Rainworks Omnimedia, a producer of traveling exhibitions for science and natural history museums, announced Monday that it would launch an 8,000 square foot interactive, multimedia exhibit to highlight the need for better financial literacy.
"For most of us who are striving towards financial freedom but don't have a formal education in finance and accounting, personal finance is an enigma," Gail Vida Hamburg, CEO and founder of Rainworks told AdvisorOne by email. "While I was doing research for a museum exhibition on health a few years ago, I found a global study on money worries and disease. I felt as I delved deeper into this near universal worry and fear about money that affected individual health, marriages, and whole families and communities, that financial literacy could help people manage some of these worries."
Hamburg noted that for many people, managing personal finances is a burden.
"Your eyes glaze over as you try to make sense of SEP, index funds, ETFs and penny stocks," she joked. "I felt that what was lacking in financial literacy education was entertainment. I wanted to design a museum exhibition that would make personal finance and money matters engaging and entertaining. I also wanted it to be inspirational and so I decided to frame it as a journey towards financial self-actualization. That is really the genesis of Economia: Money Matters."
The exhibit targets families and schoolchildren, Hamburg (left), wrote, but is designed to include adults of all ages, "the kind of visitors who go to science, industry and natural history museums." It will feature lessons on the "foundations of personal finance and financial literacy," including budgeting, spending, good and bad debt, credit card use, mortgages, predatory loans, credit unions, college loans and retirement, according to Hamburg.
The exhibit features several distinct displays to address those myriad issues. A gallery of interactive exhibits called "College Road" shows students and parents how to pay for college "without going broke," Hamburg told AdvisorOne. "The Third Act" is a gallery that outlines how to prepare to a worry-free retirement. Other exhibits will show how compounding helps grow savings, and a "mega installation" covers how the stock market works.
