreal Science Centre has been awarded a prestigious prize from the SMQ, Québec’s provincial museum association, in recognition of its excellent museum practices.

The exhibition was recognized for its inclusivity and presentation in no less than six languages, and was purposely designed to introduce children ages 0 to 7 to eco-citizenship through a highly immersive approach. Its design features three zones: the forest, the river, and the city, and the exhibition space offers little ones a fascinating and interactive world where they can explore and discover their environment. Using a hands-on, free-play approach, the exhibition invites them to handle objects, hear sounds, and engage in activities designed to stimulate all their senses.

“This prestigious prize wonderfully recognizes the vision and the efforts of our team [who] set out to create an out-of-the-ordinary science-inspired exhibition that would raise the bar in terms of diversity, inclusion, and environmental consciousness,” said Isabel Dansereau, COO of Attractions (Québec) and Executive Director of the Old Port of Montréal Corporation, in a press release. “We are exceedingly proud to have added such an inclusive product to the Old Port of Montréal Corporation’s service offering.”

Mini Mondo is also the first exhibition that uses the diversity-sensitive Gender-based Analysis Plus process (GBA Plus), which also aims to develop inclusive spaces and experiences that reflect the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of all kinds of families. Through this approach, the Science Centre’s team performed a careful analysis of the different barriers that members of recent immigrant communities face in an effort to understand how the Montréal Science Centre’s spaces might be unknowingly contributing to them. “Working directly with these communities was extremely instructive,” said Cybèle Robichaud, Montréal Science Centre’s Director, in the same release. “Much like when improving accessibility, the adaptations we integrated into the exhibition design ultimately improve the visit experience for all our audiences. We are extremely proud of the process we underwent and the results that came from it.”

– Jennifer Cox