Welcome to the ‘Empowering Youths in STEM through the Arts’ KA2 Erasmus+ Project.
Project Number 2020-2-MT01-KA205-074304
Total Project Grant: €132,915.00
Project Duration
20 Months: 1st October 2020 till 31st July 2022.
Project Beneficiary:
Esplora Interactive Science Centre
Project Partners:
Inizjamed, Malta
Aġenzija Żgħażagħ, Malta
CosmoCaixa Barcelona, Spain
NEMO Science Museum, Netherlands
Project Rationale
Our top priority is that, as part of this initiative, all project participants will collaborate with youth workers and youths to involve them in informal STEAM and science communication education. Furthermore, exchanging knowledge and experiences will improve the project’s outputs, especially through the development of an interactive resource, which would also enhance public speaking and debate skills sets among youths. The innovative aspect of this project is that the interactive resource will be developed on the basis of research conducted as part of this project in collaboration with the Youth Agency, involving the youths.
Youth engagement encourages a more inclusive society by strengthening personal and social growth, providing expertise for youth programmes and services, and promoting personal and social development. It is becoming increasingly relevant for scientists and policymakers to actively communicate with and encourage meaningful involvement of youths in the face of complex intergenerational challenges such as climate change and sustainable development.
As part of the dissemination of this resource, a series of three youth science cafes will be hosted in the three partner countries: Malta, Spain and the Netherlands. Youths will be actively involved in their organisation by means of multiplier activities, as well as in the science display and science cafe. Via the involvement of the local community, these multiplier activities will reach out to more young people. Throughout these events, youths are given the opportunity to talk about their involvement in informal education, especially in relation to science communication and STEAM subjects. The interactive resource will also be freely accessible to the public on science center websites.
A short questionnaire was developed as part of this project. This will help us improve the youths’ experience in relation to STEM subjects. If you are between 16 to 24 years of age, we encourage you to fill in this questionnaire by clicking on the following link:
Project Resources
As part of the Project Empowering Youths in STEM through the Arts, CosmoCaixa and NEMO Science Centre created a video featuring the interactive outputs that they developed for this project. This video was taken during the multiplier events held at their premises where numerous youths have joined. NEMO developed a show targeting youths between 18 to 20 years, on the topic of the evaluation of Robots, posing various questions on the concept of whether robots have feelings like human beings. The script for this interactive show entitled Robots in Captivity can be accessed here: robots-in-captivity-script-eng
Relating to this, CosmoCaixa have also developed an interactive resource targeting youths between 16 to 18 years. Their resource focused mainly on Transhumanisms and Cyborgs. In addition, they also created a dossier with a game proposal: a role-play activity to promote debate using cards. This could be accessed from here: cosmocaixa-dossier-transhumanism
You can check Nemo Science Centre’s video from here and CosmoCaixa’s video from here.
The first intellectual output developed was the research on the methodology and the review of literature about the project theme. Here we focused our research on the triangulation format. Triangulation facilitates validation of data through cross verification from more than two sources. It tests the consistency of findings obtained through different instruments and increases the chance to control, or at least assess, some of the threats or multiple causes influencing our results. During this research, the following methods will be used to collect data:
– Literature Review
– Focus groups
-Social media youth questionnaire
Esplora Interactive Science Centre have also created an interactive resource as part of this project. It developed an escape room inspired codebreaker entitled ‘Unlocking AI- Can you crack the code?’, targeted for youths between 20 to 24 years. This challenge includes physical puzzles that the participants must solve in order to arrive at a final goal. This will be themed around the Enigma machine which will be used to decipher messages hidden within the puzzles.
From the following link, one can freely access the resource plan to replicate this challenge: ey-steam-unlocking-a-i
Here are some photos taken throughout the science cafe’ sessions held at Esplora Interactive Science Centre!
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