New KiDiMu executive director looks to expand services
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Faced with a changing economic environment, Kids Discover Museum executive director Shea Kennedy took the helm of the non-profit in September 2025 with a vision of not only maintaining services but also expanding them.
“When I was hired, they [KiDiMu] had been without an executive director for almost 18 months, and they basically were facing closure when they communicated with me and said, ‘Okay, you’re hired; however, you have about 45 days to kind of stabilize operations’,” she said.
Kennedy said children’s museums across the country are facing declining admissions and memberships, which can impact their revenue streams.
“There’s a lot of people trying to get really creative to figure out ways they can diversify their revenue. Especially right now, there’s a lot of economic pressure,” she said. “And a lot of people are choosing gas, and they’re choosing food, and they’re choosing other things for their basic needs, rather than making these choices that feel like above and beyond what they can handle for their families.”
Kennedy said KiDiMu has offered part-time preschool offerings, which originally started around the COVID-19 pandemic, and the organization is planning to expand to full-time this next school year.
“I started working on expanding programming, so we started doing things like night at the mini museum where parents could drop off their kids, and kids would have like a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) activity and snacks and get to play in the museum and watch a movie,” she said.
Kennedy described some future changes at KiDiMu. “Right now, we’re doing demolition for the top floor of the museum, and we’re creating a sensory space for neurodivergent families and children in Kitsap County. We’re focusing on all of the eight senses, but particularly vestibular (sense of balance) and proprioception (ability to perceive your own body’s position or movement), and kind of helping people understand sensory processing and child development through those interactive, hands-on experiences,” she said.
