March 2, 2012: thankfully to the invitation and great hospitality of the Swedish science center NAVET, the Experience Workshop, the Ars GEometrica and the Bridges Organization introduced its various activities in Borås, Sweden for the first time!
At the celebrational opening of the NAVET’s new interactive mathematical exhibit, called ‘Dodekaeder’, Kristóf Fenyvesi, the leading curator of Experience Workshop, Ars GEometrica and the coordinator of community events of the Bridges Organization tributed his talk to the memory of the great Swedish artist, the father of ‘impossible objects’, Oscar Reutersvärd and reminded to the educational importance of the playful and artistic connections of mathematics.
In the framework of the presentation, besides the international reception and inspiration of Reutersvärd, Fenyvesi called the attention to the oeuvre of such Hungarian followers of Reutersvärd like Tamás F. Farkas and István Orosz who collaborating with the Experience Workshop, Ars GEometrica and the Bridges Organization since a long time ago.
The Dodekaeder Exhibit, designed with the contribution of Anthony Furness, a noted artist, photographer and educator (author of number of maths education resource books) communicates and teaches a great abundance of mathematical and geometrical knowledge in a children-centered, playful form.
Lotta Johansson, the NAVET’s directress finds especially important her science center’s wide collaboration with universities and colleges of teacher education. The center built up a close cooperation with the local teacher’s college and hosted more than 13,000 teachers and teacher education students in 2011 from all over Sweden! The NAVET functions also as a resource center for schools in the Borås area.
The teachers can borrow books, resource materials and even special educational toy and tool packages from the NAVET. Above the interactive thematic exhibitions, you can also find a theater room and education laboratories in the center.
We hope that we can inform our partners about more and more results of the collaboration between the NAVET and the Experience Workshop in the near future.