The following guide outlines ten “experiments” that should help explore how educational practitioners or indeed, anyone can use the physical environment as an active tool to carry out STEAM-inspired activities or to induce some STEAM spirit into traditional education practice. It is a loose guide that draws much of its contents from one year of experimentation across 10 Labs during the EU-horizon financed research project SENSE.STEAM.
10 Experiments
Space Matters. Physical environment has an impact on educational outcomes. The role of space while assessing the success of a STEAM practice is seen as crucial as the physical environment can greatly influence the designed activity’s results.
THINK DIFFERENTLY
“We don’t want to wait - for new curricula to be written, for new schools, community centres and science and arts institutions to be built. We want to start now, and we invite you to start with us.”
Hack the Space
“Cambio ergo cogito”: I change therefore I know. In this experiment, we can either ‘hack’ a familiar into an unfamiliar space or ‘creatively adopt’ (with some mild spatial violence) an unsuitable space to our needs. The only rule is: don’t use anything as originally intended – and of course – go wild!
My Body is My Space
In this experiment, we use our bodies to create a new, interactive, and highly personal experience space by moving, extending, exploring and expanding all our senses, and by doing so, reordering the reality around us. Feel and understand that reality is what your body makes of it!
Keep on Moving
People think differently in different environments. Let’s start by doing the same activity in different surroundings. It is simple: take the things we need and leave, move and reflect on the change: it is changing the way not the statice destination, that matters.
