The limbART Project
The limbART Project was created in the Spring of 2015 at the behest of Suzuki Teacher Cynthia Faaist, Director of the Talent Education Center in Irvine and the Santa Ana Suzuki Strings, a music education program for disadvantaged youth hosted by the Orange County Children's Therapeutic Arts Center. A student in her program longed to play the violin, but how could a student without an arm do it?
I assembled a group of enthusiastic K-12 and college students to begin exploring the possibility of creating low-cost artificial limbs using a combination of 3D Printing and off-the-shelf components. The team delivered the first prototypes during the Summer of 2015 at the Capistrano String Institute, a summer music festival presented by St. Margaret's Episcopal School in partnership with Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California, enabling this student to fully participate in private lessons, group classes, and a concert performance.
I assembled a group of enthusiastic K-12 and college students to begin exploring the possibility of creating low-cost artificial limbs using a combination of 3D Printing and off-the-shelf components. The team delivered the first prototypes during the Summer of 2015 at the Capistrano String Institute, a summer music festival presented by St. Margaret's Episcopal School in partnership with Community Youth Orchestra of Southern California, enabling this student to fully participate in private lessons, group classes, and a concert performance.
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Now, as I move forward to establishing partnerships with organizations that can support further research and development, I aim to create not only physical solutions for students with disabilities, but also empower them through technology education to take control of their own prosthetic development. In turn, I also hope to offer a wide range of volunteer opportunities in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) for K-12 and college students, while fostering values like creativity, compassion, and empathy. Ultimately, limbART is about uniting the talents that our students have in art and technology to make a difference in music education accessibility in our global community, while encouraging them to progress beyond the fundamentals they learn to create new knowledge in fields beyond these.
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