creativity is crucial

creativity
is crucial
Now there’s
“Years from now people will
look back to September 2013
as the moment when science
and magic converged.”
Commander John B. Herrington, astronaut
In 2013, the inaugural
Beakerhead set Calgary
on fire by opening a highly
entertaining door onto
the world of science and
engineering.
creativity
is crucial
....TO SOLVING PROBLEMS
IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
BUT IS USUALLY OVERLOOKED
AND RARELY ENCOURAGED.
Jay Ingram, science writer and broadcaster
Beakerhead.
The first year created powerful experiences in Calgary and
generated pictures and stories that travelled around the world:
2.1 million
1,496 in-person encounters
social media mentions
volunteer hours
4,620 60.3 million
by
students attended
earned media impressions
28
9.2 million
62,500
schools involved
252
volunteers
paid media impressions
So now it has begun...
What is
Beakerhead?
A sandbox for human ingenuity
Beakerhead brings together the arts and engineering sectors from across the city,
province, country and world to build, compete and exhibit interactive works of art,
spectacle and entertainment, during a five-day international phenomenon of culture,
science and technology every September. From outdoor artworks and late-night
laboratories, to community contests and celebrations, interactive digital events to
event premieres, Beakerhead is a crucible for human ingenuity.
Beakerhead is hands-on and citywide. It takes place indoors and out, includes
ticketed and free events and involves venues and public spaces in Calgary, Alberta.
Science and engineering just
got mainstream – and spectacular!
Thinking Big
Elements
Thinking Big
•Collaborator Programs
•Flagship Performance
•Installations
Students
•Ignition Crew
•Field Trips
Ingenuity
Challenges
•Beakerhead Summer
Intensive
•Shell International
Engineering Competition
•Student Makers
•Catharsis Catapult
Competition
•School Visits
Families
and Workers
•Opening Ceremony
•Four-to-Six
•Speakerhead
•Beakernight
•Atomic Number 13
Ingenuity Challenge
Communities
•Workshops
•Built in Your Backyard
•Sustainival
Thinking Big
Thinking
Big
All hands on deck!
In its first year, Beakerhead
became one of Calgary’s
largest collaborations.
70 organizations
came together –
producing events and programs that drew
students, artists, engineers, scientists,
Calgarians and tourists into venues and public
spaces across the city.
40 distinct events
took place over five days, some Canadian
premieres and many of them staged by
Calgary’s most established organizations.
...And new
collaborations
took form.
FLAGSHIP PERFORMANCE
Seven Calgary restaurants created Beakerheadthemed dishes and cocktails. One of them, Raw
Bar by Duncan Ly at Hotel Arts, sold out of its
engineered concoction. Not surprising. It was an
interactive cocktail that required a small hammer
to crack a sphere of ice.
An intimate night with 1,500 guests,
The Tremendous and Curious World of
Beakerhead was a high calibre taste of culture
mixed with science and engineering. A standing
ovation and a few tears of emotion wrapped
up a performance that was described by
internationally popular blogger, Eugene Kim
of My Modern Metropolis as “the best
performance I have seen in my entire life.”
Maker Faire
Calgary’s Mini Maker Faire attracted over 150
makers and thousands of visitors over the course
of two days of hands-on creativity – much of it
involving technology. It was located this year
at the Alberta College of Art + Design. Here’s
a place where families could make and buy
original works.
Installations
Beakerhead’s main information booth was
accompanied – naturally – by a 40-foot tall
rocketship, hosted by Victoria Park BRZ. Climb
up! The all-day line-up moved quickly, so families
only had to wait a few minutes to climb 18-feet
up to meet the Five Ton Crane crew and explore
the three levels of interactive control panels.
Over the course of Beakerhead, 7,800 people
visited the Raygun Gothic Rocketship.
Strategic Goals for 2014-16
• Coordinate one major arts and
engineering spectacle
• Build year-round artist/engineer
matchmaking program
• Support expansion of community
collaborations
• Develop large-scale multi-partner
projects
Students
Engineered Eats!
Students
Students
Every child should have
the chance to draw on
both their creative and
technical skills as they head
down their career path.
Beakerhead is the catalyst
for that reaction through
year-round education and
outreach programs. This is
Beakerhead’s core purpose.
In 2013, 4,620 Students and
28 schools were engaged in
Beakerhead activities
•2,050 students visited by artists/
engineers
•450 Aboriginal youth met an
astronaut
•1,500 students met Mondo Spider
•100 students electrified by Arc Attack
Ignition Crew
Beakerhead Summer Intensive
The Ignition Crew, an enthusiastic gang of youth
ambassadors, took to the streets spreading the
word about Beakerhead and meeting the makers.
Dressed in bright orange lab coats, the crew
participated in 12 different Beakerhead events
over five days.
Ten ambitious teens came together in a summer
intensive program to collaboratively build a
gigantic turtle bike that they proudly drove
through East Village during Beakernight and
showed off in the lobby of the Jack Singer
Concert Hall at the Tremendous and Curious
World of Beakerhead.
SCHOOL VISITS
FIELD TRIPS
Students learn outside of the classroom by
exploring and learning through hands-on
experiences at the massive installations and
programs of Beakerhead. In 2013, for example,
38 busloads of students took part in field trips to
the interview competitors at the Shell International
Engineering Competition and took an educational
spin on the world’s first green carnival rides.
Student Makers
• 6
40 Atomic Number 13 Ingenuity Challenge
participants
• 1 20 students created self-directed in-school
projects
• 1 0 three-week long summer intensive
program participants
Strategic Goals for 2014-16
• Involve all six surrounding school
districts
• Expand programs to all Alberta post-secondaries
• Increase number of students in
Beakerhead summer intensive
• Expand youth ambassador program
Ingenuity Challenges
Extraordinary mentors, educators, engineers
and performers come to Beakerhead every year
to perform and exhibit, so Beakerhead sends
them out to educate junior and senior high
schools while they are here. In 2013, schools visits
included a 2,000 kilogram mechanical spider
made by eatART from Vancouver, and a lesson in
electricity with Arc Attack’s Tesla coil rock n’ roll
performance (of America’s Got Talent fame).
(Made possible by Calgary Educational Partnership
Foundation and Calgary Board of Education)
Ingenuity
Challenges
Ingenuity Challenges
All Beakerhead
competitions require
creative and analytic
skills. In 2013, Beakerhead
included three main
challenges:
Shell International
Engineering Competition
Turn a piano and billiard balls into a calculator…
Find a better solution for recycling tires from oil
sands mining trucks…
Those were the two challenges posed to
university students from around the world in
the first ever Shell International Engineering
Competition. To top it off, the student teams had
24 hours to solve the problem. The challenge
brought together:
•15 universities from 8 countries
•1,160 junior and senior high school students from Calgary areas schools
•1,500 public visitors
Catharsis Catapult
Competition
A challenge of creativity limited only by
physics … and the need to vent! The first
annual Catharsis Catapult Competition pinned
competitors against one another to design
and build machines to release frustration.
Challengers included families (the youngest
competitor was five years old), student groups
and corporate teams with varied themes
and designs.
•4 teams
•Invited to kick-off at the Calgary
Stampeders’ game •1,000 public visitors
Atomic number 13
Ingenuity challenge
Strategic Goals for 2014-16
• Expand the Shell International
Engineering Competition to include Asia and Africa
• Grow Catharsis Catapult
Competition to all western Canada
• Involve all six school districts in an ingenuity challenge
• Create a community challenge
Families and Workers
A massive roll of aluminum foil was sent to eight
schools with a back-to-school challenge – change
your world by thinking differently on a shoestring.
640 student makers from kindergarten through
grade 12 rose to the occasion and built a stunning
variety of creations. They wrapped their rooms,
shaped new creatures, created stages – all with a
spool of tin foil.
Families and Workers
Families
and Workers
Get them where they
live. Beakerhead’s public
programs bring famous and
soon-to-be famous artists,
scientists and engineers
together in public spaces
to experiment, create
and delight. Everyone
is welcome. Many
Beakerhead programs
are free and take place
in public spaces, with a
very liberal dose of mindblowing spectacle.
2013 achievements
include:
Opening Ceremony
“A Sequence of Unexpected Events” attracted
450 students and 100 guests to Stampede Park
to see history in the making. Decidedly Jazz
Danceworks, parkour artists, Calgary Mayor
Naheed Nenshi and Alberta Culture Minister
Heather Klimchuk were among the 21 performers
involved in the production.
Four-to-Six
Beakerhead brought Stephen Avenue Walk to
life in a whole new light with art cars, science
buskers, pop-up labs and kinetic art – a total of
43 performers encountered by 15,000 Calgarians
over two days.
Speakerhead
A speaker and workshop series open to all,
featuring famous and soon to be famous
creative and technical visionaries, from
astronauts to potato farmers. 25 presenters
attracted 1220 attendees.
Beakernight
One Night, 1,000,000 volts. Beakernight is
Beakerhead’s biggest public celebration, taking
the collision of engineering and creativity to
the streets.
On September 14, 2013, Beakernight spanned
three central city locations: Olympic Plaza,
Victoria Park and East Village RiverWalk. 10,000
visitors stumbled into surprising situations
including late night labs, a nine-foot tall laser
cat, gigantic musical Tesla coils, heavy metal
robot bands, three-storey tall 3D projections,
art cars, and plenty of fire – all in the name of
celebrating technology! A total of 31 companies
and 81 people, Beakerhead staff and legions of
volunteers, helped stage this spectacle.
Strategic Goals for 2014-16
• Create opening ceremony as
participatory community performance
• Expand public programs aimed at adult learners
• Consolidate and expand Beakernight
Communities
• Increase number of interactive public visiotr installations
Communities
Communities
Beakerhead is an
opportunity for community
building year-round, with
culmination in a high
profile, highly concentrated
expression of social and
cultural creativity.
IT’s contagious!
•252 volunteers were the backbone
of Beakerhead 2013.
•1496 volunteers hours were filled.
•Over 50 corporate volunteers from
12 companies were called in.
•Beakerhead was selected as the
volunteer choice for the winner of Calgary’s TimeRaiser event in 2013.
WORKSHOPS
Beakerhead held its first community workshop
in spring 2013, inviting individuals and families
to build green machines (aka art bikes) out of
scrap materials. The results? Participants learned
design processes and technical skills to build
custom creations to take to the streets.
Built in Your Backyard
Dozens from around Alberta dusted off their
inventions to show off as part of Calgary Mini
Maker Faire during Beakerhead. This element of
programming has been targeted for expansion.
Sustainival
Imagine running a full-sized midway of rides
on vegetable oil? Beakerhead partnered
with Sustainival to do just that – inviting the
community to learn about the future of energy
through 15 rides were powered by oil discards
from Calgary restaurants.
Strategic Goals for 2014-16
• Year-round workshops and build-days
for workforce development
• Rework green-powered midway rides
to a “dining in mid-air”experience.
• Increase non-local volunteer
participation
• Pan-provincial Built In Your Backyard program
• Expand call for art cars to all of
North America
Measuring
Impact
of a WellExecuted Plan
Just the Start: Economic Benefit
Based on the 2011 Economic Impact Analysis projections by the firm Econometrics,
Beakerhead generated the following economic impact in its inaugural year:
Calgary Impacts 2013
•91 full time equivalent (FTE) jobs generated by Beakerhead in Calgary in 2013.
•Income in Calgary augmented by $5.8 million.
•The three levels of government collect $2.2 million on the local impacts.
Alberta Impacts 2013
•113 FTE jobs generated by Beakerhead in Alberta.
•Alberta provincial income augmented by $8.3 million.
•The three levels of government collect $3.05 million on
province-wide impacts.
Amplifying Tourism Opportunities
Beakerhead is a strong beacon amidst other September tourism activities. It
leverages the unique timing of September for families to create a tourism event that
is healthy for both the local community and professionals in trades and technology.
“Fortunately the convergence of major international sporting events [...]
combined with new, unique events like [...] Beakerhead to provide compelling
reasons to visit Calgary in August and September.”
Calgary Tourism Q3 2013 Destination Report
Based on the national and international media buzz, the tourism impact is expected
to climb in the years to come. Attention to visitors
services will be increased to meet the demand
through a business plan that works in close
coordination with existing tourism organizations.
Commitment
to Sustainibility
Instigating Authentic and
Inspiring Social/Community
Wellbeing
The social enrichment that builds throughout
the rest of the year culminates in a vibrant and
inspiring community event each September that
welcomes the world to see a new side of Canada’s
culture – our technological savvy. The community
pride that comes with building and hosting this
contemporary event imparts a social benefit that
is both rare and necessary.
Beakerhead is committed to environmental
and economic sustainability and operates with
the goals of long-term stability, equality and
opportunity for current and future generations.
Beakerhead is aware of its core strengths and
how it can work with skill and strategy as part
of a larger community with shared goals for
the public good. A long-term financial plan is
aligned with the business and marketing targets
based on current success.
The appetite for Beakerhead’s originality, calibre and inclusiveness was seen in dozens
of letters received, like these.
“WOW!!!! The event at the
Jack Singer Friday night was
incredible! My son and I had
such a great time, he was
literally bouncing when we
got home. I want to extend
a huge congratulations on
executing such an incredible
festival. Everything I saw or
read was amazing. You and
everyone with Beakerhead
should be very proud! Now
on to Year 2!!!”
“A huge thank you for
creating and spearheading
Beakerhead! My fifteen year
old son, husband and myself
attended several of the
events and were mesmerized
by the creativity, ingenuity,
and passion of people who
participated in Beakerhead.”
“You and your team did such
an amazing job of creating
a wondrous, unique and
educational series of events
for our city…province…
country…continent…planet!
Congratulations on a job very
well done!!!”
Strategic and Aggressive
Media and Marketing
One quarter of Beakerhead’s budget is allocated to marketing events in a way that
leverages paid media dollars to generate earned media attention. For example,
marketing dollars invested in guerilla art events generate more attention than the
same number of dollars invested in advertising. This also engages the community in
the process of making cultural news.
A strong and well-executed media and marketing campaign in 2013 yielded results
that were approximately 300 percent greater than expected for a first-year event of
this size:
Paid media
Local audiences Non-local audiences
10.9 million
Earned media
Local audiencesNational
International
10.6 million
2.5+ million *
8.6 million
47.2 million
* International numbers might be much higher. Data unavailable for outlets in Russia, Nepal, Venezuala,
Kenya, Indonesia, Netherlands, Denmark, and many northern European and US blogs where “Best of
Beakerhead” blogs circulated for several weeks post-event.)
A record-setting 2.1 million social media impressions and trendings established
Beakerhead as an interesting event to watch. This will help to build the base of
participants and awareness among youth.
BEAKERHEAD Board of Directors
Chris Bedford
President and CEO, Karo
Donna Livingstone
President and CEO, Glenbow
Elizabeth Cannon
President and CEO,
University of Calgary
Jennifer Martin
President and CEO,
TELUS Spark Science Centre
Kevin Hanson
President,
Simon and Schuster Canada
Mary Anne Moser
President and Co-founder,
Beakerhead
Jay Ingram
Co-founder, Beakerhead
Larry Shelley
Managing Partner,
Citrus Capital Partners
Len Webber
Member of the Legislative
Assembly, Calgary-Foothills,
Government of Alberta
It matters
As individuals and as a society, we talk about
the need for innovation. How do you ignite it?
Full steam ahead (science, technology,
engineering, art, math).
New ideas and much needed solutions are
born where creativity and knowledge meet.
An ambitious vision and massive collaborative
effort, Beakerhead is an opportunity to put talk
into action, create critical connections between
individuals and communities to stimulate change.
Walk the Talk
1 Inspire Tomorrow’s
LEADERS
very child should have
E
the chance to integrate
creativity and technical
knowledge into future
career choices.
4 Attract skilled
Workers to Calgary
As participants and
visitors, people who visit
Calgary with an interest
in trades and technology
see what the city has to
offer from a cultural and
employment perspective.
2 Stimulate Ingenuity
Beakerhead promotes a
culture of creativity that
will invigorate people and
communities.
5 Build a Contemporary
Cultural Conversation
Beakerhead shows Calgary
and Canada as creative
and original, investing
in raising the profile of
innovation nationally
and internationally.
3 Engage the Community
eakerhead builds
B
authentic, strong
experiences for community
building that encourage
children, families, artists
and engineers to see,
touch, do and create.
6 Create Economic Benefit
Beakerhead positions
Calgary as a fall tourism
destination and generates
provincial income and
jobs.
2013
Sponsors
2013 Beakerhead Secretariat: Hanan Chebib, Kirk Dunkley,
Michelle Htun-Kay, Dallas Kitt, Lizzie MacNeill, Mary Anne
Moser, Liam Nelson, Jasmine Palardy, Katie Varney
Contributing Photographers: Neil Zeller, Stephanie LeBlond,
Sustainival, Lizzie MacNeill, Katie Varney, Dana Teh, Jasmine
Palardy, Fair Goods, Genomikon
Contact
Mary Anne Moser
403-629-3255
moser@beakerhead.org
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