Full STEAM Ahead: One Last Time Before the Museum Opens

Full STEAM Ahead returns on October 1, once again filling the Grand Forks Curling Club with hands-on discovery, creativity, and the joyful energy that has defined this pop up program from the beginning. This year’s theme, Play It Forward, celebrates everything Full STEAM Ahead has sparked in our community: the curiosity it has nurtured, the confidence it has built, and the momentum it has carried toward the opening of the Grand Forks Children’s Museum.

For years, Full STEAM Ahead has been the place where children experience what a museum can be: a space where questions matter, ideas grow, and learning feels like play. Families have returned season after season because their children leave inspired. Not by instruction, but by exploration. Play It Forward honors that legacy. Every activity, every challenge, every moment of discovery becomes something a child carries with them, something they can build on, something they can share.

This fall is especially meaningful. With the Museum’s opening on the horizon in 2027, Full STEAM Ahead steps into what is likely its final year as a standalone pop up museum in Grand Forks. The Curling Club will once again buzz with STEAM stations, tinkering tables, collaborative builds, and the kind of playful problem solving that has made this program a favorite across the region. It’s a celebration of everything Full STEAM Ahead has accomplished and everything it has inspired.

While Full STEAM Ahead may be ending in Grand Forks as a pop-up museum, the spirit of Full STEAM Ahead is not. Once the Museum opens, we hope that the program will evolve into a traveling exhibit and outreach experience, bringing STEAM-based learning to schools, rural communities, festivals, and partners throughout the region. Play It Forward becomes more than a theme; it becomes a promise. What began as a temporary spark we hope will continue to move outward, reaching new children, new families, and new communities.

Full STEAM Ahead begins October 1 at the Grand Forks Curling Club. It’s free, open to the public, and designed for kids of all ages. Whether you’ve joined us every year or you’re discovering it for the first time, this season invites you to play, explore, imagine and help us Play It Forward.

Katie Mayer, Executive Director, Grand Forks Children's Museum