In Summer 2016, robots will be invading NuVu, transforming our school into NuBots studio! We are offering 18 exciting 2-week Studios including Flyingbots, Futuristic Fashion, Spacebots, Robopets, Health Wearable Tech and more! Check out the program and register online!

More info at https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/terms/summer-2016

It's Monday, and we're back at work at the studio. NuVu Students are designing and testing their first prototypes in the Session 2 studios of the Winter "Health" Term! Check out the fun!

Kate Reed joined NuVu four years ago as a bright and eager 14-year old ready to take part in NuVu's studio model as a full-time student. Four years later, Kate will be graduating this June from NuVu. It's been a wonderful journey for Kate, and we've seen her grow and develop her skills, all the while pushing herself in the most creative challenges. In her 4 years at NuVu, Kate has worked on over 30 inter-disciplinary projects including: an interactive art installation titled "Bufo", a lovable frog that responds to people's facial expressions in real-time; the Wheelchair Hand Drive, a 3-D printed attachment that makes lever-powered wheelchairs more accessible to everyday users; and powerful animated films such as the "Deep Web" that unabashedly cover rarely discussed topics.

Kate will become our first 4-year student to graduate from NuVu. We are thrilled to see her move on to the next chapter of her life; sharing and building her skills, exploring new ideas, and creating meaningful products and experiences for people. Kate was accepted into a number of prestigious universities including the Rhode Island School of Design, the Iovine and Young Academy at USC, Maine College of Art, Brown University, and the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program. She was also awarded scholarships at a number of these institutions. Here's to a bright future ahead, Kate!

For the past few years, we've been expanding the reach of our program beyond the US and bringing creative education to places around the world. This was our third year of running the Studio 6 Program in Mumbai, India in partnership with the American School of Bombay (ASB). This March, around 200 middle school students (grades 6-8) participated in 14 studios based on NuVu's studio model. Studios included Fun and Fashionable Wearable Electronics, Art in the Public Space, Robot Swarms, Solar-Powered BumbleBots, and Design in Color.

For a full week, classes stopped at ASB, and Studio 6 became the focus. Our NuVu team of Coaches brought creativity to the forefront of the school's agenda and students worked collaboratively to develop projects such as water-based solar-powered bumblebots, digital comics that explored themes of displacement, wearable tech pieces that tracked health metrics, and swarms of robots that worked as a team to build a complex structure.

Our NuVu kid engineer, Stefano Pagani, was featured on Design Squad Global for his invention called the Uplift Wheelchair that helps kids with cerebral palsy in Monterrey, Mexico. The Uplift Wheelchair seeks to make it easier for a caretaker to lift, rotate, and position their child with cerebral palsy in different locations within the home, especially in the bathroom. Additionally, the device was tailored to the requirements of Monterrey, Mexico, which demand low cost and high flexibility. Hear the story and more details about his design and engineering process featured on this episode of Design Squad Global.

More details on Stefano's Uplift Wheelchair can be found at https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/studios/developing-design-adaptive-devices/uplift-chair#tab-portfolio.

Our NuVu kid engineer, Stefano Pagani, was featured on Design Squad Global for his invention called the Uplift Wheelchair that helps kids with cerebral palsy in Monterrey, Mexico. The Uplift Wheelchair seeks to make it easier for a caretaker to lift, rotate, and position their child with cerebral palsy in different locations within the home, especially in the bathroom. Additionally, the device was tailored to the requirements of Monterrey, Mexico, which demand low cost and high flexibility. Hear the story and more details about his design and engineering process featured on this episode of Design Squad Global.

Watch the Design Squad episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoc3ZT9lfog

More details on Stefano's Uplift Wheelchair can be found at https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/studios/developing-design-adaptive-devices/uplift-chair#tab-portfolio.

Kate Reed joined NuVu four years ago as a bright and eager 14-year old ready to take part in NuVu's studio model as a full-time student. Four years later, Kate will be graduating this June from NuVu. It's been a wonderful journey for Kate, and we've seen her grow and develop her skills, all the while pushing herself in the most creative challenges. In her 4 years at NuVu, Kate has worked on over 30 inter-disciplinary projects including: an interactive art installation titled "Bufo", a lovable frog that responds to people's facial expressions in real-time; the Wheelchair Hand Drive, a 3-D printed attachment that makes lever-powered wheelchairs more accessible to everyday users; and powerful animated films such as the "Deep Web" that unabashedly cover rarely discussed topics.

Kate will become our first 4-year student to graduate from NuVu. We are thrilled to see her move on to the next chapter of her life; sharing and building her skills, exploring new ideas, and creating meaningful products and experiences for people. Kate was accepted into a number of prestigious universities including the Rhode Island School of Design, the Iovine and Young Academy at USC, Maine College of Art, Brown University, and the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program. She was also awarded scholarships at a number of these institutions. Here's to a bright future ahead, Kate!

Last Monday, April 4, two of our students, Jonah Stillman and Christine Bourdeau, were invited to be a part of a panel discussion at the Harvard School of Graduate Education on "Accessibility Through the Arts". Mike Lipset, co-host and co-producer of 'The Palette' podcast interviewed Jonah and Christine about their Prosthetic Bow Hand project. More details on the project can be found here. The event was organized by Harvard STEAM.  

This week, our Art in the Public Space studio has NuVu collaborating with international artist Shilo Shiv Suleman. This is the second week of the studio and students are creating a mural around themes relevant to the Cambridge area. The project is part of Shilo's Fearless Campaign, a collective of hundreds of artists across South Asia, that do participative storytelling and art in public space. Below is a short brief on the mural.

Belonging

Across Boston and Cambridge, the ancient river Charles etches it’s way through the landscape creating intersecting islands of people.

Woven between the transient populations of university youth, migrant communities, cantabrigian locals and the ever imminent threat of gentrification, the river gently threads all of Boston’s diverse groups together. At the threshold of Area 4 (now being renamed the Port Neighborhood), old Cambridge and all the universities is our wall. In a place of so many intersections, we want to explore the question "What makes us feel like we Belong?".

The mural itself will depict a multi-racial person, with locally found flowers growing out of her chest. The river weaves and snakes through her body and emerges into a 'port' of sorts. A port where one comes and docks, and is simultaneously welcoming, but also a checkpoint or threshold of sorts. In each of the small plots on the map of the charles, we will have different members of the community "dock" and write one thing that makes them feel like they belong, to create a sense of ownership and community involvement.