KHOJ – Science + Art + Innovation was initiated as a joint concept by two organisations: Manthan Educational Programme Society, India (organization working in the field of innovation-based science communication ideas since a period of almost past 2 decades) and ZOOM Kinder Museum, Vienna (a children’s museum in Vienna focusing on the concept of play for learning. Zoom was founded in the year 1994 and is a very important museum in the Museums Quartier in Vienna).
Khoj is one of the few dynamic children’s museums in India and was established in the year 2018. It connects science, design & innovation by means of participatory displays. Unlike a regular museum where visitors don’t touch the display, at Khoj children are encouraged to participate and play with the displayed activities. Khoj believes that learning happens best when a child is immersed in a positive, happy experience and provides this by means of games and experiments designed around a certain concept such as soap bubbles, plants or moving images. It’s a museum that children and adults will enjoy alike!
The museum has 2 permanent exhibits – A for Astronomy and Able. The two temporary exhibits rotate every 6 months.
As of August 2019, the museum was in the process of initiating the second exhibit cycle based on the concept of environment. It will display exhibitions on Plastics, Soil and Water and Climate Change. Each floor displays a set of almost 20 to 25 different activities which impart experiential knowledge on different concepts of science.
The key approaches of the museum as hands-on, interactive, inquiry-based, subject-specific, promoting the concept of design, conducting workshops, experimentation based, linking science with daily life and connecting science, art and innovation.