The Science of Awesome

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The stories and images included in these booklet are those of real individuals and organizations. To respect their privacy, we ask that you do not share or distribute booklets or information contained therein with parties outside of the MCA programming team and executive leadership.

THE SCIENCE OF AWESOME

Participating in and Producing Breakthrough Teen Programming

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

TEEN PROFILES

Expert Iltimas, 19

Explorer Zahin, 17

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILES

Learning by Making The Edge Broad and Bespoke Eyebeam

MEASURING AWESOMELearning from Our PeersMeasuring Momentum at MCA

APPENDIXTurning Ethnography into ActionIdeation Tools

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INTRODUCTION

How does a building become a home for breakthrough?

As beacons of creativity, questioning, and exploration, arts and cultural institutions play a unique role in the lives of our neighborhoods and cities. When it comes to teens, this role can be particularly pivotal. In the weeks we spent meeting people who participate in and run youth programming at leading institutes around the world, we learned that the needs and intentionality driving awesome teen programming are universal. For teens, they seek to find their own voice and connect with a community of mentors and peers. For program staff, they want to produce exceptional learning experiences that empower teens to be supported and self-sustaining.

Here, we share two stories of teens who made cultural institutions their home away from home and two stories of program staff who are turning their institutions into havens for breakthrough. We invite you to get to know Iltimas, Zahin, Daniel and Erica, and to consider how MCA’s teen programs might draw inspiration from their journeys and ambitions.

TEEN

PROFILES

EXPERTTeen Profiles

Iltimas Age: 19Lives: Crown Heights, BrooklynWorks: Eyebeam resident & freelance art teacher

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“People take me seriously here. I’m a huge self-doubter.”

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DRIVING NEEDS

+ A community to anchor his independent research + Time to consider what he really wanted to do after finishing high school

+ Peers and mentors to collaborate with and learn from

+ Dedicated studio space with professional equipment

“They were teaching us the tools that professionals use.”

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SKILLS DEVELOPED

+ Teaching and mentorship + Project management

+ Coding

+ Physical prototyping

+ Community outreach

+ Research methods

+ Product development

+ Presentation

+ Budgeting and fundraising

“It’s like I was free falling and they built a structure around me.”

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Taking a gap yearDeciding to take two years off before going to college in order to reform his high school’s curriculum and develop a counter-surveillance hoodie Discovering a counter-cultureSituating his work within an emergent art and tech movement of sousveillance–flipping power dynamics by embedding surveillance cameras on the body

Finding his peopleMaking friends with professional artists and Eyebeam staff, and becoming part of an art and technology community

It was a sticky August afternoon and Iltimas, a 17-year-old senior, had volunteered to set up A/V equipment at a summit on immersive arcades.

During the volunteer orientation at the Museum of Arts and Design, one of the featured artists shouted a desperate plea to the volunteers, “Does anyone here know how to solder?” Iltimas raised his hand and jumped up to trouble-shoot a janky game controller. The artist he helped was Kaho Abe, an internationally-renowned wearable game designer. For the rest of the weekend, Iltimas became the special assistant–performing last-minute handiwork for Kaho and the rest of the exhibiting artists.

After the summit, he followed Kaho on Twitter. A few months later, Kaho tweeted about a teen workshop she was co-leading at Eyebeam called Playable Fashion. The workshop was a demo for a 16-week program. Iltimas was immediately intrigued: “I was excited about the intersection of games and fashion. You don’t ever hear that.” A week later, he walked into a room of sewing machines, arduinos, and teenagers from across New York City. He paid $10 for materials, and over two days, he learned to make a fabric game controller. Little did he know that sewing squeezable sensors would seed a much bigger breakthrough.

INITIATION | 2012Iltimas’ Story

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Iltimas has always loved taking things apart.

Growing up, he spent a lot of time tinkering with whatever he could get his hands on: “Electronics are the easiest thing to do by yourself.” Starting in the 6th grade, he would walk to the local Radio Shack in Crown Heights to pick up cheap parts–soldering wire, circuit boards, and resistors. Hacking remote controls through his middle school years gave him the skills to run tech for theater production at the NYC Lab for Collaborative Studies. Those same skills came into play when he raised his hand to help at the summit.

UPBRINGING | 2008-2012

After one weekend, Iltimas was hooked.

The preview workshop of Playable Fashion had been so rewarding that he enrolled in the semester-long after-school program. For the first time, Iltimas was part of a hacking community–working alongside two professional game designers (Kaho and Ramsey Nasser) and 15 peers. The program struck a balance between intense learning and just plain fun:

There was a drive to work on your project to its fullest, but there were countless occasions when some of us had spent all day studying chemistry and were like, we can’t do this. And for me that was probably the secret sauce to it–there was a lot of empathy for us as high schoolers and for what we were going through…They made a fun environment to let off steam.

Iltimas was most impacted by the stress management skills he learned from the facilitators. As professional indie game designers, Kaho and Ramsey shared tools of the trade–like making punch lists and prioritizing what parts of coding language to learn first–to prevent the kids from getting overwhelmed.

INVOLVEMENT | 2013Iltimas’ Story

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Iltimas’ locker is his home away from home.

As a student resident at Eyebeam, he gets: a locker and desk space alongside an international cohort of professional artists; weekly meetings with the research and program directors; access to a laser cutter, sewing machine, and 3-D printer; and a page on the Eyebeam Crowdrise site to raise funds for his materials. It has been almost two years since he graduated from high school, and Eyebeam has provided Iltimas with enough structure to develop his hoodie prototypes, prepare a robust portfolio for his application to study industrial design at Parsons, and to reassure his parents that he’s on the right track. “There’s endless support here. There are so many people here who know so many things. If there’s ever a question I have and someone can’t answer it, they can almost always redirect me to someone who can answer it.”

BREAKTHROUGH | 2014-present

JOURNEY MAPIltimas’ Story

Hobbyist Hacker Volunteer

BangladeshCrown Heights Museum of

Arts and Design

NYC Lab Schoolfor Collaborative Studies

Workshop Attendee

TwitterEyebeam(Chelsea)

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NYC Lab Schoolfor Collaborative Studies

Course Mentor

Student Resident

StudentCourse Participant

After School Program(Chelsea Computer RecreationCenter)

Eyebeam (Industry City)

Parsons(Industrial Design)

HIVE

Crowdrise

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EXPLORERTeen Profiles

Zahin Age: 17Lives: Corona Park, QueensWorks: NY Hall of Science

“I always knew the museum was a cool spot, so I thought, ‘why can’t I work there?’”

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DRIVING NEEDS

+ A summer job + A place to hang out after school in his neighborhood

+ His own way to be passionate about science

“They taught us how to brainstorm and how to help our community.”

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SKILLS DEVELOPED

+ Collaborative design + Teaching and mentorship

+ Physical prototyping

+ Designing for community

+ 3-D modeling

+ 3-D printing

+ Public speaking

+ CV development

+ Laser cutting

+ Woodworking

+ Drawing

“I started learning more about the world and how it works.”

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Finding his voicePracticing how to present his ideas gave him confidence to speak up at school and at home* Connecting design with citizenshipTaking a walk with a cultural anthropologist in his neighborhood opened his eyes to how design and science can help his neighbors

Experimenting with enterpriseBuilding a non-Newtonian liquid pothole patch kit that will debut at this fall’s Maker Faire

* See Turning Key Moments Into Insights, p. 55

Zahin’s parents wanted him to get a job.

It was the spring of his junior year and the pressure was on to start paying his own phone bill and saving up for college. Through the Queens Public Library, he landed a spot in a youth employment program as a camp counselor, but he was looking for something more challenging. Zahin’s house is a three-block walk to the NY Hall of Science (NYSCI) and he loved spending weekends there with his family. One of his good friends from school, Raj, had a job at NYSCI and Zahin tagged along one Saturday to see if there were more openings. Raj introduced him to the director of youth programs, Priya Mohabir, who invited Zahin to apply to the summer Innovation Institute. The program was a three-month boot camp, where 24 high schoolers from all over NYC earned minimum wage to learn the ropes of innovation. Zahin was thrilled at the prospect of being paid to learn. As part of NYSCI’s dedication to serving local residents first, Zahin went to the top of the applicant pile and was accepted.

INITIATION | Spring 2014Zahin’s Story

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Zahin had just turned four when he first stepped into NYSCI.

It was his birthday and he remembers how his mom let him roam free to touch and test all the exhibits. Growing up in a neighborhood with not much else to do besides going to the deli or the park, the museum stood out as a place where he could explore and meet new people. As he got older, it was also the safe place he could take his younger sisters when he was charged with watching them. Zahin’s parents were pleased with his science hangout–holding high hopes that their son would study medicine and become a doctor.

UPBRINGING | 2001-2013

Even though it was June, Zahin was worried about winter.

It was the first week of camp and a cultural anthropologist guided the teens on a walk through the neighborhood, encouraging them to make a list of every problem they observed. Zahin questioned how homeless people kept warm in the winter. He discussed the issue with his team, and they decided to build a heated jacket. In the Maker Space of the museum, the staff and guest facilitators helped the teams refine their ideas through multiple iterations and build working prototypes. In the final weeks of camp, Priya jumped in to coach the teams on their presentation skills and to give students one-on-one advice on building their resumes. Zahin recalls this part of the course being the most transformative: “I was really shy. We had to create something of value for the community, and we had to present it. This really helped me be more expressive.” Since camp only met twice a week, Zahin’s team set up their own Facebook group, where they would meet in the evenings to chat and work on research. Even though it has been several months since camp ended, the group continues to convene on Facebook to catch up and collaborate on new design projects.

INVOLVEMENT | Summer 2014Zahin’s Story

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On the list of things Zahin wants to fix are potholes.

With $100 in seed funding from NYSCI, he and his Facebook group are working on a non-Newtonian fluid pothole patch kit, which they will debut at the NYSCI-hosted Maker Faire this fall. NYSCI is now Zahin’s after school and weekend spot. Spotted at summer camp as a responsible team member and good problem solver, he was tapped for a teaching assistant role for an after-school program last fall. After that job ended, Zahin spent his winter break volunteering in the Maker Space, helping kids and families trouble-shoot their holiday hacks. In January, the managers of the Maker Space decided to create a special position for Zahin as the Maker Space intern. His parents are pleased with their son’s job and that he can use his employee pass to invite his family in for free when he’s working. They are even accepting of his decision to study business over medicine. Zahin is hoping to attend Baruch College, where there is an excellent entrepreneurship program. He had considered studying out of state, but he wants to stay close to the Maker Space: “Without this job, I wouldn’t have learned responsibility and all the skills I have. I really wanted to move, but I would lose my museum job and everything here.”

BREAKTHROUGH | Fall 2014-present

Jobseeker Student

Corona Park

NY Hall of Science(InnovationInstitute)

Forest Hill High School

JOURNEY MAPZahin’s Story

Teaching Assistant

Pakistan Facebook

NY Hall of Science(Maker Space)

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Volunteer Maker SpaceIntern

Entrepreneur Student

Baruch College(Entrepreneurship)

Makerfaire

ORGANIZATIONAL

PROFILES

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LEARNING BY DOINGOrganizational Profiles

The EdgeBrisdane, Australia

Interview with Daniel Flood, Creative Production Manager

Year Founded: 2010Number of Program Staff: 4Teen Programs: How to Make Dyes from Your Groceries, Edible Automata, Action Hero, Good Vibrations

To achieve both breadth and depth–delivering transformative learning experiences to the 4.5 million citizens of Queensland

To build a 21st century library for communities to practice creativity across art, science, technology, and enterprise through hands-on workshops, meetups, one-on-one mentoring, and maker lab equipment

ENGAGEMENT MODEL

ORGANIZATIONALCHALLENGE

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Reversing mentorship

Creating a non-hierarchical learning environment where high schoolers often teach PhD students to code

Combating mediocrity

Setting a culture of high risk where only experiments with unknown outcomes are encouraged

Making everything shareable

Disseminating program content and methods through open source documentation and community partnerships

“If there’s a better way to do that, show us and we’ll bring you in to lead.”

“When something fails, our attitude is, ‘congratulations for pushing things too far.’”

“We give away everything we do.”

Daniel Flood wants to be out of a job.

From the moment he stepped into his basement office in the Queensland State Library, he has been planning his exit: “The first thing you do in a community engagement is plan to leave.” His vision is to seed a culture of experimental learning so self-sustaining that his institution would become obsolete as the community takes over. An open source ethos guides this plan. Every activity, experiment, and workshop is documented and shared online. While young people are the target demographic, age caps have become arbitrary in an era of democratized access to information. In Daniel’s experience, “the second you call a program a teen program you lose all interest from teens.” Instead, programs are labeled 12 and up.

APPROACHOrganizational Profiles

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Daniel’s approach to program design is to emphasize actions and outcomes:

If you have a workshop called ‘Introduction to Robotics,’ no one will come. They will think, that’s not for me. If you call it, ‘Here is your Robot,’ it’s clear you will walk away having built something. It implies a sense of empowerment, agency, and affirmation.

This approach resonates with the spectrum of youth that Daniel categorizes as at one end, the “stupidly clever” kids disenchanted by school and at the other end, the refugees, homeless, and incarcerated youth who have become disconnected from society altogether.

Pedagogy is rooted in resilience and rewards.

In a computer recycling course for youth refugees, every week Daniel intentionally breaks a computer part that the kids have just learned to build. If by the end of the course the kids prove they can handle the repairs, they keep the computer. Thus far, every participant has succeeded in fixing their machines, leaving the program equipped with their own computer and a marketable skillset to ease their transition into their new communities.

BREAKTHROUGH Organizational Profiles

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BROAD AND BESPOKEOrganizational Profiles

EyebeamBrooklyn, New York

Interview with Erica Kermani, Education Director

Year Founded: 1997Number of Program Staff: 2Teen Programs: Playable Fashion, Digital Day Camp, POW! Creative Caped Crusaders in Technology

To continue to deliver internationally-recognized teen programming with significant funding and infrastructural setbacks

To bring young artists together in a collaborative, project-based environment with emerging and established practitioners

ENGAGEMENT MODEL

ORGANIZATIONALCHALLENGE

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BREAKTHROUGHS

Aligning with the cultural affinity of an industry

Staffing teen programs with teaching artists from the indie game industry supports demographic reach and defines an approach to learning

Making their own metrics

Shifting focus away from attendance and attrition rates to measure success by strength of pedagogical model and depth of creative practice

Scaling through IP

Iterating small-scale programs at the intersection of fashion, tech, and gaming and developing a toolkit for teachers to run their own playable fashion workshops

“The indie game world is inclusive–especially to girls and queer youth.”

“We’re not trying to get teens ready to work at Google.”

“We have a signature program where we’ve invested the most time and resources.”

Erica has spent the past two years thinking about one thing.

Although she inherited a broad menu of adult and youth programs, she is focused on getting one program right for teens–Playable Fashion. In the wake of a budget cut and building move, Erica operates with serious constraints on time, money, and convenience. She relies on in-house expertise, the personality of an idiosyncratic industry, community partnerships, and an ideologically-aligned funder to produce internationally recognized teen programming despite these drawbacks.

Before Erica came on board, Eyebeam’s signature youth program was Digital Day Camp, an “all-you-can-eat” approach to exposing teens to a broad spectrum of art and tech activities. From the artist honoraria to the MetroCards for teens, the program proved too expensive to sustain. As the sole part-time program person, Erica decided to scale back the camp and shift her strategic focus to nurturing deep practice with underserved demographics. She tapped two Eyebeam artists-in-residence who are professional indie game designers, Kaho Abe and Ramsey Nasser, to co-design a teen program to embody their industry’s inclusive counter-culture and scrappy skill sets.

APPROACHOrganizational Profiles

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BREAKTHROUGHOrganizational Profiles

Playable Fashion is becoming a movement.

After three iterations of Playable Fashion programming, over 100 teens have completed workshops in game design theory, coding, and game modification and crafted their own wearable games on everything from gentrification coffee culture to Korean pop stars. Programs take place at Eyebeam, as well as community centers, public high schools, and colleges around the city. Last fall, Erica was invited to share the program model at a convening of 1,500 art and tech educators at MozFest London. Following her presentation, Mozilla’s Hive Learning Network awarded Eyebeam $40,000 to create an educator’s guide to making your own wearable tech workshops. Erica is currently partnering with researchers at the NYU Poly Game Innovation Lab to translate her program into a kit of parts.

MEASURING

AWESOME

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LEARNING FROM OUR PEERSMeasuring Awesome

Organizations formulating breakthrough learning experiences provide opportunities for teens to develop creative confidence, civic mindedness, and personal agency through these three areas.

Learn

Creating opportunities for hands-on learning experiences that range from gaining initial exposure to honing an expertise

Connect

Cultivating a community of collaboration and mentorship

Build

Providing space and support to test new ideas and put them into practice

Defining qualitative engagement goals is the path to achieving ambitious quantitative outcomes. A holistic approach to engagement metrics measures momentum across a spectrum of programming intensities to capture modalities of meaningful participation.

MEASURING MOMENTUM AT MCAMeasuring Awesome

Engagement Goals

+ Urban home

+ Exposure to creative practices

+ Peer-to-peer learning

+ Creative production

+ Skills building

+ Mentorship

+ Career exposure

+ Creative risk-taking

Engagement Methods

+ Staff alignment

+ Program ambassadors

+ Community and industry partners

+ Professional associations

+ Social media

+ Shared IP

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Engagement Metrics

2,000 Walk-ups

1,000 School tours

1,400 Special events

600 Drop-in

12 Failure Lab

Thoughtstarter

How might we evaluate MCA’s teen programs through the lens of breakthrough?

How might we work with teens to co-design meaningful engagement goals?

How might we measure success in ways that embody our unique positioning and brand values?

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TURNING ETHNOGRAPHY INTO ACTION

Turning Key Moments Into Insights

Creating Journey Maps

IDEATION TOOLS

Essential Elements of Ideation

3 Modes of Brainstorming

APPENDIX

Use stakeholder key moments and pivotal stories to help glean insights around behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that might be representative of a broader community mindset. Through one-on-one conversations and group reflections, talk with teens about their specific experiences and skills developed in the program that would have otherwise not been possible. Make a list of these key experiences and skills, and consider from a programming perspective how to replicate and amplify those experiences.

TURNING KEY MOMENTS INTO INSIGHTS

Turning Ethnography into Action

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KEY MOMENT

Practicing how to present gave Zahin confidence

INSIGHT

Teens can benefit from more real-world expository opportunities to help them gain confidence and composure

KEY MOMENT

Practicing how to present gave Zahin confidence

INSIGHT

Teens can benefit from more real-world expository opportunities to help them gain confidence and composure

CREATING JOURNEY MAPSTurning Ethnography into Action

You can create journey maps* for each of the stakeholders (teens, staff, senior citizens, et al) within the MCA ecosystem in order to glean insights around:

+ Functional factors (time, transportation, job, etc.)

+ Social or cultural patterns

+ Lifestyle (eating, socializing, repose, etc.)

+ Wayfinding within the museum

+ Engagement opportunities

* See Journey Maps on p.18 and p.32

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These elements help create the right conditions for effective ideation:

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF IDEATION

Ideation Tools

Group size

Groups of three to six are ideal for brainstorming. When working with more people, break into smaller groups, but have both groups work from the same prompts.

Warm up

Take five minutes at the beginning of a brainstorm session to review the ground rules and try a quick warm-up activity, such as:

+ Logging Write down as many possible uses for a log

+ Next Big BandRandomly select two instruments. Come up with as many names as possible for this band

+ Elephant Tears Everyone stands up holding a piece of paper behind their back. In two minutes, people try to tear the paper into the shape of an elephant and then share results with the group.

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Materials

Sharpies, sticky notes, a big wall and three or more people are the only tools required for a good brainstorm. If possible, provide stickies and sharpies in many colors to allow for easy labeling and sorting later on.

Rules

The most important piece of setting up a brainstorm is establishing the right conditions for the group. Write ground rules on a wall and review them before you get started.

+ There are no bad ideas + Write it down or it doesn’t exist

+ Welcome the unusual

+ Shoot for quantity over quality (you can edit later)

Make questions generative by offering prompts that begin with the phrase “How might we…”

3 MODES OF BRAINSTORMINGIdeation Tools

1. Insights

Prompts based directly from learnings and insights:

How might we use our resources in new ways?

How might we meet needs that came up in discovery?

How might we expose our teens to more creative practices?

2. Adjacencies

Prompts related to the project but removed by a degree:

How might a competitor or a mentor solve this problem?

How might things change if the stakeholder swapped positions?

How might a FLAB teen design the program if she were running it?

What would we change if we were participants?

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3. Disruption

Prompts that reframe thinking around the project:

How might someone from a different field approach this?

What might we learn from a shared experience (e.g. airport, casino, spa)?

How might Kanye West direct MCA’s teen programming?