A beekeeper and a waste management specialist walk into an art museum. They, along with an elected park commissioner and a water quality expert are at Mia to be interviewed by 21 teenage girls. These remarkable young women meet at the museum weekly for “Girls Design the World: Supporting Green Communities with STEAM,” a partnership between Mia and the National Museums of Kenya.
Minnesota sophomores and juniors meet in the design galleries at Mia as part of “Girls Design the World.”
STEAM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math, is a movement championing art, design, and creative thinking as equally significant to the future of innovation as the sciences and math. Globally, students of STEAM are poised to transform the world in unimaginable ways. Teen girls in the Twin Cities and Nairobi are researching environmental concerns in their cities, and imagining and prototyping creative solutions through the process of design thinking, or human-centered design. They are truly putting STEAM in motion.
In early October the Twin Cities girls got to know each other in the Modernist Design galleries on their first day at Mia. They searched the galleries for artworks they felt exemplified “good design” and shared these with one another. No ordinary icebreaker. The girls continue to use the museum as a laboratory for understanding how visual artists across time and the globe have creatively solved practical and artistic problems.
Minnesota teens video-conference with their Nairobi counterparts at 1 a.m. at Mia.
A videoconference with the girls in Nairobi at 1 a.m. on a Saturday morning (it was 9 a.m. in Kenya)—the highlight of an unprecedented sleepover at the museum—made the international component of “Girls Design the World” very real. Following brief introductions, the girls talked about their cities, schools, environmental issues, food, and music. This was the exciting beginning of a long-distance relationship that will lead to exhibitions at both museums and international travel to their partners’ city for five girls in each cohort.
Artists Melanie Mozingo and Alyssa Baguss showing teens how to make their thoughts visible during brainstorming.
Teams of girls are drawing not only on the art in Mia’s galleries, but also on their own considerable talents in robotics, biology, dance, 2-D and 3-D arts, and math to address environmental problems plaguing their communities: water pollution, invasive species, loss of pollinators, waste. The first stage of the design process is to gain knowledge about these environmental issues and a deep understanding of their impact on the community. To this end, the girls have interviewed passionate community members engaged in environmental change and education, Eureka Recycling, Hennepin County, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, Pollinate MN, the Minnesota Zoo, Crow River Organization of Water, Mississippi Watershed Management Organization, and Wild River Academy.
Minneapolis teens conduct interviews in Mia’s drawing classroom as part of their research.
Each team of girls has defined a design challenge—for example, reducing or eliminating urban runoff in their own communities—and begun the process of ideation, or brainstorming many possible solutions. Next it’s time to get their hands dirty creating a lot of prototypes of what their design solutions might look like. Feedback from artists and community members they interviewed will inform each team’s ultimate design prototype, which could be an object, conceptual model, graphic representation of a system, or some other product that visually illustrates their solution idea.
The results of a “loss of pollinators” brainstorm.
Be on the lookout this spring for an exhibition showcasing the design solutions by these talented young women who are putting STEAM to work to support a green Twin Cities.
Girls Design the World: Supporting Green Communities with STEAM is a Museums Connect℠ project. Museums Connect℠ is an initiative of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs that is administered by the American Alliance of Museums.