Punch Needle Tempestry

Scientists are excellent at collecting, analyzing and displaying data. But when the data tell important stories, we often struggle to make those stories heard by audiences outside our scientific community. The Niwot Ridge Long Term Ecological Research program is a National Science Foundation funded project that has been studying the effects of climate change on alpine plant and animal communities for more than 40 years. Our work in the Rocky Mountains at the head of the Boulder Creek Watershed has revealed changes in mountain ecosystems that should matter to everyone living downstream. 

This project was a collaboration between Niwot LTER and Casey Middle School in Boulder, Colorado, aimed at improving data literacy in middle school students while engaging them in the creation of visual art to represent data in a beautiful, personal way. We used inspiration and yarn from the Tempestry Project, a data-art collaborative that began by encouraging knitters to depict daily high temperatures for a given year and location. 

The partners on this project are, from Casey Middle: Ian Schwartz, 8th grade science teacher; Malinda Hoverstock, art teacher; Lisa Norton, AVID teacher; and Kenneth Santiago, community liaison. Together with Alexandra Rose, education and outreach coordinator for Niwot Ridge LTER and CU Science Discovery, we worked with 24 8th graders enrolled in the AVID program—a college and career readiness program providing academic, social, and emotional support to students with college aspirations. Students chose the data sets, helped convert the data into colors, and created the gorgeous works of data art you see on display here.