Welcome to Educating to be Human, a podcast where we'll explore what it means to be human in today's world at the intersection of education, technology, and culture. I'm your host, Lisa Petrides, founder of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education. Each week, I'll speak with people who are supporting transformative change in education today. That is, ordinary people creating extraordinary impact. Thank you very much for listening.
Here, within Episode 5 of Educating to be Human, we explore a new aspect of what it means to be human. Our boundless curiosity and extraordinary impact. These two things are deeply intertwined because while curiosity drives us to explore and ask questions and seek new knowledge, it's creativity that compels us to innovate, to find solutions, and to express ourselves, for example, through music and literature.
But the question is, how do we harness this interplay across different fields like art, science, math, technology, and engineering? In order to build a better future? So in this episode, we dive into these questions with Nina Barbuto, whose passion for art, architecture, and social learning led her to found Assemble, which is a community-oriented makerspace for arts and technology, and it's located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Nina launched Assemble in 2011 to create a space that could bring in members of the community, young and old alike, to open up, create creative processes, build confidence, and offer learning that is hands-on. At Assemble, diverse communities come together, reimagining and creating new possibilities for the future. Nina, welcome to our show. Thank you, Lisa. And it's just so great to be talking with you on your podcast.
I wonder if you could just describe what you see when you walk into Assemble. I had the opportunity to actually visit Assemble. Some months back, and you have to see it with your own eyes. And so since we're here on audio, I would love for you to kind of describe it with your eyes to the listener. Totally. We are in a storefront. So as you're walking home from school or riding home on your bike, let's say you, you know, want a snack and you come into Assemble.
When you first come to Assemble, you will see a wide glass. Facade filled with different posters and kids' artwork in the window. You open the door and you see a Black Lives Matter handmade sign that's on a doily hanging in the window. To your left, you'll see the gallery. And typically there will be something in there. Maybe there's an installation. Maybe there's stuff hanging from the ceiling. Currently, there's stuff from our Hack the Future students, which is our two-year program.
And all the signs that they painted and created for the local Garfield farm based on different mental health sayings and trauma-informed care issues to encourage people on how to keep going. And so you see that. And right in front of you will be the check-in table. To your right is going to be a bunch of tables in a U formation around a monitor, big TV screen. That we typically will have videos or presentations in.
And then in the corner, you'll see the chill zone where there are books and stuffed animals and games. And also to our laser cutter and our 3D printer. But if you look up, there's giant foam tools, there are crayons floating on the ceiling. There are gender neutral bathrooms. So, you know, take your pick. And we also have. We have a room in the back that we call the danger zone that has the electronics and robotics kits, as well as like saws, hammers, and more.
There's a few desks against the wall for part of the office space. But then there's another room that we have even more office space now that's connected to the next facade. All the walls in the space are metal shelves that we have transformed into being our walls. So we have. We have pieces of OSB and homosote attached to eight foot shelving that are able to roll around and they hold all of our bins of materials. So you are just surrounded by stuff and opportunity.
What does assemble give to kids that schools aren't able to, right? Because in schools we're teaching science and technology. And so, so what is it that, that. Uh, kids are able to do there that they don't get to do in schools.
I think something that they're able to do at assemble that they're not able to do in other places is teach each other and be encouraged to teach each other and teach our teachers as well as like, just question and be like, well, what if, cause like there are no grades at assemble, if they are interested in going down a path that isn't. What the teacher had planned for the day. That's okay. Part of our mission is nurturing agency in learners and thinking like, how do I own my own learning?
And it might not be a total free for all, but at the same time, like encouraging the kids to say like, okay, well, you know, I might be interested in doing this today and that tomorrow. And how, how could I do that? And who should we bring in and really utilizing the full learning environment of Pittsburgh as a resource. And Assemble being more of a conduit and connector to those folks.
So like, if we do have students, for example, interested in DJing, we will bring in people to teach the kids how to DJ. Right. And maybe the kids can even go to visit someplace that's like making DJ equipment, or let's say like someone is interested in robotics. Can we have people come in? Can we go to a field trip? How do we continue to expand on this learning, but also to reimagine? What are the ways that this type of learning is actualized currently?
And what inspired you to create a space like this? Assemble really comes out of my own learning experiences from studying architecture as an undergrad and getting my bachelor's of architecture and really diving into like project-based learning that way. And then going on for my master's of architecture. And your master's of architecture with media.
And that led me to work in LA, diving into how buildings learn from us and how we learn from our buildings, which then translated to these ideas of like, how are we teaching ourselves? And how are we learning from our community and the environment? And long story short, I ended up moving back to Pittsburgh with this idea of what if we had a space to come together and to put things together and to question things and to learn from each other?
And I just kept talking to a lot of folks about the idea and magically a friend was buying a building on Penn avenue in the Penn Avenue Arts district and I convinced them that he should let us do assemble in there we started as an all volunteer run organization. And 13 years later and a move down the street we now have a total of 30 people working in Assemble and 15 of the folks are full-time.
That's quite an endeavor. I would love to hear just a little bit more about when you were talking about your background in architecture, because I think there's something really unique that you bring when you're thinking about space. I know that you use architecture. I mean you said that architecture is like problem -based learning right? And how architecture kind of impacts your concept of what place should be? Some people might start a non-profit and say okay we're going to rent this
office space so we can get going. I think your concept and really informed by your own background, really helped develop what this was going to be in
reality. And I think of Assemble as its own like form of social architecture when we're designing architecture right and we're designing spaces be it a permanent or temporary structure we're thinking about how bodies move through space and how people typically are utilizing it for different reasons and needs and wants, and how are we incorporating the flexibility,
right for people to make it their own? There's a great article about Adolf Loos, Crimes and Ornament, and it's just like the architect who over designs everything and you know like you might think of a Frank lloyd Wright in this situation where you're like you have to sit in these chairs and other things.
But the architecture that I'm trying to practice here at Assemble shines when people are able to make that space their own so like the infrastructure is invisible or it's enough so that you don't have to make up everything but you can remix everything. I love that, i love that so when you were creating Assemble, you know, who were you designing it for? Well again like we got the space and so a lot of
it was like okay who's coming in who's here. We didn't really know who was the audience, but the original space was right next door to the thrift store so every Saturday we had kids and i mean like granted, i was designing it for people i knew and my friends right. So like at that time i was 26. So it was like oh millennials and weird artists folks and interesting creatives and techies and
everything in between. So I was designing it for people who wanted to come together and learn stuff and was not designing it for foundations. So I was designing for the people who walked down the street and lived next door or would come in to get a free snack. I think that set us up to always be reflective of of our community. And so when you first started, did you start with volunteers or did you start with a team? How did you get going?
So for the first four years of its existence, it was all volunteer run. I pulled together people that I knew as a board and things together for starting a 501c3. I did not know anything about that kind of stuff before diving into it. Fortunately, we have a really great library system in Pittsburgh where there is a nonprofit library room. And there's also a great business room too. They have everything. And was able to pull some local expertise to share.
And we were able to get contracted to deliver programming for other out-of-school time spaces and nonprofits throughout the summer of like 2012, and started to be able to pay teaching artists as contracted teachers at that point. And then we continued to do that until really 2017 when we switched everybody to part-time staff and created some full-time positions. And we're able to have more full-time positions in 2019 and have continued growing.
So tell me a bit about how your programs have evolved over time. I think all of our programs really have been a response to community need from after school to summer camps to even birthday parties. We're doing it because someone was like, hey, can you guys do a birthday party? Or hey, can you do summer camps? Or after school, or tutoring or something, the monthly gallery crawl that we're a part of is already part of the Penn Avenue Art District's infrastructure. And so that was a given.
And we really just have been responsive to what other folks have asked us to do, even including our day camps for youth that have days off for different holidays. When it comes to the subjects and topics, we are very committed to the combination of science, tech, engineering, art, and math through a culturally relevant and contextually responsive lens.
We want to make sure that we're hitting a wide range of subjects, but also to thinking about how do we practice all of those verbs for science, technology, engineering, art, and math, and doing it in a way that is meaningful. So if you don't see yourself in what you're learning about, why would you, why do you want to learn about it? Or you don't see how you might influence it. And, or if it's not relevant to your existence currently, how might you use it differently in the future?
So we're constantly looking at what is happening in contemporary art and science and math and engineering, as well as like, what can we learn from the past to remix for the future? And another example of how we practice STEAM through a culturally relevant and contextually responsive lens is through our Afrofuturism curriculum, where we're looking to the past as we reimagine the future while centering folks from the African diaspora. That's great.
That's so important how you're weaving in STEAM, right? STEM. I'm not sure if everybody knows what's, why don't you tell us about STEAM and STEM and the art, a little bit just quickly about the origins of that? Yeah. Oh, yeah. A lot of the STEM versus STEAM conversation really comes down to funding and who is paying for what.
So I always like to say that, you know, like if you're looking at more STEM programs, you're looking at folks or like it's more work -based or workforce development based programming. So it might be more like learn how to use these fancy buttons to do the thing that I am telling you to do versus like STEAM, which is really truly looking at the creativity behind it.
It's like, well, what fancy buttons are we inventing and why do we have buttons and really questioning and communicating about something else. When we are defining STEAM at Assemble, we're not just looking at the subjects, but also the verbs that we use to practice it. So Assemble, as you know, is both a verb and it is a noun because it is a place and it means to come together and to put
together. And so, when we're practicing science, we are observing the world around us and we are looking at how elements might react when we're studying chemistry or living things and how they eat, die, poop, and reproduce when we're studying biology. And then we're able to put our measurements or metrics to it to prove things true. And that's where our math comes in and we're able to see if something happens over and over again, and we're able to see if something happens over and over again.
And we're able to see if something happens over and over again. And we're able to speculate from there, right? When we're practicing our engineering, we put what we've observed and what we know to be true through the engineering design process. And then through that process, we're able to make something new. We're able to make new science or we have new types of math that comes through that, well, what if I do this? And with technology, this is the stuff that we are creating along the way.
It is truly our making. So what do we want to make through the things that we are changing, things that we've observed, things that we've proven to be true? And then through art, it is how we communicate about it all. If we do not have the ability to communicate, our science dies. We can't say what we want to change or what we're creating, right? Like it really needs art at the end of the day. And so we take it all apart and we put it back together, and that's how we practice STEAM at Assemble.
I think we understand. I think we understand. And you know all too well from your own work about how curiosity drives human innovation and discovery, for example. Is there a way that Assemble is really sort of nurturing and harnessing this kind of natural curiosity? I would say in the kids, but probably in the adults too. So it'd be nice to hear a little bit about your work with adults.
Yes. And I think the first adults that we have to start with are the adults that work in Assemble, because they're the ones who have to embody
it. There's a lot of reprogramming we have to go through as adult learners even if we are working with youth. I grew up in a time when creativity was still a dirty word. You'd be in trouble for trying to do a creative act. And everything has shifted, which is so wonderful. But thinking about innovation and creativity, something i think we practice which is something that i don't think we practice a lot in schools is listening to each other and helping each other to be seen
and feel that we are being seen and heard. And so having that presence or being able to say like, I understand and I see you and I hear you, and what if we do it this way? Or what do you think helps to foster that spark towards deeper innovation, right? And collective imagination. With our adult learning programs, we really want to help folks see and gain access to the amazing stuff that we are doing with kids, such as like sewable circuits.
We just did a workshop last week, actually, with some alumni from Carnegie Mellon to do a sewable circuit activity where we created a special stamp with the laser cutter and stamped it. And then people got to hold it. And so that's what we're doing. We're going to embroider and add some lights. And they had never done that before. So thinking about like, what is possible and what we can continue to share. And sewable circuits, right? Like that's not new technology.
They've been around for close to 10 years. But yet that's not something that's pervasive, like sewing. Can you actually describe what a sewable circuit is? Oh, totally. So a circuit, right? A simple circuit, one can say has a power source, and some output. And for this case, we're going to use a battery and an LED. So you can put an LED and a battery together and you make a very simple circuit. Now, what if I would like to do a sewable circuit? Well, there are sewable battery holders.
And so I'd sew that on and I'd use conductive thread, which has metal in it. And I'd sew from the positive to the positive, on the other side, the negative to the negative, and then make my circle for my electricity to travel through. And voila, you put the battery in there and the LED should light up. And if not, you need to double check to see if your string, your thread is touching itself, because that will cause a short circuit.
And it's a great way of learning about circuitry, because as we all know, electricity is lazy. And it will find a way to not make the full connection if possible. So not only do you want to have clean lines, when you are sewing, but you also just want to make sure that, you know, how are we not messing up the flow? That is just a terrific example about where the A comes in STEAM.
You know, it really seems to me that you've really built and helped foster a sense of community and connections among people. Can you tell me a bit more about the community that's developed around Assemble? It really seems that the collaboration with the community is helping to foster a deeper sense of connection and shared purpose. Is that true? And if so, tell me a bit more about that. Yeah, part of the intention and design was always for a symbol to be reflective of its community, right.
And so community has always been something that I am driven by. And part of assemble's name, right, the smaller text is a community space for arts and technology. And it's slowly built a fabric of community that is not only youth, but the adults, the guest experts, the board, folks from different universities, people who live down the street, and everyone in between.
So when I would talk about Assemble and how we assemble different communities, I would always talk about, you know, the physical community of Garfield, and there's Friendship and Bloomfield and all these other neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. And then to like all the elementary and middle and high schools that are around the area, and then the universities thinking about how are we mixing our big brains with our fresh brains.
And then also to like, how are we bringing in the arts community and the tech community to share their ideas. And it's been an assemblage of everybody at once, and has been a beautiful thing. And you never know what's going to come out of this juxtaposition. Can you say a little bit more also about Pittsburgh, because a lot of people might not know Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, very specifically, you know, what is it that's unique about Pittsburgh that you're even able to be in this space?
In this environment where you have art and technology and science together? So Pittsburgh is an interesting city in the sense that it has always been identified as a city that makes things, right? So like it was a city of steel, the steel industry was huge. And it has since revamped itself to be more of the eds, meds and tech. There's a whole bunch of robotics companies. We, of course, have CMU, we have things like Duolingo, we have a lot going on.
But there's a lot of art that sometimes is not as thought about and lifted up. And there's just so much creativity. It's also a town that had a lot of immigrants, and it still is a sanctuary city, and prides itself on being a space for refugees and new Americans. And thinking about how one can take their DIY spirit or like I'm gonna figure it out. Kind of mentality. And things like, how would you do this for your neighbor? How can you do this together? Let's make something happen.
So really what you're describing it, it's a social space, as well as a creative space. And I might say, you know what, why is that important today? You know, creativity can happen in a solo environment, but we're never truly disconnected. We're always either affecting the environment or each other. It's never in a vacuum, right? We're always building off of what someone else has done and what we are doing becomes part of that lineage.
It's always rooted in community, regardless of what we're doing. So what do you see as both the opportunities and challenges for Assemble going forward? You know, what are you most excited about and maybe what are some of the barriers in the way? The things that I'm most excited about are our ability to help the next generation of educators.
So, we have created a fellowship for 18 to 24-year -olds who are interested in getting involved in the informal teaching world or becoming out-of-school time educators or teaching artists, which typically you don't need a degree to do, right? So like, how does one learn about human development? How does one learn about lesson plans?
How does one learn about all of these things so that they can start to execute and translate their creative ideas into learning experiences for younger people or for seniors or for whoever might be learning at that time. That's something that I am really excited about.
But one of the challenges is finding the funding to keep doing this work, doing the work for the opportunity youth for the 18 to 24-year-olds, doing the work for everybody, the kindergarteners to the 18-year-olds, for, adults and for seniors and making sure that we are creating a workspace that is practicing equitable policies and practices so that we can be a place where people can be their full selves at work, that they can share their creativity, that they can help others to continue to share
their creativity and to continue to build and practice the future that we want to see. So that's a big challenge. And an amazing opportunity. Nina, thank you very much for your time today. I think you've made for us some pretty important and profound connections between how we think about space, the space we occupy, the communities we create, and the creativity and curiosity that actually enable these things to kind of thrive over time.
Is there anything else that you want to add before we end today? I just want to say thank you, Lisa. And thank you for all your work within this space that you've done for so many years. You are most welcome. It's my pleasure to be able to talk with folks who are in the world, innovating, creating, and trying to transform what we do. So thank you again so much. Thank you, everybody, for listening to the show this week. This has been Lisa Petrides with Educating to be Human.
If you enjoy our show, please rate and review us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can access our show notes for links and information on our guests. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Edu2BeHuman. That is E-D-U to be human. This podcast was created by Lisa Petrides and produced by Helene Theros. Edu2BeHuman is recorded by Nathan Sherman and edited by Ty Mayer.