Thinking creatively, innovating, learning through hands-on design - these are some of the takeaways from All Saints Academy students on their NuVu Innovation Studio experience from the last year. Via our NuVuX partnership with All Saints Academy in Florida, students in grades 9-12 take part in NuVu Innovation Studios every semester where they put their imagination and creativity to the test. Over the last 3 years, students have been designing and building innovative solutions to real-world challenges in their community.

At the end of every semester, we host a large exhibition at the Baldwin Center for Innovation & Collaboration. This Spring, over 120 projects were presented! Watch this short film on the Spring Exhibition finale and hear more from the students about their experiences learning and creating meaningful work.

NuVuX Global Challenges: Graffiti Gratitude

NuVuX Global Challenges is an ongoing series of challenges for students ages 5 to 18 to share experiences, stories, and ideas, while creating a positive impact in the world through design. Each challenge addresses a theme, giving students the opportunity to address current issues in the world in different ways. This week's challenge is Graffiti Gratitude.

Graffiti Gratitude Challenge
We all have people to be thankful for, especially in the current moment. They may not know how much we appreciate them, and now is the time to show it. Express gratitude in an unexpected way by creating a surprising thank you project for a person, a group of people, or an organization that is making a difference in these challenging times. Maybe it’s your local grocery store worker, or your mailman, or a family member. Your project can be for someone you know or for someone you don’t. Find a safe time and place to install it (not violating any social distancing guidelines), and be creative!

How Do I Participate?

1. Be a current student between 5 and 18 years old.
2. Pick a person, a group of people, or an organization that is making a difference in these challenging times.
3. Brainstorm ideas and create your installation. Think about supplies you have around your house and locations where your project will be most impactful.
4. Photograph your project. Try to capture the person you're thanking reacting to your project!
5. Submit on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @nuvustudio and by using #NuVuXGlobalChallenges. Also tag the person (or people) your project is for, your city, and your school. In the text of your post, please include your first name, school, age, and the city and country you are posting from.
6. If you prefer to submit by email, title the email “Graffiti Gratitude” and send your photograph(s) to globalchallenges@nuvustudio.org with your first name, school, age, city, and country.

A few things to think about...

• Get creative with materials and supplies around your house, including recyclables or things you might otherwise throw away.
• Be considerate of others while creating your installation, and remember to follow the social distancing guidelines in your town or city. 
• In this challenge, "graffiti" means a public form of artistic expression, not necessarily spray painting. Don't vandalize!

Need inspiration? Explore the presentation at the top of this post to get ideas for your project.

What Happens Next?
After each challenge, we will feature the most creative entries in our newsletter and across our social media platforms. Challenges will be ongoing, and different prizes for the best submissions will be announced and awarded along the way.  Towards the end of the 2020-21 school year, a grand prize will be announced for three exceptional participants.  

For NuVu’s partners and friends around the world, we ask that each of you share this call for entries with your respective schools and student networks, and to support our shared goal of bringing innovative education and learning to diverse groups of students around the world.

Echoes is a sonified three-dimensional map that uses cymatics to showcase the activity of each NuVu hub around the world. It aims to connect and bring together all the NuVu partner schools through the visualization of sound. The project marked the launch of our first NuVuX Student Exchange between partner schools. Students from NuVu and our partner Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii, collaborated on the project over a 2 month period and ended the joint studio with a physical exchange.

NuVu Seniors, Maddie, Chris and Tinna, began working on Echoes as part of the Soundscapes studio in which students created site-specific sound sculptures to activate the lawn outside of the Cambridge Public Library. The senior chose to continue their project as part of their Senior Exchange Studio. Working in partnership with students from NuVuX partner, Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii, the three seniors spent 3 months developing the concept, designing, building and planning for the installation of a sound-based piece based on KS's campus. The Studio culminated in a week-long trip to Maui in early March lead by Amanda, one of our amazing Coaches. During that trip, Maddie, Chris and Tinna installed the final piece, and presented Echoes in a final exhibition alongside KS students who had created projects as part of the virtual exchange.

About Echoes

Echoes is comprised out of a table-sized dish, speakers, and liquid. Under the liquid-filled dish, the speakers are placed where the NuVu hubs would be on a traditional map. When activated, each speaker plays a distinct audio clip from each NuVu partner school. The frequencies of the audio clips cause the liquid to vibrate in intricate ways, which causes the ripples from the vibrations from each hub to collide and merge into one, showcasing and promoting the connection of the schools.

Cycles of 24-hour recordings taken at the individual NuVu hubs are played through the speakers. Depending on the activity and time of the NuVu location, the sound exiting the speakers will activate the ferrofluid above and stimulate cymatics. When people are active at a NuVu location during the day, the cymatics above the continent are heightened based on the ambient noise level. When it is night-time in that time zone, the ambient noise level is not high enough to activate the cymatics. When two close-by locations are active at the same time, these waves interfere with each other, creating a new pattern, and showing the potential connection between the two spaces. Through this 24-hour cycle, Echoes generates an engaging visual representation of NuVu's activity all over the world.

NuVu Summer student, Thomas Galletti, launched a campaign called “Sunflowers for Experiential Learning” to raise money for teachers and students to attend NuVu’s summer programs and experience hands-on learning, through the sale of beautiful sunflowers. By the end of January, Thomas had raised over $7500! His efforts will bring one Baltimore public school educator to Cambridge for NICE, our NuVu Innovation Camp for Educators, and one student from Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women to attend our 2-week Summer Residential Program. We are so proud of Thomas' steadfast efforts to support experiential learning and build a relationship between the experiential learning advocacy project that he began and the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.

This Spring, our students are collaborating with students at our NuVuX partner school, Kamehameha School, in Maui, HA, on a large-scale, on-site installation project as part of a student exchange studio.

The experience began with a studio called "Soundscapes" lead by NuVu Coaches and outside experts, Matt Mueller and DJ, from The PickUp Music Project. Students created site-specific sound sculptures to activate the lawn outside of the Cambridge Public Library. Students learned about the history of musical instruments, the practice of sound sculpture, the physics of sound, and the importance of participatory music in culture and society.

The second part of the studio is now being led by NuVu Coach Ammar Ahmed and NuVuX Fellow at Kamehameha School, Nakeia Medcalf.  Working under their guidance, our senior students are working with students from Kamehameha School to create site-specific soundscape installations for their campus in Maui. NuVu seniors Maddie Johnson, Tinna Grönfeldt, and Chris Kitchen are collaborating with students in the Capstone Engineering course at Kamehameha School to develop projects rooted in nature and culture that will culminate in an on-site project install with our students traveling to Hawaii this March.

Fashion designer Erin Robertson has joined us this winter as our Coach-in-Residence, leading a studio called "Solarpunk Fashion." Erin is the winner of Project Runway Season 15 and the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America Teen Vogue Scholarship. Her work has been featured in Marie Claire, Nylon, Teen Vogue, Forbes, Elite Daily and more. Students in Solarpunk Fashion are creating conceptual fashion that reaches for inspiration from the internal self out to the solar system. Solarpunk is a plausible near-future sci-fi genre which takes on historical aesthetics and a connection with crafts and handwork, combined with a sustainable future. Students are combining traditional hand crafts with digital fabrication.

Last year, a student team from our NuVuX program at All Saints' Academy won a competition for the design of a sculpture at Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, Florida. The park is being designed by award-winning design firm Sasaki Associates. The construction of the site is the first large scale infrastructural project aimed to reclaim abandoned sites and focus on the walkable Lakeland of tomorrow. The collaboration for the student project is a result of a partnership with Bonnet Springs Park and Platform Art and Art Research Enterprises. The student project is situated in the sensory Garden. The sculpture will play on sound and entice users with operable bangles as they pass through the garden. As part of the collaboration, the student group will visit the Art Research fabrication shop in Lancaster, PA and work on the sculpture themselves! The sculpture is now being fabricated but on hold for our students to add the final touches. The project will be installed on-site in the coming months. Congrats to the winning team!

The Ledger Article on Students Designing Follies for Bonnet Springs Park
https://www.theledger.com/news/20180301/students-designing-possible-future-follies-for-bonnet-springs-park

Amiyr, one of our full-time students, was featured on Design Squad Global for his eco-friendly invention. Check out his Seed Launching Backpack to sustain pollinator-friendly plants.

Watch the Design Squad episode!

Seed Launching Backpack
https://pbskids.org/designsquad/video/seed-launching-backpack/
Kid engineering Amiyr wants his community to have more pollinator-friendly plants, so he invents a backpack that launches seeds as he walks around his neighborhood!

On October 11th, we welcomed Professor Azra Aksamija, MIT, Professor of Architecture, Art, Culture and Technology Department, in collaboration with Suissnex to run a workshop at NuVu. This pilot program used a new collaborative approach to preserve threatened cultural heritage through the creation of an interactive art piece.

https://architecture.mit.edu/faculty/azra-aksamija

Students heard from Professor Aksamija about her work with refugee populations to bring cultural elements from their homeland to temporary shelters. In addition, students heard from Patrick Michel from the University of Lausanne, who provided a framing introduction on the Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, including its history and relevance.

The workshop was a hands-on collaboration with NuVu students who took ancient embroidery from Palmyra, and translated it into contemporary designs using the cross-cultural narrative between the students’ personal experience and the Historic site. These pieces will continue to travel as Azra takes her workshop to refugee populations and students around the globe. 

Laser cutter delivery to the roof, check. MDF tables, check. Rolling chairs, check...

The innovation studio in Amman, Jordan is slowly coming to life. This year, we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Ruwwad, a nonprofit community development organization which works with disenfranchised communities through education, youth volunteerism and the grass roots organizing. Ruwwad's approach encompasses an array of programs and initiatives that strengthen agency in students. In addition to their on-site programming, we will be working in partnership with Karam Foundation, our NuVuX partner, to develop a studio-based innovation program for youth in Amman. The innovation curriculum will be based on the NuVu-Karam program which has been running in Turkey since 2017.

To learn more about Ruwwad, read more online.

"Ruwwad developed as an idea in mid-2004, when Fadi Ghandour, founder of Aramex International, one of the world’s leading logistics companies, discussed his intentions to play a more active role in community development with his company’s management team and CSR department. Until that time, Aramex had consistently supported social, educational and entrepreneurial initiatives. And so, in 2005, the decision was taken to establish a foundation that would transcend Aramex’s CSR programs. The foundation would involve other private sector players and work with a specific low-income community rather than allocate resources to various individual projects, and it would carry the name of Ruwwad Al-Tanmeya – The Arab Foundation for Sustainable Development."