Labor Day weekend I had the opportunity to visit Colorado and to experience Meow Wolf Denver: Immersive Art Museum. “Reality unravels across 3 floors of mind-bending art and one-of-a-kind experiences. Choose a path or let it choose you, the unknown is waiting.”
Meow Wolf began in New Mexico and has expanded to Las Vegas, Texas, and soon Los Angeles, and NYC. At its core, Meow Wolf is about art, adventure, and exploration. Denver offers a Convergence Station where four alien worlds collide into one. Visitors are free to walk and explore passing through doors and tunnels into new worlds. Over 100 artists are represented the world they have created.
Reading about Infinite Learning, especially in Learning Everywhere, I was reminded of my experience at Meow Wolf. We entered excited, but also a bit intimidated. There were people to negotiate around in the space and I was also confronted with a sense of a vast unknown. As libraries have evolved from “learning in the warehouse” of solitary learning in the stacks, to collaborative spaces, we as librarians have had to negotiate changes in technology and society (Stephens, Infinite Learning 2019). Like Meow Wolf this is both exciting and intimidating.
“We, as librarians, have adapted our roles over time in relation to our core values and mission” (Stephens, YLibrary, 2014). In a model where evolving spaces, participation, and collaboration, we have the opportunity to offer something new for our community that is “new and outside-the-box to satisfy their curiosity.” Offering meaningful learning experiences will position us within the community as the place where people look for new things.
What do we mean by learning through play? on Vimeo explores the components of creative learning. “The most powerful part of the experience is that is open-ended.” This leads to unique and individual experiences the apply to other areas of life. Exploration develops creative confidence, confronting our uncertainty allows us to do something new, which applies to the bigger challenges we face. Lego believes creativity and collaboration are skills that are developed, not skills that are innate, so by challenging ourselves to play we develop skills that apply to all areas of problem solving.
I used to live in Denver and Meow Wolf was one of my favorite locations for staff outings. I love Meow Wolf!
Ron, that would make for an incredible staff outing. We started the day at Casa Bonita and then went on to Meow Wolf. Having been a local you know what a wild day that was. Our minds were blown! haha.