How does a Japanese mini-truck, weighing in at less than a ton and containing a mobile recording studio and the tools to build Bluetooth speakers from scratch, find its way to the Indiana Mall?
Through nothing short of a moonshot if you ask Indiana University Pennsylvania professors Sean Derry and Sharon Massey.
Derry is an associate professor of sculpture and Massey is an associate professor of jewelry and metals. The two have collaborated since 2020 on an educational partnership called Local X Change. The partnership includes artistic work and community-oriented projects from Derry and Massey, and from students in their shared course called 3D Design and Digital Fabrication.
The development of Local X Change coincided with a shift in the approach of Homestead-based educational collective Remake Learning.
Tyler Samstag is the executive director at Remake Learning and oversees a network of 1200 teachers and innovators in Pittsburgh’s educational ecosystem. His organization sought feedback from their partners in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — a time when educators faced an unprecedented shift towards technology in the classroom.
Remake Learning addressed this gap through a new grant opportunity with support from several regional foundations including the Grable Foundation, the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, the Henry L. Hillman Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The new Moonshot Grant aimed to support local innovators working to expand the use of educational technology, particularly to areas outside of the city without consistent access.
“The Moonshot Grants are all about thinking 10 years in the future — we call that our ‘preferred future of learning’. They pitch an idea, something they could do today that is bold, experimental, but ultimately could catalyze movement toward that ‘preferred future of learning’,” Samstag said.
In 2023, the preferred futures of Remake Learning and Local X Change aligned. Derry and Massey sought a $70,000 grant from Remake Learning to tackle their boldest idea yet. Hoping to share their technological skills and to inspire teens to find their own unique voice, the pair sought to convert a Japanese mini-truck into an educational powerhouse. Within the truck, students would be able to record their own podcast and build a Bluetooth speaker to listen to it. Their request was granted and the project was called Studio Stream.
The mini-truck and its staggering rose gold exterior, added by Derry and Massey, were essential to Studio Stream’s goals.
“I think you just try to meet participants where they are. I think we've been really intentionally going back to the fact that this is a mobile recording studio that comes out of a shiny mini truck. That was a very deliberate attempt to make the project approachable,” Derry said.
Studio Stream also placed a strong emphasis on teaching teen learners STEAM skills. Massey noted that focusing solely on STEM: Science Technology Engineering and Math leaves out the A, which stands for art.
“When kids are learning STEM, there's not a big emphasis on original content or original creativity and original thought. And so we see ourselves as artists, as sort of experts and teaching students how to have original ideas and innovation and getting them to solve problems in creative ways, which feels really relevant when you're trying to work in a STEM field too,” Massey said.
Last Sunday, Studio Stream concluded their first summer of programming with a final stop at the Indiana Mall. Over the course of four months, Studio Stream made several stops in rural Southwestern Pennsylvania, including Brownsville and Johnstown, in addition to their home base in Indiana.
One of the visitors to the mini-truck on Sunday was Audie Biddle, a seventh grader from Indiana. Over the course of an hour, Audie and his brother Dawson were assisted by Massey and Derry in the step-by-step building of a Bluetooth speaker. Audie followed this up by recording a brief interview for a podcast. In addition to spending an afternoon enjoying the mall, Biddle said he envisioned himself using his newly acquired skills in the future.
“I was thinking about being an engineer whenever I grow up, so that might involve soldering,” Biddle said into the microphone.
Derry said he’s grateful for the opportunity to work with kids like Biddle and hundreds of other teens over the summer.
“I think to that moment where they turn on the solar powered Bluetooth speaker that they soldered and built from basic electronic components and you hear the pairing sound and you see kind of the reaction in their eyes or the audible, you know, scream is always exciting."
"And also kind of the reflection that happens in the recording station. Once you put those headphones on and you start either talking to yourself or talking to a peer, the conversation really kind of deepens and becomes more profound,” Derry added.
With the summer tour behind them, Derry and Massey will work together to develop all of the audio recordings into a web-based radio station coming this fall. They also aim to create and distribute a zine, a small printed book, to be a tangible product of student work over the summer.
With one summer down, Derry and Massey are both optimistic about the future of Studio Stream.
“We've had interest from a lot of other populations as we've been out in communities and so we don't have definite plans yet, but it could be interesting to work with retired people or just different populations of people that have expressed a lot of interest in the project,” Massey said.
At the conclusion of the event, Massey made a gentle three point turn, guiding the mini-truck past a coin-operated children’s ice cream truck ride and a roller skating rink before returning to the open road.
