October 17, 2024
A rainy day in Bilbao received the members of Academia de Inventores and Edelvives for a meeting with the City Council of Bilbao to learn about the STEAM Education projects that they have.
The meeting took place at La Perrera, the main STEAM center that the city has created. Its name comes from one of the old uses of that building, the dog shelter.
This building, with 560 m2 in the city center had the “aspiration to become the reference space and equipment for the youth in Bilbao, besides offering other socio-cultural services to the city”. This is part of an “integran project of social innovation in youth politics in three different angles: information and counseling, emancipation and innovation”. This is meant for boys and girls aged 12 to 30, as a answer to the needs of the youth all over the different cycles of their life. It’s parto f the Konekta program, together with the Basque Government. However, this is just one of the 9 spaces of the city: Deusto, Castaños, Ramoni, Begoña, Esperantza, Abando, Basurto, Zorroza and La Perrera.
They presented Bilbao’s STEAM initiative and the activities conducted across various centers. This initiative was largely implemented in collaboration with EHU, which has provided guidance for the maker lab and activities, for example. This is an excellent example of collaboration between two entities, as documented in this report.
The meeting is with Javier Portillo, Urtza Garay, Arantzazu López de la Serna, Ainara Romero (EHU Universidad del País Vasco), and staff from the Bilbao City Council: Itxaso Erroteta Sagastagoya, Councilor of Youth and Sports from the Bilbao City Council, and Idoia Uriarte Ercilla, Director of Youth and Sports, and the technical managers of La Esperantza and La Perrera centers. From Academia de Inventores (ACINV), Sol Martire and Luis Martín and, finally, from Edelvives (EDE), Juancho Pons (STEAMbrace project coordinator).
Bilbao City Council is very much involved in the STEAM Alliance for Europe that STEAMbrace is creating and will have a delegation traveling in February to the 1st STEAM Congress for stakeholders in Göteborg, Sweden, organized by WiTEC (European Association for Women in Science, Engineering & Technology, under the frame of STEAMbrace.
After this first meeting, members of EHU, ACINV and EDE went to the Faculty of Education (Universidad del País Vasco EHU) for a meeting to set up the common ground for the STEAM activities in the different WPs and how it’ll work out for the case studies in the schools. Templates were established as the foundation for extracurricular activities (D3.7), handbook (D4.2), the Gothenburg Congress, and STEAM week. Issues regarding the congress in Zagreb (first annual meeting) and budget clarifications were also addressed.
At the end, there was a short tour of the faculty facilities: Makerlab, classrooms and labs.
Workshops by ACINV for students of the Master’s degree in Educational Technology the Universidad del País Vasco offers. The group consisted of three senior managers from Berritzegune Central (a center for training and educational innovation support in Euskadi), five experienced teachers, and eleven recent graduates in education, audiovisual communication, mathematics, and digital humanities.
The workshops lasted for over 2 hours and they were a big success. At the same, we managed to promote the STEAM Alliance for Europe and the STEAM Congress, after an introduction of STEAMbrace. Since the students were mainly women, it was very valuable to see their opinion and reactions to the different project activities. Their insights were seen not only from the educational point of view but also from a gender perspective and that generated a very interesting debate.