ART OF MATH CHALLENGE
K-12 COMPETITION & EVENT
The Art of Math Challenge is an annual K-12 Art and Math competition that I created, coordinated, and managed at The Barnes Foundation, engaging 200+ students, 40+ teachers, and 15+ schools each year.
After experiencing the effects of STEAM in 5th-6th grade through the Art of Looking program, I wanted to experiment with the same practices outside of our visits. I dreamed of students who engaged with art in a meaningful, investigative way, using all of their diverse and varied mental and physical skills
- and I wanted it to be fun!
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With these ideas in mind,
the Art of Math Challenge was born.
The Challenge: Students use math strategies to design and build a 3-D scale model of a painting. They collaborate as a team to build the model and write a description of their math process. The challenge culminates with a large free event at the Barnes where their work is displayed. During the event, teams are interviewed about their artwork and their written statement by expert math and art judges, then winners are chosen.
The Art of Math Challenge is an incredible opportunity for students of all ages, backgrounds and intellectual abilities to work together as a team. Students stretched their mathematical and creative understandings while using engineering and science based concepts to construct and study a Masterpiece. I am so thankful for the areas in which my students showed growth during the season in preparing for this STEAM competition!
Art of Math Challenge Teacher
In addition to creating and designing the Art of Math Challenge, I coordinated the competition for 5 years.
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I worked with the in-house editorial team to create marketing materials and used them to recruit teachers and students to participate through local in-person and online channels.
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For 7 months each year, I was in touch with all interested teachers through teacher workshops, individual information and feedback emails, and regular check-ins leading up to the event.
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In preparation for the culminating event, I worked with the events and public programs teams, researched and booked local entertainment, invited and collaborated with math experts to act as judges, and managed a team to ensure the 7 hour event went off without a hitch.
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The Art of Math Challenge regularly engaged 250+ students from 15+ schools for 7 months of the school year, with over 50% of schools returning from the previous year. The display event saw over 2,500+ visitors annually, including students, teachers, families of participants, and general public.
Once we were finished and looked back at the process we realized we all felt different in the beginning. Some of us were confident, some were nervous and some were in the middle. After making all of our mistakes, working through them and learning from the mistakes we realized we should never put our head down. If we keep going, we can achieve our goals. Some of us feel like this was a life changing experience.
Student, Art of Math Challenge
Written Statement
BOOM, BANG, CRASH!!!! Our project blew up. Not literally but our plan had failed and we realized we wasted a lot of time. We had to start all over so we all came together and talked about our mistakes. We came up with a new plan. We would all work together and focus on the objects in relation to each other. We compared the heights and the widths of each object and considered how close or far apart they were.