We created STEMarts International, an international youth exchange program that facilitates communication and collaboration between youth leaders around the world through the STEMarts Curriculum Tool platform. The goal is to encourage intercultural respect, creative expression and scientific literacy as students collaborate on a sci-art installation that is presented at festivals in the partner country.
STEMarts Lab was awarded $10,000 from the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund to pilot Space Messengers, the first project of the BioSTEAM International exchange program. This included a 7-week virtual workshop in February/March 2021 connecting a middle/high school classroom in Taos, New Mexico with a classroom in Oeiras Portugal to collaborate on the Space Messengers sci-art installation. Space Messengers will launch in Oeiras Portugal at the Festival Internacional de Ciencia on October 12,13, 2021. This project was sponsored in part by the U.S. Embassy of Portugal, Taos Community Foundation, LANL Foundation and the MAE Foundation. Space Messengers will travel to Guadalajara Mexico in February 2022 for the second virtual workshop between students in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Guadalajara, MX culminating with a festival in Santa Fe (TBD).
In June 2021, STEMarts Lab partnered with the KERNEL X- Light Art Festival in Monza, Italy, to connect students there with students in New Mexico, to participate in an audiovisual 3D mapping onto the architecture of Residenza Ponte dei Leoni in the city of Monza.
KERNEL X is the first Italian light festival of international interest to take place in Monza. Between June and November 2021, audiovisual 3D mapping shows and interactive, light and sound installations will transform and enhance the historical and cultural context of the city center through an emotional experience capable of involving the interest and participation of a transversal audience. The light festival will also host audiovisual mapping projections developed with the involvement of emerging artists, students of Italian and international academies and elementary and middle school children. Marcello Arosio, Art Director of AreaOden and the Kernel X Festival says, “We’re very excited to connect students from Italy and New Mexico by giving them the opportunity to become the protagonists of a collaborative video mapping show, where they’ll share their own vision of the future through fantasy, color and the freest interpretation of architectural shapes.”
In the spring of 2021, we launched the BioMachine Design Challenge. Middle and high schools from Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque registered their students to design an imaginative BioMachine inspired by pollinators, to explore the topic of biodiversity loss and pollinator decline and how it is important to our community, our food security and the health of our planet. We received 197 entries. The winners received cash prizes See all the winners on our website. As part of this project we formed a partnership with the Taos Land Trust to curate an art installation called Pollinator Concentrator which inspired the BioMachine Design Challenge. The mission was to beautify and promote the Rio Fernando park with a site-specific installation that engages and educates the community on the preservation work happening at the park, instills value for protecting our environment, and increases visitation to the park as a place to feel wonder, respect and inspiration for nature.
This was our sixth year of designing the STEAM youth program for The PASEO festival. In 2019 we brought PASEO artists into 9 participating middle and high schools in Taos County for an exciting line up. Coupled with The PASEO STEMarts Curriculum Tool , students get a behind the scenes demo and hands on STEAM activities to deepen and personalize their understanding of sci-art and participatory installations.
