As an ongoing partnership with the DOE, Beam Center leads project-building programs in schools across NYC. Beam’s Project Designers collaborate with teachers to facilitate hands-on projects related to what students are learning in class. Our Project Designers have been hard at work preparing projects for Spring 2023 and some projects are already in progress.

Take a look at the projects below to see what young people are making this spring!

Terrariums

Students at South Bronx International Middle School(SBIMS) are collaborating with our Project Designer Serena to build a multimedia project called Terrarium. Sixth graders at SBIMS are learning about biomes and how humans impact the food web, ecosystem, and climate change through their behaviors. Students will be creating terrariums and short films to show human behavior like pollution, overfishing, poaching, construction, and many others that can impact the ecosystem. They will be using recycled materials which were constructed to resemble a specific biome, and throughout the process of building students will modify the materials to reflect a series of natural disasters, products of climate change, and human impacts.

Escape Room

As part of PS175's enrichment program and Thomas Edison's Future Ready Pilot Program, elementary school and high school students will collaboratively design an escape room. Our Project Designers Anthony and Chris are collaborating with teachers and students from both schools to help them build the escape room. The finished escape room will feature a series of puzzles and an interactive experience which is set to open in May. Stay tuned for more information on when they will open the escape room for a community celebration.

Students at Brooklyn Frontiers will be exploring woodworking, circuitry, and illustration during their FabLab class. As they are exploring and learning different skill sets, they will create a neon lamp with their personal emblem or logo.

Second grade students at PS 938 are working on constructing their Pioneer wagons by using different tools, net drawings, and wheel shaped pasta. The wagons are able to move on their own using a specially designed balloon and straw attachment.

Hero’s Journey: the Board Game

Sixth graders at MS 935 will be designing a segment of a board game as a group which later will be put together to be a large collective board game. Lauren, one of our Project Designers, is collaborating with the teacher and students to help them design the project, called Hero’s Journey: the Board Game. In groups, students will also write a scene of the myth that embodies one of the stages of a hero’s journey.

Archeologies of the Future

Designing for Our Values

Our Project Designer, Caleb, is collaborating with teachers and students at UASDC on a project exploring a hypothetical future in which archeologists are studying the values and traditions of today. Called Archeologies of the Future, the project is part of a history class in which ninth graders have been learning about archeologists, personal histories, and traditions.

After exploring their personal histories and traditions, students ideated objects that could bring their values and identities into a technologically advanced future. The project includes both conceptual and making components intended to provide students with a sense of agency in the making of history.

As a reflection on their Indigenous Studies unit focusing on Haudenosaunee Longhouses, fourth grade students at Brooklyn School of Inquiry will reflect on how personal and communal values influence design practices.

After discussing and solidifying core group values, students created blueprints of community spaces they’d like to live in. They used baseboards to drill holes and glue dowels for the main structure with the assistance from one of our Project Designer, Izzi. Students then used lashing techniques to complete walls and roofing along with paper and modeling clay to finish decorating the interior.