Data Quilts

We're always looking for ways that people can engage in creating Data-Driven Art at large public outreach events. It's tricky, though! You want to have an activity that's meaningful and interesting, that comes together quickly enough that even the first visitors to the station can make some meaningful insights with the artwork they're helping create. Annually CU Science Discovery hosts an event called Family STEAMFest, which brings over a thousand people in family groups to the CU Campus. CU faculty, graduate students and organizations engage visitors with hands-on demonstrations, presentations and activities of all sorts. We created these Data Quilts to explore how we arrive at our STEM interests as adults and as children. We asked people to reflect on what kinds of STEM fields excite them most and how they discovered their passion for that field.  See the materials below for more information about how we coded people's STEM identies and pathways into fabric and beads.  Two other activities that work really well for large events are the Community Histogram and Quipu.