Arizona Natural Resources Museum (ANRM)

Arizona Natural Resources Museum (ANRM)

Visitor Experience Narrative

Arizona Natural Resources Museum (ANRM) is a highly interactive museum created to attract and educate K−12 students, school groups, educators, college students, and family audiences. The museum will be an immersive experience centered on Arizona’s natural resources education.

Updated November 14, 2022

Opening Date: Late 2025
Building Square Footage: 30,020 square feet
Exhibits Square Footage: 18,300 square feet
Admission cost: $15 for adults and $9 for seniors and children (under twelve).
Museum Membership: $125 per year

Arizona Natural Resources Museum (ANRM)—Narrative
The Arizona Natural Resources Museum (ANRM) (working title) is to be a highly interactive museum created to attract and educate K−12 students, school groups, educators, college students, and family audiences. The museum will be an interactive, immersive experience centered on Arizona natural resources education.

Primary natural resources to be covered in the ANRM:

Minerals
Water
Food/Agriculture
Forests

We all require natural resources, but what are the best ways to acquire those resources while protecting and preserving the natural environment for future generations? The museum will include displays and interactive exhibits on Arizona water conservation, gems and minerals, agriculture, mining, and conservation practices. The museum’s content will present various points of view regarding natural resources and encourage visitors to engage with those diverse opinions. The museum will also highlight the research at the University of Arizona that impacts and fosters these natural resources.

The visitor experience will be highly interactive and include tactile, open-ended, and didactic interactions that comply with the American Disabilities Act. The visitor experience will constantly change, with monthly updates to exhibits, lectures, programming, and museum outreach.

Our lives are based on natural resources that require conservation, innovative techniques for procurement, and innovative solutions for a sustainable future. There are many points of view regarding natural resources, but one thing is certain: we all require natural resources to live and thrive. The Arizona Natural Resources Museum will ensure visitors are engaged participants in an ongoing conversation.

First Floor:

Lobby, entrance desk, ticket sales
Your Innovation Badge – Your journey to becoming the next groundbreaking innovator starts with your innovation. By answering a few questions, your journey becomes personalized to your interests and tracks your innovation at the museum, and you can continue your work at home.
Arizona Innovation (Changing Gallery) – This changing gallery will showcase the groundbreaking innovations of The University of Arizona as inspiration to create your solutions to today’s problems.
Arizona Nature – The Copper State is the location of infinite natural wonders. This gallery will highlight the challenges and opportunities in farming, agriculture, mining, energy production, and climate change.
Mineral Gallery – With one of the world’s best collections (more than 20,000 specimens) of minerals, this interactive gallery will use AR and VR to show minerals’ science and future uses.
Open Storage and Laboratory – The former stage area is now a glass-enclosed specimen storage space and laboratory viewable from the first floor.
Multipurpose Room – A room that serves as a theater, lecture space, and space for special events.
Earth and Innovation Scoreboard – The overhead earth spherical projection also serves as an “innovation scoreboard” that displays the current innovation projects created by visitors to the museum. Visitors and a panel of innovation experts vote on the innovations created by museum visitors using a Techstars approach, and innovations have the potential to be funded.
School Innovate – School classes (and summer camps) can sign up for guided school innovation programs.
Special Events – The first floor also can be rented for special events (dinners, cocktail parties, birthday parties, and meetings).

Second Floor:

Innovation Laboratory – The second floor starts with a “How to Innovate” gallery, laying out the overall innovation process; empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Using your innovation badge system, each visitor is given an opportunity to test their skills first with a practice innovation, then with an innovation of their choosing.
Makerspace – The Makerspace is available for museum members that want to prototype and test their innovations and work with the NIC staff for feedback and mentorship. The Makerspace includes 3D printing, soldering stations, laser cutting, and machines for rapid prototyping.
Online Museum Experience – Your Innovation Badge is available at home via a Web3 portal that allows museum members to continue working on their projects. Projects online include the creation of NFTs, an online innovation community, and museum member tools for innovation.

Outdoors:

Science Playground – On the front and the side (West) of the museum is an outdoor interactive science playground. The science playground activities include; a pulley system to show the process of bringing minerals up from the earth, a sluice to direct the water, an Archimedes’ screw to move water, a meefog system, water play, and basic machine activities.