Evolution, where art meets STEM to create performance! UK

Exploring children’s ideas about what engineers do

Our Evolution Design & Technology project really got going when our STEM Ambassadors made classroom visits at 14 London Primary Schools, drawing on Cirque du Soleil as inspiration.

 

Working in pairs, our team spent half a day in each school, exploring the children’s ideas about what engineers do before helping them with the design and construction of their art-meets-engineering project.

The challenge

Evolution challenges 8- to 11- year olds to work in teams to design and build a working model based on a scene from Cirque du Soleil’s show Totem, which they saw at the Royal Albert Hall, our project partner.

The challenge

Evolution challenges 8- to 11- year olds to work in teams to design and build a working model based on a scene from Cirque du Soleil’s show Totem, which they saw at the Royal Albert Hall, our project partner.

Understanding and experimenting with structure, gears, pulleys, levers and cams was at the heart of this project, which is often the students’ first opportunity to explore these concepts hands-on.

Our first visits focused on refining the children’s design ideas and helping them to start building their basic structure and mechanism. Most groups had the basics of a working model by the end of the session and had recorded what they needed to do next. We helped to start stages revolving, stage sets lifting, and acrobats and trapeze artists spinning and rotating, and rising and falling.

The team visited again later in the month to help with final design tweaks and model construction, before the children got out the glitter to bring the sparkle of Cirque du Soleil to their mechanised models!

Gill Fennell with the expertise of Andy Dunne, Andy Hall, Carol Rance, David Billen, Ellie Green, Frida Nzaba, Graeme Poole, Jaz Johal, Moira Tildsley and Paul Bateman.

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