The Davis Square Community

What:   Tomato canning @ Parts and Crafts

Summer's over, and we're starting up our fall roster of classes, workshops, and afterschool programs.   Here's a quick overview of what we've got lined up over the next few weeks:

Inventioneering: from imagination to prototype
Fridays 6-8 p.m. (8 sessions)
Kids ages 7-13

Lights, Sounds, Motors!   Intro to electronics
Thursdays 4-6 p.m. (8 sessions)
Kids ages 7-13

Girls Invention Workshop
Second Saturday of every month, 12-2 p.m.  (starts 9/17)
Girls ages 7-13

Arduino 101:  Intro to digital electronics
Saturdays 10:30-12 p.m. (5 sessions)
Kids ages 10 and up

We're also running our first-ever afterschool program in our space, as well as a free open shop day every Saturday from 12-3.   Details after the jump!

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A whole summer of invention and creation! We'll have our art / electronics workbench, a bunch of hand-tools, building supplies, scrap materials, air pumps, hot glue, duct tape, etc. Things will be attached to wheels and ridden. LEDs will be added to everything that needs to glow or blink. Everyone will be asked if they want to learn to solder. There could very well be giant sculptures made of corrugated cardboard. Come by and make something!

What: Summer camp!
Where: 155 Powder House Blvd. @ Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church
When: June 27 - September 2
Who: Kids ages 6-12
Cost: $50-300/week, sliding scale

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This year we're launching a series of two-week themed sessions, featuring special guests who will come in to work on a topic in-depth. Registration is still open for all sessions -- interested parties should visit www.partsandcrafts,org, or contact Katie at katie [at] partsandcrafts.org. 

Here's what we've got planned for the summer!


July 4th through July 8th — Girls’ Invention Week!

 Sexism is bad and gender-politics are complicated. Heck, gender-identity is complicated! We’d like all of our programs to be totally diverse, but we think that, in order to get there, we need to spend some time reaching out specifically to underrepresented groups and making spaces that feel safe and empowering and fun for them. So far, running girls-only programs has been one of the most effective things we’ve been able to do to work on this.

July 11 through July 22 – Things that Move**

We’re surrounded by mechanical systems. Motors, gears, cams, crankshafts, pulleys, linkages — the building blocks of mechanical systems are really fascinating, and hands-on demonstrations of engineering principles and ingenuity.  So we’ll make things that move. Kinetic sculptures and motorized toy cars and catapults and streetbeests.

**Note:  This session is basically at capacity for those not participating in the teen program -- if you're interested, email us for enrollment information.

July 18 through July 22 -- Things that MOve:: Teen Program

Participants in our teen program will split their time between Parts and Crafts and Sprout, a communtiy science workshop in Davis Square.
Working with a dedicated set of counselors, and having access to the tools and expertise of the Sprout community, campers will be able to design and execute larger scale projects of their own devising and design and to think more about how to deploy the products of their work in ways that mean something to them or their wider communities.


July 25 through August 5 – Music Experiments and Experimental Music

Come and make your own musical instruments, and make our musical instruments do weird and wonderful things! We’ll make different kinds of musical instruments, acoustic and electronic, simple and complex, hand-powered and bike-powered. And then we’ll learn to play them together as an ensemble and take to the streets of Davis Square.

August 8 through August 19 – Imaginary Worlds

Sometimes creativity is designing a really clever mechanical linkage or solution to a programming problem, and sometimes it’s inventing a magic spell or a fascinating creature. We’ll design alien worlds and alien life and make movies about them. We’ll also play games and tell stories set in fantasy worlds of our own devising. And, of course, design magical and alien artifacts — wands that shoot sparks out of the tips, rockets for aerial photography, and spectrometers and filters to see invisible things in our own world.

August 22 through September 2 – Life: Natural and Artificial

Robots and wildlife! We’ll make autonomous robots and program computers to simulate living things and then we’ll go outside, explore the urban ecosystem, garden, hike around Somerville gathering wild edible plants and cook ourselves a snack!

For more details or to register, visit www.partsandcrafts.org