The Education Program of ArtScience Labs (ASL) is based on principals described by the design innovator and ASL Founder David Edwards. The core hypothesis of the program is that students best learn to learn in the passionate pursuit of dreams that aim at global scale beneficial change.
As in the original educational program of David Edwards at Harvard University, the ASL steers students toward a special class of dreams characterized by highly innovative art and design ideas at the frontiers of science. Imagining in the arts, dialoguing with the public through exhibitions, and exploring frontiers of knowledge where the future is being formed, students learn to excel in the ‘artscience’ process of ideation, guided by intuition, thriving in uncertainty and ambiguity, while at the same time advancing through deduction, and able to frame complex issues as tractable problems that can be solved.
Each year students in many cities and school systems around the world, often in after-school programs through occasionally within the curricular setting of high schools and universities, participate in the ArtScience Prize.
In 2011 the theme became Virtual Worlds. In 2012, the theme is Synthetic Biology — and in 2013, the theme will be Energy.
Over the course of several months, students, guided by mentors, and a curriculum developed by the flagship ArtScience Prize run by ArtScience Labs in Boston, Massachusetts through the Cloud ArtScience Foundation, develop their ideas. Their goal is to prepare an Idea Pitch, in which they frame the problem or opportunity, present their idea and various precedents, and invite a small investment of resources by which they can do a first experiment in the coming months to advance their idea and move toward a scalable project that can meet the larger need. This scalable project might be a company, or a nonprofit, or a cultural exhibition. At the end of the program, many student groups receive funding from the ArtScience Prize by which they can pursue their dreams.
In the process, students learn many 21st-century communication skills.
They grow confident in their ability to sell a dream, to cross into domains of knowledge – and cultures – for which they are little prepared. They learn to work in teams, take criticism, and articulate their passions. They learn to seek out experts, and to make a pitch before potential investors. Finally, they learn to learn -- while pursuing dreams that can change the world.
For more information, please visit artscienceprize.org and lelaboratoire.org.
