CVAG is committed to supporting youth in navigating their learning pathways at the intersection of art and technology — areas that have been historically patriarchal. Originally inspired by the exhibition Our Young Girls featuring the work of artist and electrical engineer Deb Dumka, this ongoing project emphasizes access, diverse perspectives and ways of learning, and is rooted in relationship building and reciprocity.
CVAG’s STREAM Incubator Project 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.
STREAM 2025
Every year, since the beginning of COVID, the Comox Valley Art Gallery has provided an opportunity for Elementary and High School students to explore STEM/STEAM activities in the summer.
Meeting several evenings a week, an evolving group of eight to ten students has explored Robotics, Architecture and LEGO Great Ball Contraptions (GBCs) as ways to utilize Science, Technology, Engineering, Aesthetics and Mathematics skills as discovery pathways.
This year, the students have been working to enhance their scale model builds (where one LEGO stud equals one foot) of the Comox Valley Art Gallery, the Courtenay Branch of the Public Library, and the associated streets — and they have also begun to explore the hows and whys of LEGO GBCs and the inclusion of aesthetics elements into those contraptions. In a few spare moments, some of the students, with either a background or interest in Agriculture, have been exploring simple robotic builds that might be useful in those areas.
“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
– Stew Savard
STREAM – SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ROBOTICS, ELECTRONICS, ARTS + MATHEMATICS — 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 is which diverse identities came together to express something about place, identity and belonging. In this a 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 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 of participants working collaboratively on various projects was presented in CVAG’s Reception Hub. The STREAM Incubator photo mural was relocated to the Hub Community Gallery in CVAG’s entryway in the late fall of 2023, where it remains visible.
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 to produce could produce drawings, make responsive sounds.
STREAM Incubators + Mural Installation: During the 2024 year the STREAM participants added building a model of the Vancouver Island Regional Library in Courtenay and continued their incubator explorations in robotics, coding, and stop-motion/animation using the gallery’s flex spaces as they as they drew inspiration from the work that is part of the Comox Valley Art Gallery’s programming presentations.
FURTHER READING
SD71 Program – Information Brochure
University Affairs – The Engineering Gap: It’s More Than a Numbers Game
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Comox Valley Art Gallery is grateful to operate on the Unceded Traditional Territory of the K’ómoks Nation.
Computers and EV3 robots supplied by North Island College (Youth Academy at NIC).
