ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum in Ashland has been a communal hub for the Rogue Valley’s youth for more than two decades, but through the nonprofit’s ScienceWorks After Dark program organizers aim to extend that community to adults in the region.

The program was introduced in late 2022.

“After Dark is an experiment to open our doors and provide a different opportunity to be more inclusive, to welcome people who maybe wouldn’t normally find their way here,” said Cynthia Salbato, acting creative director of ScienceWorks. “We’re working together to come up with the next round of creative programing that will get our community into our beautiful science museum to enjoy both the art and science of ScienceWorks.”

With the museum typically formatting its programs for the youth of Southern Oregon, ScienceWorks After Dark offers adult-only events with dancing, alcoholic beverages and other activities.

The nonprofit’s most recent event in late June — The Art and Science of Attraction — brought out visitors to explore the art and science behind human attraction with tango dancing, circus acts, karaoke, theater and exhibit premieres to check out.

Considering the long-term sustainability of ScienceWorks After Dark, organizers are testing the program to see if it could become a long-term staple of the museum by using the scientific method.

“This experiment is ongoing … When you’re doing the scientific method, you try your experiment, then you step away and you review your results, and so that’s what we’re doing right now, is reviewing our results,” Salbato said. “The community needs to give us feedback and let us know if we are meeting their needs.”

Museum organizers are planning out future ScienceWorks After Dark events, and the next one will be the third annual Monster Ball in late October. The Halloween-themed fundraiser event features dancing, a costume contest and more.

“It is our major fundraising event, people come and are very dressed up,” said Desirée Yanez-Canton, public programs and volunteers coordinator at ScienceWorks. “There’ll be drinking and playing with the museum and being a community together and raising funds for the museum.”

Outside of ScienceWorks After Dark’s sustainability, leaders at the nonprofit are working to make the museum itself sustainable for future generations.

“We’re kind of going through a rough patch right now,” Salbato said, adding, “It’s a very expensive and time-consuming undertaking to run a science museum of this size in Southern Oregon.”

Part of the sustainability push involves expanding its programs and activities to encompass much more for community members, modeling some of its ideas off other science museums on the West Coast.

One of those expansions is to incorporate more art into ScienceWorks’ programming.

“We’ve pivoted away from just STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and into STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics). We really are enveloping ourselves into more of the art part of that STEAM mindset here in the museum,” Yanez-Canton said.

“The Exploratorium and OMSI, we kind of think of them as our big siblings and they are also really leaning into the ‘A’ for art,” Salbato said. “For this museum to remain sustainable, there needs to be something for everyone here. Sometimes art is the doorway into the greater science education.”

The museum established its own art exhibit space earlier this year, featuring the works of artists inspired by biology, geography and other scientific pursuits.

The current exhibit is painter Sarah F. Burns’ Vesper Meadows series with artwork documenting the different habitats of the 1,000-acre nature preserve east of Ashland.

“Every two months it changes with a new exhibit, and our next exhibit after we complete Vesper Meadows will be Aurora Borealis,” Salbato said. “We have a wonderful photographer — Bill Saltzstein — who captured amazing images of the Aura Borealis here in Ashland as well as around the world.”

In order to stay as an all-inclusive hub for education and activities in the Rogue Valley, the museum needs volunteers, donors and participants.

“Being equitable and bringing everyone to the table is what brings me to this position; it’s making that science equitable and approachable, because it was never approachable for me as a child,” Yanez-Canton said. “That’s what brings me here and keeps me here, is making sure that everyone has equal footing and an equal seat at the table.”

To volunteer, donate or learn more about ScienceWorks, visit scienceworksmuseum.org.