Finding Creativity: The City Museum’s team encourages imagination and exploration to make the museum a fun place for all to play

With only 20 minutes before the City Museum of St. Louis opens, General Manger Eric Gilbert feeds strands of lights up to the Creative Directory Rick Erwin, who stands on a scissor lift to hang from the ceiling. They previously had standard white icicle lights hanging, but are swapping them out for the more colorful, rainbow lights.

When they aren’t working on spreadsheets or finding miscellaneous items for exhibits, they do what they can to help out around the five-floor building in downtown St. Louis. While working, they toss around absurd ideas of potential exhibits to impress and engage their guests. 

“Ultimately, [Gilbert] has the final say, but we get to bring ideas to him as well as everybody else, so it’s a lot more fun,” Erwin said. “Even the lowest people on staff, if they come up with an idea and it’s good, let’s try it out!”

From the airplanes, towers and caves to climb through to their iconic 10-story slide, the City Museum offers many ways to play. Gilbert and Erwin help to foster a creative environment with their staff through using their imagination to create unique experiences for the museum guests.

“We’re still kids,” Erwin said. “How fun is it to go down a slide? You don’t think about it, but it’s just fun. We don’t really think about other people, we just think about what’s going to be fun, and fortunately other people find it fun too.”

While Gilbert makes the final decisions on projects and finds funding for them, Erwin works to bring the ideas to life by finding materials. 

Erwin had been the General Manager for 15 years, but stepped back to be Creative Director last year. Over the years, he’s received many donations from the community, ranging from someone offering up an old water turbine that would be turned into a snail to a bank gifting the museum their old vault doors and safety deposit boxes to turn into an exhibit. Often times Erwin will even just send someone down to the local scrapyard to look around for potential projects.

“We don’t see ourselves as the designers of the City Museum, we just take other people’s ideas and put them together and we see if they work,” Erwin said. “But it’s just about the materials and seeing if they work together.”

The City Museum is constantly adding to their building and changing things up so it will stay fresh for their guests.

“If you go to regular children’s museums, it’s pretty much the same thing with a grocery store and a little town and something like that, but [The City Museum] is out of the box,” museum guest Sara Tebee said.

Being residents of St. Louis, Tebee brings her kids to the museum about once every other month because they never grow bored there and there’s always more for them to see and play.

“[Kids enjoy] the amazement and wonder of being able to explore,” Gilbert said. “Whether you’re in the caves or going down the slides or you’re in toddler town, it’s such a sensory overload that they can be lost in their own space, in their own explorative mind.”

Gilbert has been in the entertainment industry for 32 years, starting as a ride operator at a Texas six flags, and he’s always loved providing entertainment to people. According to Gilbert, the City Museum not only provides these opportunities, but celebrates imagination and exploration.

“I’ve been doing it for such a long time that I really enjoy seeing the smiles and hearing the laughter and watching the play happen,” Gilbert said. “The imaginative play is something that as you’re getting older you should never get tired of. You should be able to have that little sense of imagination always.”