How People Make Things

How People Make Things Opens at the Cade Museum on May 22, 2021

Gainesville, FL - Every object in our world has a story of how it is made. How People Make Things, a new traveling exhibit opening at the Cade Museum on May 22, 2021 tells that story by linking familiar childhood objects to a process of manufacturing that combines people, ideas and technology.


How People Make Things, inspired by the factory tour segments from the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood television series, offers hands-on activities using real factory tools and machines to create objects with four manufacturing processes - molding, cutting, deforming and assembly. Many common manufactured products help tell the story of how people, ideas and technology transform raw materials into finished products.


Visitors can use a die cutter to make a box and a horse; cut wax using different sculpting tools; deform a wire by twisting a straight wire into a spring shape by winding it around a metal shaft; mold spoons using real melted wax; assemble a trolley; and test their skills on the testing track.


“This exhibit brings children close to the real stuff, the nuts and bolts of how products are manufactured, which is very easy to feel removed from these days,” says Jane Werner, Executive Director of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. “Through his factory tours, Fred Rogers took complex issues and made them simple and direct so children could understand them and relate them to their own lives. He made manufacturing fascinating and inspirational, and we continue that tradition with How People Make Things.”


The factory tour videos from the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood television series featured in the exhibit depict the making of crayons, carousel horses, balls, stop lights, quarters, shoes, toy cars and toy wagons.


How People Make Things was created by Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh in collaboration with Family Communications, Inc. (FCI), the producer of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE). The exhibit was made possible with support from the National Science Foundation and The Grable Foundation.


How People Make Things can be viewed Fridays-Sundays 12 p.m.-5 p.m. at the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, 811 S. Main St., Gainesville. General admission is $12.50; youth ages 5-17, $7.50; children ages 0-4 get in free; seniors and college students only pay $10, and Cade Museum members get in free. Visit cademuseum.org for more information.

About the Cade Museum
​ In 2004, Dr. James Robert Cade and his family established the Cade Museum Foundation to build the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The Cade’s mission is to transform communities by inspiring and equipping future inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. Dr. Cade, a physician at the University of Florida, was best known as the leader of a research team that invented Gatorade in 1965. The Cade Museum is open to the public and located at 811 South Main Street, Gainesville, FL 32601. An independent 501(c)(3) public foundation, the museum receives no operational funding from federal, state, or local governments, or the University of Florida.

About Children’s Museum Pittsburgh
Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh (www.pittsburghkids.org) is a place that delights and inspires children, where they can take off on fantastic flights of imagination daily, and return to earth to splash in a river, hammer a nail and ink a silkscreen. With 80,000 square feet of space the Museum welcomes more than 307,000 visitors annually and provides tons of fun and loads of “real stuff” experiences for play and learning.

Permanent hands-on, interactive exhibit areas at the Museum include The Studio, Theater, Waterplay, Attic, Nursery, Backyard and MAKESHOP®. The Museum’s award-winning, three-story, center building is screened by a shimmering wind Sculpture and connects two historic structures (Allegheny Post Office Building & the Buhl Building). In 2006 the Museum became a certified green building and was honored by the American Institute for Architects and the National Historic Preservation Trust. In 2015 Parents Magazine named the Museum one of the nation’s fifteen top children’s museums and in 2017 the Children’s Museum was Voted One of the Nation’s Ten Best Museums for Families in USA Today 10Best Reader’s Choice Contest for Best Museum for Families in America. On April 27, 2019 Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh Museum opened MuseumLab™, a new museum for older kids, located in the former Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny adjacent to the Children’s Museum. With the opening of MuseumLab on April 27, 2019, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh has transformed a North Side landmark into an integral component of what is now the nation’s the largest cultural campus for children.

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