STEAM & The Community

STEAM Community Studio

“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
​― Mahatma Gandhi

In a year of great challenges worldwide, there grew an opportunity to look at the needs of the St Thomas- Elgin County community and develop a plan to prototype possible solutions.  Thanks to a $225,000 donation by the estate of Donna Vera Evans Bushell, the STEAM Community Studio was created and officially launched on November 10th, 2020 to help create impactful community change. 

Inspired by a concept pioneered in Vancouver and developed in other large cities across Canada, STEAM Community Studio is a model of experiential learning and civic engagement that will foster collaboration between students and key community stakeholders including academics, teachers, political, community and business leaders.  It's focus on issues in rural communities make it the first of its kind to showcase rural concerns using this model.  This three- year pilot project will feature six selected suggestions annually in which STEAM team members and participants will examine challenges facing the community and propose potential solutions while developing recommendations to address the problems. Up to $2000 of funding per project  is available for prototyping these possible solutions.

At the November virtual zoom launch, participants included those from; the Thames Valley District School Board, the City of St Thomas, City of Hamilton, Western University, University of Waterloo, St Thomas Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Business Development Board, Wellkin Youth Engagement advisory committee and local students.  These participants gathered to share ideas on how best to reach out to the community to seek ideas for the area’s most pressing issues and to partner those issues with local students as an experiential learning opportunity. 

​Following this launch, for the next three weeks STEAM Centre collected the suggestions from the public and has now released its first four selections.  These issues are now in process to be paired with student groups and academic classes.  The Centre received sixteen submissions and has tabled some for future participation. 

​The first four selected are as follows:

​1) Reducing waste: Finding reuse for items in a cluttered world ​
​Using design thinking students from the Western University Environmental Health Promotion class will be asked to prototype a physical process to enable reuse at the City of St. Thomas Community Recycling Centre. This facility currently receives a number of waste and recycling streams but doesn’t have a reuse model.  Students will look for answers to questions like whether a small area could be designed with basic rules to allow users to drop off and pick up materials.  Measurables such as environmental impact on landfill and emissions as well as the overarching theme of giving old materials new life in order to reduce manufacturing waste from new product creation will be part of the prototyping process.  
​Proposal by:​

2) Creating Sensory Spaces
Students will research and prototype a series of modular "sensory wall" panels. The inclusion of sensory play in a space may offer an opportunity to create more accessible spaces for all people who seek support for improving their mental health. The challenge is to design the sensory panels in such a way as to be able to adapt to different room sizes and environments and to create them using safe materials and systems to use them even during the pandemic.
​Proposal by:​

​3) Virtual Marketplace for Small Businesses
This global pandemic has had a massive effect on our small and medium sized enterprises and if you are accustomed to brick and mortar sales this has become a race to capture an online presence in order to succeed.  Students will be provided with an experiential learning opportunity to prototype solutions to assist local business owners to utilize technology to gain more of this market share.
Proposal by:

4) Audio/Video Production Studio for Youth Skill Building
Creating an opportunity for youth skill building through establishing an audio-video production studio.  Youth would be involved in the planning of the studio and ultimately the studio would be a tool for continual learning.  Students at both the Ignite Youth Centre and through in class programming would look to the STEAM Centre for guidance and assistance in creating the studio. 
Proposal by:

The STEAM Centre welcomes further submissions and academic partnering applications.

Apply Here