Fall 2022 School Projects
Last year, Beam’s Project Designers designed some really cool projects for our in-school programming across NYC. Projects ranged from princess carriages to skyscrapers for elementary school students, from remote controlled cars to boomboxes for middle schoolers, and from plink probability boards to tufting and audio meditation for high schoolers. Looking ahead at the new school year, our Project Designers have been hard at work prototyping more exciting projects that will be created by youth. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the projects we’ll be making this year in collaboration with teachers at our partner schools.
Astro-Art
Astro-Art is an art project designed by our Project Designer, Anthony, designed to transform drawings into light emitting constellations. This project grew out of Anthony’s curiosity about constellations and stars. During the process of creating Astro-Art, students will make white-on-black drawings of self-portraits, animals, or other shapes of choice. Then students will mark specific dots into their drawing matching the constellations for their individual zodiac signs. Their drawings will be placed onto a cardboard canvas - which will also be built by students - and holes will be poked through the marked dots through which LED lights will be inserted to light up their constellations.
Anthony has designed many opportunities for creativity and individuality in this project. Students won’t necessarily need to light up their drawing based on their constellations. Instead, they can pinpoint 6-10 locations on the drawing to insert white LEDs in a different shape of their choosing, even as a layout for the image they drew.
Speaking on the age group he had in mind while designing this project Anthony said, “I think this project is suitable for anyone really and requires very minimal tools. Overall, the project serves to demonstrate how art and electronics can be fused together to make awesome things.”
Opti-Specs
Anthony also has been exploring optical effects and how these can impact how we see the world. He prototyped a four part project that encourages students to view the world through different lenses. Students will explore a number of different optical effects, including light diffraction, color filtering, light reflection (like kaleidoscopes), and 3D imagery (like stereoscopy). After exploring the different effects, students will design their own “Opti-Specs.”
Given a starting template in Adobe Illustrator, students can choose which glass frames they’d like to laser cut. These frame designs are designed to be adaptable so students can showcase their personalities and so the various effect-producing lenses and films can be interchanged, allowing all effects to be explored.
In addition to running these projects separately, Anthony is also thinking about combining both Astro-Art and Opti-Specs into one project, allowing students to view their Astro-Art through different lights and effects.
Wind Turbines
Serena, another Project Designer, has been prototyping Wind Turbine and Reef Structures for her fall projects. The Wind Turbine project is being prototyped for sixth graders at PS 676 in Red Hook. Teachers at the school designed a curriculum around turbines and renewable energy, with the goal that students understand the threats posed by climate change in New York City. They were also inspired by new offshore wind farms to be constructed over the next 6 years to power New York City and Long Island.
To expand this curriculum, Serena is figuring out how to teach students to build wind turbines. Over the last few weeks, she has been researching what materials are best suited for scale models and exploring a series of steps to construct them. Students will work in groups of five, each of which will experiment what factors impact building wind turbines or efficiently harnessing the wind. For instance, some groups will test how shapes or length of the panels affect how much energy a wind turbine generates, while others will experiment with different materials and how weights of the materials affect how much power is generated. While building the wind turbines, students will be able to visit where the wind farms will be constructed and will have the opportunity to present their designs to the contractors involved in the project.
Reef Structure for Oysters
Serena is also collaborating with teachers at PS 676 on a project involving reef structures. The goal of many reef structures in NYC is to provide a surface on which oysters can grow and reproduce when they are reintroduced in our waterways.
Serena’s work with second graders is part of a larger partnership between PS 676 and the Billion Oyster Project. While first graders learn about the process of growing oysters and their role in water filtration, third graders will learn about oyster habitats and the ecosystem. Second graders will work closely with Serena to learn about reef structures and to design and build their structures out of clay. Students will have the opportunity to visit Beam Center in Red Hook and on Governors Island, where they will learn about how clay solidifies via tools like a kiln. After the reefs are created by the students, Serena and other Beam staff will fire the structures in our kiln, making them durable enough to be placed in the water.
We are looking forward to providing fun learning experiences to youth in our partnered schools. If you enjoy seeing Youth and Beam Staff in action, follow us on instagram and subscribe to our newsletter. Stay tuned for more extraordinary projects like Astro-Art, Opti-Spec, Wind Turbine and Reef Structures, as Project Designers build with youth throughout the year.
