How MuSo helps kids learn outside classrooms
Mumbai's Museum of Solutions (MuSo) offers children hands-on learning through play, fostering creativity and critical thinking in a unique space.
MUMBAI: Stepping into the lobby of the Museum of Solutions (MuSo) in Mumbai’s Lower Parel, one is greeted by a chorus of high-pitched voices. A hundred odd children are assembled in the space singing so loudly that one is barely able to decipher the songs. The air crackles with excitement as they let themselves go in a massive learn-through-play wonderland.
MuSo, which opened its doors to the public in November 2023, is an experiential children’s museum that combines creative play and hands-on learning. It has four main labs, where children can learn about scientific concepts like Bernoulli’s Principle or the water cycle through fun experiments; investigate the causes of real-world problems like climate change and water pollution and find innovative solutions; tinker with electronics and robotics; and get first-hand experience of sustainable gardening and composting. Add to that a gallery space, which is currently hosting the American Museum of Natural History’s ‘Dinosaurs Among Us’ exhibit.
“Just like the NCPA back in the day created a space for theatre in India, I want MuSo to be a space where children can be engaged and build their own community,” says the museum’s founder and CEO Tanvi Jindal Shete. “I want them to grow up with MuSo as a central part of their lives.”
For Shete, the museum is the culmination of a life-long commitment to working with children. When she was still in school, she started volunteering at a nursery school close to her Malabar Hill residence. After earning a degree in economics from New York University, she returned to Mumbai and signed up for the Teach For India (TFI) fellowship. Her first assignment was a low-income school in Mankhurd’s Lallubhai compound.
“I remember one day the principal told me to take the kids to the garage,” she says. “I didn’t even have a blackboard. But just by playing games with them, getting them to just have fun, I realised that I was able to teach a lot more and I felt that the kids were really, really engaged.”
Jindal also spent several years working with the Akanksha Foundation, as well as on the JSW Foundation’s educational initiatives. A few years ago, her mother Sangita Jindal approached her with an idea. The family owned a big office building in Lower Parel that was unused and in a state of disrepair. Could Shete think of a way to use the space?
She took the proposal to Shaheen Mistri, founder of Akanksha Foundation and TFI. “At the time she was working with seven other NGO groups on a project to reimagine what education in India should look like,” she says. “The problem statement they were working on was—adults have failed to solve the problems of the world, why not give the children an opportunity to try? That idea really stuck with me.”
A mother of two, Shete also felt the lack of community spaces for children in India. She set out to fill that gap, spending years visiting children’s museums all over the world for research, consulting with experts, and mapping out her vision for MuSo. She also tapped into her mother’s extensive contacts in the art world to help design the museum’s many programmes, workshops and events.
Within six months of its launch in November 2023, Time magazine named MuSo as one of the world’s greatest places where children are empowered to think critically and creatively. It’s also the first Indian museum to win the prestigious Hands On! Children In Museums award. But for Shete, the most satisfying wins are the little stories she hears from happy parents.
“We had an activity where we explained to kids that leaky taps waste a lot of water, and taught them how to fix a leaky tap,” she says. “One child actually visited each apartment in his community, asking if he could check their taps so that we could save water.”
There have also been many challenges along the way – the biggest one being cultural. Indian parents, it turns out, are not always happy to let kids take the lead, without any hand-holding. “The feedback that we constantly get is that there’s not enough instruction,” she says. “People don’t necessarily like not knowing what they are supposed to do and figuring it out. So, we’ve had to tweak some stuff to find balance.”
Shete has big plans for MuSo’s second year, with a lot more programmes and workshops lined up. In line with the museum’s core principle of giving kids a seat at the table, her team is also putting together a children’s board, where a hand-picked group of kids will help conceive and design new exhibits and activities. They will even have decision-making authority.
“We also want to start a MuSo outreach programme, for children from the city’s outskirts and rural areas who can’t easily come to Lower Parel,” she adds. “We’re developing a prototype that we can take to villages, so that they too can get an opportunity to apply their learning towards problem-solving projects and skills.”