The Sloan Museum in Flint Michigan was created through a personal gift from Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and still bears his name. The museum is currently engaged in a $24 million modernization campaign to transform itself into the premier regional resource for early childhood and K-12 STEM and history education. Plans include the construction of a 10,000-square-foot Science Discovery Hall featuring a Makers Lab, interactive physical science and earth science exhibits, a spaceship earth climbing structure, and a specially designed entryway focusing on “what is science.” The museum estimates that more than 200,000 people will visit annually, including 90,000 K-12 students, many of whom will come from underserved communities. Funds from this grant support the Sloan Museum’s modernization campaign.

Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is host to a unique program, “Fiction and Entertainment,” devoted to the notion that architectural training and a strong design background provide an excellent foundation for success in nonarchitectural fields such as media and entertainment. Funds from this grant support an expansion of the Fiction and Entertainment program that will help 16 master’s students incorporate the latest research in AI and automation technologies into multimedia fictional narratives including short films, animations, documentaries, video games, VR environments, music videos, and web series. Grant funds will allow students to engage in a year-long exploration of AI and automation technologies guided by eight experts in these fields—from Google, Uber, Sidewalk Lab, and elsewhere. Additional workshops and labs will pair students with leading artists to discuss world building, storytelling, character development, and production. As they refine their projects, each student will be matched with an appropriate technologist collaborator whose research they will crystallize into fictional projects. The grant will be capped by a daylong storytelling symposium, Fear & Wonder, which draws 500 people to hear leading directors, conceptual artists, video game designers, and storytellers “share their approach to imagining alternative worlds as a means to understanding our own.” The resulting work products, which may take a variety of multimedia forms, will then be screened at a Future of Automation symposium, which will be interspersed with themed panel discussions to further contextualize the issues. Experts and well-known figures in technology and the arts will be invited to participate. Last, Sci-Arc will produce a 12-minute documentary about all the projects and distribute it via social media.

This grant provides funds to the Science Festival Alliance (SFA)—a network and incubator of science festivals across the country—to promote the development and expansion of 12 science festivals across the United States in communities with small resource bases and with a focus on promoting diversity. SFA will select and recruit four leading festivals; they will spend the first year experimenting with different approaches to improving diversity. Each lead festival would create a customized plan for engaging diverse audiences with measurable indicators for progress that would be evaluated after 12 months. This new knowledge would then be applied in selecting the 12 new partners—each lead festival is responsible for recruiting and mentoring three new festival partners in communities with small resource bases. The 12 selected festivals would be given modest $2,000 professional development grants and then be eligible for $10,000 challenge grants as they develop their own plans. Grant funds support these activities and associated administrative and operational costs.

This grant provides operational and administrative support for the National Math Festival, a biannual celebration of mathematics and mathematics research held in Washington, D.C. The festival, which drew crowds in excess of 20,000 people in both 2015 and 2017, features publicly accessible lectures on mathematics, interactive exhibits about mathematical concepts, and demonstrations for adults and children of the beauty of mathematical patterns and their prevalence in virtually every facet of life. Grant funds will support production of the National Math Festival in 2019 and 2021, the fielding and analysis of attendee surveys to improve the festival’s offerings, production of a documentary about the festival, and expanded outreach through the web and social media.