Ciencia Pública: Creative Placemaking + STEAM Education Strategy Consultant

Working in collaboration with staff from the museum’s Studio for Public Spaces and Education departments, I facilitated a series of strategy workshops that focused on exploring ways the museum could adopt creative placemaking practices, engage Latino youth in new ways, and to address deficiencies in local STEM education. As a result, Ciencia Pública was co-created, which is an experimental collaboration between museum educators, artists, Latino youth and community leaders. Ciencia Pública adopted and adapted the parklet model to create public platforms for informal science education in San Francisco. Each parklet is envisioned as an opportunity for Latino youth to engage in participatory design practices that draw upon familiar cultural traditions to explore science in new ways. Ciencia Pública aims to support leadership development by facilitating opportunities for museum staff and community leaders to engage in learning exchanges and in doing so to gain a more authentic understanding of the diverse relationships Latino youths have, and could have with STEM subject matter. Content produced and program designs generated in these workshops were then used to create a success application to the National Science Foundation, who now support for this science-focused creative placemaking initiative.