Good to Grow! Museums

Congratulations to the Good to Grow! Museums
Since launch of the self-study in Fall 2008, six museums have earned designation as Good to Grow! Museums based on their scores.

  • The Children’s Museum of the Brazos Valley (Bryan, TX)
  • Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert (Rancho Mirage, CA)
  • The Children’s Museum of La Crosse (WI)
  • Creative Discovery Museum (Chattanooga, TN)
  • Discovery Center Museum (Rockford, IL)
  • Discovery Gateway Children's Museum (Salt Lake City, UT)
  • Port Discovery Children's Museum (Baltimore, MD)

Become a Good to Grow! Museum 
Earn national recognition from ACM and increase your museum’s credibility as a children’s health resource with funders, partners and key audiences.

All Good to Grow! Museums are listed on GoodtoGrow.org and receive a recognition certificate from ACM and a Good to Grow! Museum seal to display in the museum. Good to Grow! Museums may use the Good to Grow! logo on marketing materials and museum Web site. 

The first step to becoming a Good to Grow! Museum is to begin the Self-Study process, in which the museum benchmarks its health and wellness efforts and creates a concrete plan for advancing its work. 

About the Good to Grow! Self-Study
The Self-Study process provides an organizational review with a focus on health and wellness practices. A way to both think about what the museum is already doing and what it wants to do in the future, it serves as a tool for museums for planning how to build capacity to advance children’s health and wellness in the communities they serve. The process is community-centered, drawing on an understanding of the health and wellness needs of the community’s children. At the same time, it is museum-driven. It brings together staff and board to explore and discuss their own museum's health and wellness interests and relevant practices across their organization. It also encourages discussion and shared understanding of how health and well-being fit into a museum's culture and reflects what is distinct and important.

Completing the Self-Study is an investment. When a museum carries out the Self-Study, it is not only better able to understand what to do to support children’s health and wellness needs, but it is also helping to build a body of best health and wellness practices for museums.

We encourage museums to conduct the Good to Grow! Self-Study and become a Good to Grow! Museum, a museum that is committed to the following:

  • Emphasizing ACM’s four key Good to Grow! messages to advance children’s health and wellness in their community.
  • Actively working with its community on behalf of children’s health and wellness.
  • Deliberately incorporating health and wellness into all aspects of its organizational planning and practices.
  • Being a recognized and valued community resource for children’s well-being.

Growing Healthy Museums
A Good to Grow! project, Growing Healthy Museums is funded by a three-year 21st Century Museum Professionals grant from the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS). Growing Healthy Museums is a comprehensive effort to increase children’s museums’ institutional ability to promote and improve health and wellness in the communities they serve.

The Growing Healthy Museums project includes three major components: an institutional self-study and recognition program; a best practices publication of health programs, exhibits and services at ACM member museums; and a post-conference session at InterActivity 2008 and resulting toolkit focused on building healthy community partnerships. These three components complement one another; however, they also represent multiple points of entry for museums at various stages of development and levels of experience around this topic.