Child Creativity Lab   

The Child Creativity Lab's mission is to foster the next generation of critical thinkers, problem solvers, innovators, and leaders through hands-on creativity-enhancing exploration. Today’s children become tomorrow’s visionaries.

The Child Creativity Lab  offers educational programs that focus on creativity-enhancing stimulation and inspiration in alignment and in support of overarching California State Department of Education initiatives for pre-Kindergarten through 8th graders.  These science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (S.T.E.A.M.) based programs are facilitated at the Child Creativity Lab Depot for Creative Reuse Center and directly on-site at schools, after-school programs, libraries, community events, faith-based organizations, and more via the Child Creativity Lab Museum-on-Wheels initiative.

Our Influence and Reach in Orange County

The Child Creativity Lab heavily relies on our ability to form strong working partnerships with schools, after-school programs and other youth-serving community organizations. Through our wide-ranging, diverse, and established collaborative partners, we reach populations otherwise unexposed to creative, expressive and artistic programming including low-income and special needs children. Current partners include: Orange County Department of Education, California School-Age Consortium, California After School and Safety Program, Orange County Association for the Education of Young Children, Santa Ana, Fullerton, Tustin, Orange, Westminster, and Laguna Unified School Districts, Orange County Children’s Therapeutic Arts Center, Orange County High School of the Arts, OC Rescue Mission, CASA of Orange County, Orangewood Children and Family Center, Anaheim Families YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs of Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Laguna Beach and Capistrano Valley, THINK Together, Orange County Head Start, Santa Ana Public Library, City of Orange Public Library, Irvine Public Schools Foundation and the Muzeo Museum and Cultural Center.

Our Short and Long Term Impact

Our impact has grown substantially since our inception.  In 2014, we offered 23 programs to 1,815 youth.  In 2015 that number grew to 86 programs serving 2,950 youth.  We finished up 2016 by serving over 13,000 youth.  Fifty-seven percent of those youth were at-risk children from low-income families.  Creativity lasts through a lifetime and can impact a child’s career.  In an IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs, creativity was identified as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.  Our program enhances existing educational opportunities that will advance creativity skills needed to become future leaders.  Today’s children become tomorrow’s visionaries. 

Community Need

The negative impacts of this loss of creativity-stimulating activities have been well documented. According to the Newsweek cover article, “The Creativity Crisis” (2010) by Bronson and Merryman, a long-term academic study in approximately 300,000 K-12 students in the U.S. (Kim, 2011) revealed that creativity scores have significantly decreased since 1990. This study reports “children have become less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle” (Kim, 2011). Moreover, creativity scores for K-3 students decreased the most, and those from grades 4-6 suffered the second greatest decline (Kim, 2011).