Reach Out does STEAM 2016
Inspired by Big Draw 2016, STEAM asked visiting pupils to design and build a functional bee hotel that could help promote the welfare and population of bees. The bee hotels were later featured in an exhibition as part of an evening with STEM-inspired artist, Wolfgang Buttress.
by visiting artist, Wolfgang Buttress, who will also deliver a talk on his sculpture work The Hive, featured at Kew Gardens, London. Bee hotels will then be delivered to each school and placed in their local environment to promote bees and sustainability.
Children were given a short presentation by one of our Senior Prefects and wildlife fanatic, Sorrel. Sorrel emphasized the importance of bees to the success of crops through pollination, as well as the importance of bee hotels to enable solitary bees to nest away from hives. From a short video, children discovered that bees are excellent engineers, and the hexagonal shaping of hives have been an efficient way of producing honey for centuries. This mathematical genius inspired many of our visitors to create interesting and creative designs for their hotels.
Aims
STEAM 2016 was the first time Reach Out combined STEM with Art. Our aim was to give children a practical approach to art, by asking them to design a solution to a problem: the decline of our humble bumble bee.
The project gave children the opportunity to showcase their creativity as part of a wider exhibition attended by local professional artist Wolfgang Buttress.
An Evening with Wolfgang Buttress featured a seminar on his famous interactive sculpture,The Hive, at Kew Gardens, as well as local Nottingham work, and wider global projects. Buttress also viewed all of our STEAM bee hotels - a range of over 25 completed by NGHS girls from Years 6 and 7, and Reach Out partner schools, Years 5 and 6.
Resources
All of our resources are available on the Reach Out website free of charge.
Our main resources were MDF and bamboo to make the bee hotels. To inspire children, one of our Year 13 students delivered a very informative presentation on bees and how to promote healthy living conditions. Sorrel also helped children carefully design and build hotels.
Staff included the Reach Out team, head of Art, Head of DT and DT technician.
The project was repeated with NGHS girls in Year 6 and 7.
Financial contribution was kindly made by HSBC.
Impact
"Very good - the addition of art prompted us to select different children to those we would have chosen for a STEM event."
"The children learnt a lot from Sorrel, apart from the brilliant presentation, she came to our table a few times to explain different things about the bees/ bee hives to the children and even helped them calculate the area of their different designs."
We aim to redeliver STEAM again next year mindful of Big Draw's theme.
Pupil Involvement
64 girls and boys from 12 inner city and county schools in Years 5 and 6.
