Photo credit: Penny Breedon

A SMASH OF UP ART, SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING.  OPEN TO EVERYONE.

Badge of Awesome Communities invites you to share your favourite things to see and do in cool destinations around the world. We caught up with the folks from Beakerhead — one of our featured attractions from the Calgary, Alberta area — to learn about what they have to offer.

What makes Beakerhead awesome?

Beakerhead: Beakerhead is a year-round program that brings together the arts, sciences, and engineering sectors to build, engage and exhibit interactive works of art.  It builds momentum through out the year and culminates in a five-day city wide spectacle in September – with interactive street art, feats of engineering, larger-than-life theatre, and spectacular performances.

Photo credit: Michael Cheo

Quirky workshops and programs are offered all year long to entertain, inform and inspire.  Create an anatomical felted heart while learning about how the actual heart works, spend an evening in a tattoo parlour with a dermatologist and a tattoo artist to learn about the social and cutaneous science of getting permanently inked or learn the science behind turning starchy barley grains into sweet malted barley and then make your own signature malted milkshake! 

Photo credit: Trevor Lalonde

Then from September 19 – 23, 2018 Beakerhead converts the downtown core into one big hands-on experiment.  Explore more than ten larger than life jaw-dropping art and engineering installations.  Discover three full blocks of open-air experimentation on Stephen Avenue Mall.  Stretch your legs in the human-sized hamster wheel, check out big-time science buskers and explore the numerous artists and performers both – human and machine.  On Saturday the 22, fire, lasers, light and music make up the DNA of science’s biggest street party at Beakernight.  The dark comes to life with multiple installations, experiences and performances spread out across Fort Calgary and the River Walk. Restaurants rise to the Beakerhead challenge with Engineered Eats.  Savour gastronomical delights, where chef and bartenders become scientists.

Photo credit: Philip David

To don your lab coat and partake in a Beakerhead once in a lifetime experience, visit beakerhead.com to learn more and purchase tickets. 

Who is beakerhead? 

For decades, people have been streamed into either the arts or sciences, yet it is precisely at their intersection where ingenuity lives.

Photo credit: Trevor Lalonde

Beakerhead brings together the arts, sciences, and engineering sectors to build, engage, compete and exhibit interactive works of art and engineered creativity for entertainment.

Photo credit: Michael Cheong

Why?  Creativity is crucial.  When you throw open the doors to science and engineering through a welcoming world of art and entertainment, a lot can happen.  BOOM.  People learn from each other.  New ideas are sparked.  Communities thrives.  BRIDGES ARE BUILT.

Learn more at Beakerhead.com

Photo credit: Katie Novak
Photo credit: Philip David