Description
Combine a science talk with an art lesson. For a long time art and science have been closely intertwined, just look at the beautiful pictures of animals in textbooks, or the works of Leonardo Da Vinci. But over time these two subjects have been separated as different disciplines when in reality, they inform each other, art and creativity can even help the human brain retain new information. That is why over the past few years, the arts have been increasingly incorporated into STEM education, creating the new acronym STEAM. So why not combine an art lesson with a talk about science?
In this unique event, your audience can learn about a scientific topic and incorporate what they have learned into the art they create. Invite an expert to talk about anatomy or the golden ratio, followed by a session of life drawing with an artist to hand to provide insights on drawing techniques, or perhaps after a lesson on botany have your audience paint a selection of flowers, thinking about the specific parts of the plants as they create their masterpieces.
Target Audience
- Adult citizens
- Children 3-6
- Children 7-12
- Teenagers
You can do it with all those groups, but we did it with professionals from different fields like public engagement or the cultural and creative sector.
Benefits
Benefits
This is a great activity for mixing audience types together and getting them to learn from one another. By mixing these activity styles you can attract people who may not think they are interested in the other subject and hopefully allow them to open up to the new experience.
Also by having by combining format types and combining both education aspects to more hands-on and creative activities, can allow for better information retention and the creation of new neural pathways that connect these two experiences.
These activities can also be adapted for different levels and ages, for younger students, getting them to draw or paint pictures about the lesson before can be very beneficial to their long term learning, as well as maintaining a mindset that the sciences, arts and the humanities do not need to be separate entities and do not limit each other. For a more grown-up audience, a deeper dive into a science and art topic may be more appropriate and could allow for the development of a new skill or hobby.
Preparations
For this event, you may need to arrange for two speakers to attend, one who can talk about the science subject and the other to facilitate and help participants to create their artwork, this could be done in a classroom or any other venue with suitable space, tables and any other audiovisual equipment that might be required for the presentations.
It is recommended that you start with the science presentation, which should also be to some degree interactive and interesting to the audience, to avoid the stigma that science is a dull subject, whereas art is the more fun hands-on discipline. This should be followed by the art activity so that the lessons learnt can then be connected to the participant’s thought process while being creative.
You may also need to provide art materials for the participants to use during the artistic portion of the event. If this is done for a grown-up audience, you want to provide refreshments.
