Oklahoma ArtScience Prize Students Chosen as Winners of Journal Record’s Creativity Award
OKLAHOMA CITY (August 13th)—Creative Oklahoma is proud to announce that one of the teams from The Oklahoma ArtScience Prize program, Team BioBlue, has been awarded the 2015 Creativity Award at The Journal Record’s Innovator of the Year luncheon at the Skirvin Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City on Wednesday, August 12.
The Journal Record’s Innovator of the Year program recognizes the entrepreneurial spirit within the state of Oklahoma. Additional awardees included innovators from fields such as drug delivery technology, communication among health care providers and their patients as well as software platform creators (?not sure creators is the right word). Comprised of high school students, Team BioBlue was the youngest group of nominees.
The Oklahoma ArtScience Prize is an educational initiative overseen by Creative Oklahoma. It is a yearlong after school program through which Oklahoma high school students are challenged to develop innovative design ideas infused with concepts at the forefront of modern science. This year’s students were given creative freedom to explore the 2014-2015 theme of “biodiversity” to develop projects that can bring change into the world.
Team BioBlue’s design is a specialized chair resembling the structure and functionality of a fish fin that will help individuals with injuries or disabilities to not only sit, but stand with ease. The chair represents a long struggle by the students to find THE idea that wasn’t on the market yet. After all of their efforts, members of Team BioBlue were thrilled to learn that they had won the Oklahoma ArtScience Prize and consequently had earned a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a weeklong innovation workshop with ArtScience Prize Founder and Harvard Professor, Dr. David Edwards.
Team BioBlue is composed of 5 team members: Arynn Howell, a homeschool student; Kenny Bradley, a Metro Career Academy student; Amy Armenta and Daisy Mezano-Fuentes, Southeast High School and Metro Technology Center students; and Alex Brown, a Star-Spencer and Metro Technology Center STEM student.
The Oklahoma ArtScience Prize is a program of Creative Oklahoma in collaboration with Metro Tech Career Academy, the University of Central Oklahoma, and Inclusion in Art. The program is sponsored through a grant from the Anschutz Foundation.
Creative Oklahoma is a statewide non-profit organization advancing Oklahoma’s creative economy through innovation-focused initiatives in education, commerce and culture. The mission is to transform the state of Oklahoma through projects and collaborative ventures that help develop an improved life quality for its citizens and a more entrepreneurial and vibrant economy. For more information, please visit www.creativeoklahoma.org