Editor: LI Ruixuan
CloudLAB is an innovative educational institution founded by a team of artists in Chongqing to provide children with interdisciplinary courses. The organization adopts the project-based learning (PBL) method and cooperates with curators, architects, designers, scientific researchers, etc. to inspire children to learn through interests.
2021 O’Kids International Children’s Art Festival
O'Kids International Children’s Art Festival is a public art project launched by Yuan Museum in 2018. Dedicated to cultivating kids’ abilities in expression, creation, collaboration, and action, the project stimulates their perceptions and enhances their capacities in learning art through curating exhibitions, performances, lectures, and public education activities, etc.
The Poster of the 2021 O’Kids International Children’s Art Festival
The fourth O'Kids International Children’s Art Festival, titled “Child-friendly City II: Art Osmosis” was curated by Ni Kun and had its grand opening in July 2021 in Yuan Museum. The exhibition presented works by 9 artists/collectives, 4 institutions, and 5 co-collaborated works by children and those artists.
The diagrams were created by the students during class.
COVID Battle Institute
Due to COVID-19, the weekly classes in CloudLAB were moved to the Cloud in Spring 2020. Kids had to stay home and take the classes with telecommunication tools. CloudLAB took it as an opportunity for kids to learn to remotely collaborate with their teams and launched the special project “COVID Battle Institute.”
Students’ homework for “COVID Battle Institute.”
The students divided themselves into four groups and worked on different topics: the History of the Virus, the Structure of the Virus, the Spread of the Virus, and the Virus and the Human Body’s Immune System. It is surprising that when children take the initiative in learning, their outcomes completely exceed adults’ expectations.
Chongfeng Island Children’s Artists-in-Residency
In the summer of 2020, Yuan Museum and CloudLAB together launched the " Chongfeng Island Children’s Artists-in-Residency," taking James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis as the core theory and inviting children to explore the imaginative and future world in Chongfeng Island. The children became temporary residents on the island and started an immersive journey.
The final presentation for Chongfeng Island (Lanbai) Children’s Artists-in-Residency
These special residents designed “Chongfeng Island Life Forms” after research, and then co-created interactive art installations according to imaginations around their new creatures.