Museum of Make Believe

Our Mission:

Museum of Make Believe is dedicated to preserving the timeless art of storytelling within a uniquely creative environment unlike anything guests have seen before. Through entertaining and thought-provoking exhibits that offer a truly magical twist on the idea of seeing contemporary art, our dedicated staff and artists seek to inspire young and old alike with a warm feeling of something familiar and a reminder of childlike mystery; awakening feelings our guests may have forgotten and are longing to remember.

Our Pledge to The Community:

We’re proud to be part of the tremendously creative Orange County area and pledge to contribute to the region through a wide variety of educational opportunities, creative courses and workshops for local youth as well as the entire Orange County community. We maintain apprenticeship programs, partnerships with our local schools, outreach to local artists and other non-profit organizations.

Created by a team of artists and visionaries, it offers a truly magical twist on the way contemporary art is experienced. After traveling our exhibits to museums around the country, we are ready to build our own permanent home!

The two founding board members are uniquely qualified to bring this project to fruition. Amy Mitchell, Executive Director, holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Western Michigan University. In addition, for over the last twenty years Amy has served as a Senior Associate Director of Admission for numerous arts colleges (Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern University in the College of Art Media and Design, and Emerson College). Prior to that Amy spent many years as a college lecturer and faculty member.

Geoff Mitchell, Creative Director, holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Geoff is a full-time artist that works within a wide range of media including painting, miniature room storytelling, music, short film, and art-book collaborations. Mitchell’s work consistently embodies a curious feeling of nostalgia. There is a desire to pull the past forward into the now and even propel it out into the future. Never in a sense of resisting change, but rather to remind us of where we have been, so we may have a better look at where we might go. Some of his pieces offer complete narrative tales unfolding, yet more often Mitchell presents us with a suggestion of events and leaves space for interpretations of the story.

As Los Angeles art critic Peter Frank has written, “Mitchell’s heraldic compositions gain their strength and tension not from the drama inherent in their elements, but from the new drama that emerges from their juxtaposition.” Geoff’s most notable solo exhibitions include Chaos at the Confessional at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi (2012), Sunspots at Sakuragi Fine Arts in Tokyo, Japan (2014), Water Appears and Disappears at Florida Mining Gallery, Jacksonville (2014), The California Fairytale at Kelsey Michaels Fine Art, Laguna Beach (2017), Magic Lanterns at The Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center, Ocean Springs (2017), Ghost Stories and Fairy Tales at the Muzeo Museum (2018), and Ghost Stories and Fairy Tales at the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures (2019).

In addition to the founding board members, our Board of Directors is comprised of a diverse group of talented individuals. We are seeking funding for initial start-up costs to be used for marketing costs, building and design costs, office equipment, starting inventory, and initial cash to handle the first year of expenses.

There is no question that the arts are integral to the well-being of society. Involvement in the arts increases civic engagement, allows us to build empathy for others, and allows us to consider the human condition of the world around us. However, funding and access for the arts continues to drop dramatically despite the benefits to the overall health of civil society. A 2018 impact study by RK&A was recently completed to study the effects of single-visit art museum programs on students in grades fourth through sixth. The findings were that just one visit increased students questioning (and thus imagination), deepened their interpretations of the art itself and increased their emotive responses. Clearly the arts allow humans of all ages, in particular children, to engage both their minds and their hearts. Our goal as a museum is to provide a way to fill this gap in creativity and imagination.
The Museum of Make Believe's objectives during the first year of business are:

To generate earned revenue from a combination of membership and admission fees, programming, outreach, retail sales, and special events.

To secure new funding sources including foundation grants, government grants, and private and corporate donations.

To have 100 total paid memberships.

To serve the community through our outreach programs.

Our largest need is start up funding, as outlined below.
Start-up Expenses
Legal (Incorporation, Permits, License) $2,500
Consulting Services $2,500
Building Costs $200,000
Building Design Costs $100,000
Stationery/Office Supplies $1,000
Advertising/Marketing $25,000
Website and Logo Design $10,000
Insurance $5,000
Utilities (During Buildout) $5,000
Signage $10,000
Starting employee salaries $150,000
TOTAL START-UP EXPENSES $511,000

Next we need a supportive city and community, volunteers, more talented artists, and an incredible space.

Orange County, California and beyond!

As our director, I often call back to my career in Higher Education. I have spent over twenty years working in Undergraduate Admissions across various selective arts colleges and I have worked specifically with our diversity recruitment efforts along with our arts programming. One of the most important lessons I have learned in trying to attract students to various institutions is that there needs to be a feeling of belonging and inclusion. Nobody wants to feel like there isn't a space for them at the table. I use this past experience to make certain that at our events everyone feels equally included and heard. The power of storytelling only works if all stories are shared equally, after all. As we move into our permanent home, it will be crucial for us to create a welcoming environment that feels safe, accessible and entertaining for all.

There have been some memorable moments at many of our exhibits that have helped us shape our priorities as well as allowed us to listen to our audience. One was of a little girl, maybe eight or nine. She was one of hundreds of young children visiting the exhibit filled with original fairytale stories written to pair with a wide variety of artwork shown (miniatures, painting, music, short films, etc.). Her parents emailed the museum later to let them know how much it changed her for the better. She had never been to an art exhibit before, but because it felt accessible and relevant with stories that she connected to, it inspired her. She began making up her own original stories about the characters she had seen at the exhibit...she told them to her parents at night. She began drawing, painting and writing until she made her own book. At another exhibit, there was a sculpture of a small dog (made entirely of felt and collected materials). The story on display with it was an original bittersweet fairytale about living a full life and the process of aging. A great grandmother attending with her family came up to me with tears in her eyes telling me how much the story meant to her. Experiences like those helped to solidify our mission...storytelling and the arts is about connection, about shared humanity, about allowing us to connect with our kinder and more empathetic selves so that we don’t focus on our differences but rather our similarities. It is our main goal to provide an arts educational entertainment experience that touches, even changes the people that view it.

We will house a permanent collection of works created by Geoff Mitchell and a team of supporting artists. The collection will be designed to change throughout the year allowing us to showcase the work of our artistic team. We will offer a number of outreach and apprenticeship programs as well as docent and artist led tours and seasonal special events.

Along with our main museum gallery, we will have our giftshop on site. The Misfit Emporium gift shop, will sell affordable high-quality art supplies, handmade toys, and other unique items. Guests will also be able to visit our enchanted ice cream shop and cafe, The Dream Parlor, and enjoy some surrealistically sweet treats. As the story goes, this magic parlor of electrified-blue appeared miraculously overnight in the year of 1857 to the amazement of the bewildered old west settlers of the region. The cafe will be a piece of life size scale artwork in itself.

Ghost stories and fairy tales are among the most beloved and enduring forms of storytelling; and one of the innovative features offered through this museum is its special events, which are designed to bring people together for the deeply human experience of sharing stories. These events weave together methods of storytelling that accent and add depth and understanding to the artwork. In addition to the classic “around the campfire” style of storytelling, we will offer shadow puppet shows in our vintage theatre, classic authentic magic lantern shows, as well as costumed impersonations of authors or even appearances of characters from the work in the museum.

A particularly exciting aspect is that we are able to draw greatly upon local talent in the community. Most importantly, these events are designed to engage and entertain the public and attract first-time guests to the museum, creating new and lasting patrons for the museum.