STREAM – Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts + Mathematics
CVAG is committed to supporting youth in navigating their learning pathways at the intersection of art and technology — areas that have been historically patriarchal.
CVAG’s STREAM Incubator is an inquiry-based, hands-on learning program for youth, ages ten to fifteen, facilitated at the Comox Valley Art Gallery by educator Stew Savard.
This program has allowed youth to explore STEM/STEAM/STREAM activities. Meeting several evenings a week, the evolving group of eight to ten students has explored robotics, architecture, and LEGO Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) as discovery pathways.
Please contact Stew Savard at stewart.savard@gmail.com with any questions about the STREAM Incubator.
“Just remember, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way.”
– MASH, Colonel Potter
Over the Years
The initial series of the STREAM Incubator began in 2021, inspired by the work of Deb Dumka and Claire Sanford in the exhibition, Our Young Girls an interactive installation exploring gender + digital empowerment + access + technology + safe spaces + art.
In the summer of 2022, the STREAM group explored how it is to be thinking, making and imagining, within an immersive space of art and design, in relationship with community + cultural workers participating in CVAG programming in which diverse identities came together to express something about place, identity and belonging. In this safe space for learning, the group expanded their scope of inquiry to include the design and construction of a LEGO model of the art gallery architecture, plaza and the 2022 gallery renovations | exploration of stop-motion animation | and collaborative learning of EV3 and VEX V5 robotics.
As part of Integrating Reality: Building from the Inside Out, December 2022 – April 2023, an installation of the LEGO model of the art gallery and a photo mural that chronicled participants working collaboratively on various projects was presented in CVAG’s Reception Hub before being relocated to the Community Gallery in CVAG’s entryway in the late fall of 2023 into the spring of 2024.
In 2023, inspired by the REPOSITORIES SERIES by Reva Stone, which was presented at CVAG as part of the exhibition Together Apart | Under One Roof, the STREAM students also initiated the Community Make Art Project Imagining + Exploring Robot Behaviours, inviting the public to join them in experiments using old and new technologies to create robots that had sensor responses and new behaviours that enabled them to create drawings and make responsive sounds.
STREAM Incubators + Mural Installation: During the 2024 year, the STREAM participants began building their second model project — a to-scale replica of the Vancouver Island Regional Library in Courtenay. The group also continued their incubator explorations in robotics, coding, and stop-motion/animation using the gallery’s flex spaces as they drew inspiration from the Comox Valley Art Gallery’s programming presentations.
In 2025, the students worked to enhance their scale model builds* of the Comox Valley Art Gallery, the Courtenay Branch of the Public Library, and the underground infrastructure below associated streets. They also began to explore the hows and whys of LEGO GBCs, which not only means the engineering but also the inclusion of aesthetics elements into their contraptions. In a few spare moments, some of the students, with either a background or interest in Agriculture, began exploring simple robotic builds that might be useful in those areas.
* FUN LEGO FACTOID: one LEGO block equals one foot!