DrawTogether & NASA send Kids Art into Space (!) and DT Summer Plans

Yup, you read that right. We're blasting kids drawings into space.

Helllooooo DT family! What a week. Happy Pride & Freedom of Choice for all.

DT is on break right now, but we wanted to share two pieces of good news:

1. DT Summer Plans: Starting next Friday, every week we’re going to release an original, DT-live video from the archive right here in our newsletter! If you’re a subscriber, you’ll also receive classic DT activities and special guest episodes like planetarium-making with artist Kelli Anderson, print making with artist Jen Hewett, and binocular-creating with DT kid Niko. So much good stuff to come.

2. Space cat is out of the bag: DrawTogether + NASA = KIDS ART IN SPACE! For over a year, DrawTogether has been quietly working on a top secret project with scientist-engineers at NASA Ames: The First Kids Art Show in Space!! Drawings created by DrawTogether kids from five DrawTogether Classrooms will soon be displayed on a satellite orbiting the Earth. This is the first time kids art will ever appear in space. Check out the website about DrawTogether x NASA here.

Satellite #1 of NASA’s Art in Space program. Satellite #2 will bear DrawTogether kids artwork! Image courtesy of Luke Idziak, NASA.

The brilliant Maria Popova of The Marginalian (previously brainpickings) wrote a beautiful piece celebrating the DTxNASA collaboration that gives better scientific, historic and philosophical context for the project than I ever could. Definitely read this beautiful piece.

Inspired by Carl Sagan’s Golden Record, the DTxNASA collaboration engaged nearly 100 DT kids. The young artists were asked the question, “What are you most proud of about Earth that you’d want to share with the Universe?” After a lesson about the Golden Record and the history of symbols, kids created their own symbolic images that represent what they most value about life on our pale blue dot. Here are a few examples of their amazing drawings and thoughts:

See all the kids artwork here.

With the help of designer Alvaro Villanueva, DT and NASA shaped these drawings into a unifying image that will soon be etched into the side of a satellite, then carried into space on a SpaceX rocket. There it will stay, circling the planet. The artwork will shine across the universe for all to see, including all us humans on Earth, reminding us of what there is to be proud of on this planet, and of all we have to protect and nurture. Including a lot of creative young people with big dreams. Let’s focus on that.

Kids from one of the participating DrawTogether Classrooms, Booker T Washington Community Center in SF, visits NASA Ames

As part of the program, one of the DT Classrooms partners, an after school program at the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center, was able to visit NASA Ames in person. They got to learn about the intersection of art and space first hand.

DrawTogether Kids / Booker T Washington Community Center at NASA, Photo by Damien Maloney

Kate and I and everyone at DT are so proud to collaborate with NASA (thank you Luke Idziak and Anh Nguyen!) and the DrawTogether Classrooms of Booker T Washington Community Center in San Francisco, CA, Strausser Elementary in Massellon, OH; Fletcher Drive Elementary in Los Angeles, CA; Special Music School in New York, NY; and the Barn School in Sagaponack, NY. Please take a few minutes to read more about the project and check out all the kids artwork. If you’re an educator or caregiver interested in doing a similar project, we’ve shared the lesson plan on the “For Educators” page on the website. And if you’d like to learn more about the program, contact Kate@DrawTogether.Studio

Happy spacing out, everyone, and see you next week for some classic DT drawing fun.

Everything is better whenDrawTogether.

xoxo,

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