2016 Inventgenuity Festival Rescheduled

Beam Center will put kids’ hands on the levers of natural phenomena in a big collaborative project, workshops and demonstrations at its seventh annual Inventgenuity Festival . As it does in its public school collaborations, camps, and afterschool programs, Beam Center blends art, science and imagination at this popular annual winter celebration of making things, this year at a new location, PS32/MS442 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Last year, 400 families attended the weekend.

Executive Director Brian Cohen says, “Beam Center has evolved from building big things with kids and artists in the woods of New Hampshire to building smaller, but equally innovative things in NYC public school classrooms. We have seen that collaboration on these kinds of projects promotes access and equity for learners and teaches multidisciplinary skills and knowledge. The results are cool, fun and beautiful.”

In this year’s Festival Project, the Mechanical Marsh, (designed by sculptor Andrew Brehm ) kids will construct real and imagined mechanical birds that will appear to take flight in a largescale kinetic sculpturescape. Participation in the project is free as are demonstrations that will include presentations from Raspberry Pi , DBA Arcade Cabinets , Nerdy Derby , and Gerb’s Garage . Attendees may also signup for one of the rotating slate of 45minute workshops. Scheduled workshops with Beam Center faculty will explore the NATURAL MACHINERY theme: through making Thaumatropes (Alex Nathanson), Color Wheels (Elizabeth Hurst), Omnivorous Plants (Jaimie Warren), Balancing Sculptures (Brett Van Aalsburg), Wooden Snakes (Mitchell Dose) and more.

The Festival will also feature several of the largescale projects that the Beam Center faculty has collaborated on with NYC public school students and teachers: Funktions: algebraic visualization screen (Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School), Digital Poetry Machine: a word board that uses the Twitter API (Brooklyn International High School), Wall of Boomboxes (MS 442).

Inventgenuity Festival takes place at PS 32/MS 442 (enter on Union Street between Hoyt and Bond Streets) on Saturday, March 12 and Sunday, March 13 from 11am 5pm. Admission to the festival is free, advance registration required. Advance online reservations for workshops ($8.25 each) will be available two weeks prior to the Festival: http://beamcenter.org/festival .

WHEN: 11AM5PM • Saturday, March 12 and Sunday, March 13, 2016

WHERE: PS 32/MS 442, Union Street (between Hoyt & Bond), Brooklyn • F/G to Carroll Street

Free admission, materials fee for some workshops Workshops for kids 7 years old and older

contact@beamcenter.org

Registration: http://beamcenter.org/festival