October 1, San Diego_| With a model of a sculpture that catches dew sitting on a conference room table in front of them, artist Elizabeth Tobias gestures as she, Materials Science Engineer Dr. Justin Liu, and other members of the Dewers meet at the San Diego Transportation and Storm Water Department in San Diego on Wednesday. |_Mandatory Photo Credit: Photo by Hayne Palmour IV/UT San Diego/Copyright 2014 San Diego Union-Tribune, LLCFor the past year, Harvey Seifter has set up a kind of laboratory in Balboa Park where dozens of community volunteers have spent hundreds of hours in an experiment where art meets science.
Seifter's 'Art of Science Learning,' funded by a $2.6 million National Science Foundation grant and administered by the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, has trained its participants in opportunity identification, idea generation, core skill communication, design and numerous other skills tied to creativity and driven by an arts-based approach.
But those involved in the project's San Diego Incubator for Innovation have also been challenged to form teams and create products that would address a concrete, real-world issue: the shortage of water in the San Diego/Tijuana region.
'We brought 100 people in San Diego together with this curriculum, in this environment, with these services,' said Seifter, whose initiative also includes similar incubators in Worchester, Mass., (addressing the issue of transportation) and Chicago (looking at nutrition).
'Could we spark innovation at the intersection of arts, science and learning? Would it have impact? Would these teams actually ever form and be able to work productively and ultimately create solutions and go to market with them?'
And the result?
'It's just been spectacular,' Seifter said. 'It succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. The teams in San Diego have been extraordinarily creative, extraordinarily productive and remarkably resilient.'
Art meets science
Among the project's 100 fellows, who divided into nine teams and will show their products in a public 'Innovation Launch' Oct. 16 in the Balboa Park Grand Ballroom, are students, engineers, teachers, artists and scientists, among others. Many are fully employed, but all agreed to attend regular training sessions and ultimately work together on creating specific solutions.
'What has kept this project going is people's commitment to doing something different,' said Nan Renner, the incubator's director. 'This idea of integrating the arts with STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) is so compelling. I think a big success of this project is the power of the idea to attract really interesting people and create a community that has tremendous strength.'
For Adrián Gamboa, an artist who runs his own graphic design firm in Tijuana, it was the project's binational scope and focus on water, as much as the idea of using the arts to spark creativity and solve problems, that prompted him to become involved.
'Water has no borders,' Gamboa said. 'And while we are fighting in a political, senseless way, water is doing its own (thing). We have to share the responsibility, and share the efforts, and share the benefits of it; at least that's how I see it.'
When the participants broke into set groups after several months of training, Gamboa found himself with like-minded individuals from diverse backgrounds. Much to his surprise, they elected him the team leader.
'So I had to be pretty open to each and every one of them,' he said. 'Because everyone has something that could be very helpful for the team or the idea.
'I learned to be extra patient, more selective in the decisions I made; I learned a lot more English than I knew before, and I learned you have to be quite specific in giving instructions.'
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