One app. Every museum. Made for kids.
Museums, zoos, and science centres have rich educational content but no shared, kid-safe digital platform to reach families at home. Bloomberg Connects is a visit companion, not kid-first. MDL (IMLS-funded) shut down July 2025.
Institutions upload content via simple CMS templates. Kids browse a feed/explore interface. All content human-audited before publishing. No ads, no data selling, no profiling. COPPA and UK Children's Code compliant.
The interactive demo below shows the product as it works today. Follow the guide or explore freely — browse content, tap discovery spots, take a quiz, and see the CMS.
Free tier rotates content fortnightly. Premium: £3.99/mo or £29.99/yr (effective £2.50/mo). The child never sees a paywall, restriction messaging, or payment screen. Subscribe button is behind a parental gate and displays a plain text alert directing to the website.
Approximately 40–60 paid subscribers covers ongoing operational costs. With conservative projections, achievable within Year 1 if grant funding covers initial setup.
£3,098–£8,298 total including one-time hardware (Mac Mini, test iPhone), insurance, legal review, Apple/Google developer accounts, hosting, and database. No founder salary in Year 1.
Y1: 30–100 paid subs, £840–£3,360 net. Y2: 150–500 subs, £6,120–£20,400. Y3: 500–2,000 subs, £20,400–£81,600. Optimistic Y3: up to £170,000.
CAC near-zero initially (organic via institutional partnerships, word-of-mouth). LTV ~£24–£30 per subscriber (8–10 month average retention). Marginal cost per additional user is negligible (CDN + storage).
Apple/Google take 30% in Year 1, dropping to 15% under Small Business Programme from Year 2. Direct web subscribers avoid platform fees entirely.
The platform collects no data from children — making COPPA compliance automatic. No data collection, no tracking, no analytics, no behavioural targeting. The safest data is data that doesn't exist.
Age Appropriate Design Code compliance by design. No addictive patterns (streaks, notifications, personalised algorithms). No data profiling. Transparent design with no manipulation tactics. DPIA completed using ICO template.
Age bands not birthdays. Nicknames not real names. Preset avatars not photos. No free-text input. No tracking. No device identifiers. No cookies. No third-party SDKs.
No third-party SDKs collecting data. No external links (app is a closed system). No social features. No ads. No subscription management within the app. Architecture designed from the start for Kids category compliance.
Closed content pipeline: only approved institutions and editorial team can create content. Mandatory human moderation of every piece before publication. Architecturally impossible for content to reach a child without passing through moderation.
Documented safeguarding policy. DBS checks for all staff with system access. Annual training. Incident response procedures. External reporting to NSPCC, IWF, local Children's Social Care if needed. Designated safeguarding lead.
Exhibit, Video, Article, Activity, Feature, Timeline, Narrative, Gallery. Each with structured templates, hero images, body text, discovery spots, and optional quizzes. Constrained forms, not a page builder.
Signature interactive element. Jiggling tap targets embedded in content that reveal slide-in panels with hidden facts. "Did you know an octopus has three hearts?" Max 5 per item. Self-contained, genuinely surprising, brief.
An education officer at a small museum should be able to create content in 30–45 minutes without training. Form-based editor: title, template type, age band, subject, body text, media, quiz. Drag-and-drop media upload with required alt text.
6–8: 150–300 words, 8–12 word sentences. 9–10: 250–400 words, 10–15 word sentences. 11–12: 300–500 words, 12–18 word sentences. CMS flags content exceeding recommended reading level.
2–5 multiple-choice questions per item. Fun and reinforcing, not testing. No scores, no leaderboards, no tracking. Encouraging feedback for both correct and incorrect answers. "Not quite — it's actually 30cm! That's about as long as a ruler."
Conversational, not academic. "The T. rex hunted other dinosaurs" not "Other dinosaurs were hunted by the T. rex." Every piece tells a story. Lead with what makes each institution special — the rescued turtle, the fossil found by a child.
Building and maintaining a bespoke mobile app costs £50,000–£250,000+. Requires ongoing technical support. Individual institutional apps struggle to gain downloads. KidsLearn is free for institutions.
A 2023 Arts Council England survey: 89% of cultural organisations recognise digital engagement importance, yet only 23% feel confident in their digital capabilities. KidsLearn bridges this gap with simple CMS templates.
Ready-made digital distribution channel reaching families at home. Zero development cost. Engagement dashboard with anonymous aggregated metrics (views, completions, quiz scores per age band). No personally identifiable data shared.
Institutions retain full ownership of all content. Free to publish elsewhere. Non-exclusive licence to display, adapt for templates, and create promotional materials. Institution can terminate with 30 days' written notice.
Institutions can cite "digital outreach to X thousand families" in their own grant applications. The platform provides reach metrics and engagement data that strengthen institutional funding proposals.
"Your rescued turtle story, interactive, reaching families at home" — not generic museum content. Each institution's unique story makes the platform valuable to them while producing distinctive content for children.
1,250+ institutions. Free (Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded). But fundamentally an on-site visit companion: audio guides, gallery tours. Adult-centric UI. Not designed for children to use independently. Reorienting toward kids would alienate existing users and require a complete redesign.
European company, 7 countries. In-museum gamification: treasure hunts and mystery games for ages 6–12. User-tested with children. But content is location-locked — no meaningful at-home use case.
COPPA-compliant educational apps. But no institutional content, generic curriculum focus. ABCmouse has aggressive monetisation. Khan Academy Kids is free (nonprofit) but single-publisher content. Neither connects to real-world institutions.
No existing product combines all nine attributes: multi-institution ecosystem, kid-first UI, at-home independent use, institutional content, COPPA/AADC compliance, no ads/no data, interactive content, global scale, and human moderation.
Start with 5–10 Dorset institutions: Oceanarium (Bournemouth), Tank Museum (Bovington), Russell-Cotes, Monkey World, Jurassic Coast centres. Personal relationships build trust. Demonstrate success, then replicate.
Institutional partnerships are a content sourcing strategy and a user acquisition channel. Each partner's existing audience becomes potential app users through institution-driven promotion.
Content is not location-dependent. The platform serves families in Minnesota as well as Dorset. English-speaking markets (US: 28M children aged 6–12, Canada, Australia, NZ) are highest-priority secondary targets.
Near-zero customer acquisition cost initially. Parent word-of-mouth. Institutional promotion. Local media coverage. Rotating free content creates habit and return visits. No paid marketing budget in Year 1.
Up to £50,000 plus non-financial business support. Part of £369M UKRI creative industries allocation for 2026–2030. Strong fit: intersection of creative industries, edtech, and cultural sector innovation.
National Lottery Project Grants: £1,000–£100,000, rolling applications. Broadening digital access to cultural content is a core ACE priority. Museum Transformation Programme (£13.6M) specifically targets sustainable business models.
Start-up grant up to £5,000 (non-repayable) + loan up to £25,000. Free mentoring and business support programme. Good fit for immediate setup costs: hardware, insurance, legal review.
Year 1 costs are manageable from personal funds or small grants. Grant funding is a catalyst, not a dependency. The project does not require VC or angel investment to launch.
No games, no gamification, no streaks, no badges, no social comparison, no personalised notifications. "You should be here because you enjoy it — because learning about this topic is interesting to you."
Every piece of content is reviewed by a person before a child sees it. Not AI-filtered, not self-published. The system architecture makes it impossible for content to reach a child without passing through moderation.
Institutions fill structured forms, not free-form pages. This limits the surface area for inappropriate content, ensures visual consistency, and makes the app feel unified and trusted across all partner institutions.
The app is a closed system. Children are never taken outside the app. Required for Apple Kids Category compliance and aligned with safety-first philosophy. No browsers, no redirects, no third-party destinations.
Dark and light mode. Dyslexia-friendly font option. Adjustable font size. Full VoiceOver/TalkBack support. Subtitle controls for all video. Reduced motion toggle. Text-to-speech for articles (planned).
Content can be downloaded for offline use — plane journeys, areas with poor connectivity. Cached locally, checked against the server on reconnection for licence validity. No additional data collection during offline use.
Gender-neutral language. Diverse perspectives and experiences. Culturally mindful historical context. No idioms that don't translate. Required alt text on all images. Subtitles required on all video.
Web demonstrator substantially complete: full CMS, content renderer with discovery spots, moderation queue, feed/explore, authentication, parental gate. 21 demo content items seeded across 5 institutions. TypeScript, React, Node.js/Express, PostgreSQL.
iOS (iPad primary) and Android via React Native. Standard, maintainable technologies that any developer can work with. Engineering code review budgeted to validate architecture before launch.
React Native port for iOS/Android. COPPA consent flow implementation. Engineering code review (£500–£1,500). Grant applications with working demo. 50 launch content items. Insurance and legal review.
Web MVP: complete (Feb 2026). Business plan & pitch materials: complete (Mar 2026). React Native app: Q2 2026. App Store submission: Q3 2026. First institutional partner: Q3–Q4 2026. Break-even (40–60 subs): Q1 2027.