this is then us make man and welcome to positively roma and today we're going to be exploring something very new and very they are in our state it's called the steam fest and with me is going to be an art in the day when festival that will be taking place in this sense junction september twenty ninth then so temperature thirtieth and we're going to go into it and it sounds like a very exciting event and  in vermont for about twenty years my background is an art making and also positive working as a chanel development and so i sort of blend those two worlds in the work that i do at essex hub and also with the work that we're doing together  bowlers who will but still so i'm julie miller johnson and i have lived in essex trunk sion for thirteen years and i came here from atlanta georgia where i worked in marketing and media management and most recently i was the market manager for the farmers market five point is farmer's market in essex junction and i currently sit on the economic development commission for the town of essex so my my role in this market sort of comes this festival comes from those two places it's group will tell us about this unusual name steam fest they understand it means science technology engineering arts and math tell us what it means that's what it means so steam fast oftentimes you'll hear the the acronym stem to refer to the science technology engineering and math fields and when you add the arts into it it becomes steam so there's a conversation around the stem fields and their relationship to our which makes it steam and so we decided that we would explore this in a much more broad way and help people  have an experience through understanding arts and the statics and as they're related to the stem fields and to pull all this together in a way that might actually help disrupt people's understanding of what exactly is that until so steam fests is celebrating sort of the makers and and creators and in patients so by having by having people who are both artists and people who are sort of inventors we can show the cycle of innovation through this festival so it's sort of a festival of process and product and  creators and makers so having both makers who sometimes come through the through the fields of stem and artists sort of exploring some of  these and how many people involved in this there is there is five corps volunteers who have been driving the organization and there are i don't know twenty artist vendors who will be at the artists market on saturday there are at this point some unknown number of makers who will be participating in the maker faire and i think we have fifteen plus artists and five a woman who will be exhibiting a film in this event around arts and it's its interaction with engineering and machine art and technology and all of these things and it was just a really generative conversation and after that a conversation i came to julie and i said hey i have this idea for maybe a festival that we should be doing around the stem fields and art making and artists and artisans and i can see what this going is going to look like and i know that you have the capacity to make that happen and as the market manager for the farmer's market and sort of the evolution of that it was sort of a perfect timing and a perfect sort of intersection of vision and action that we were able to sort of  was or the deadline to something like that we put a call to artists out goodness at the beginning of the summer probably in may with a deadline for late august early september so we distributed through that network and your own artist network we put a call out to the vendors for the for the market on saturday makers it's all we put everything out through whatever means possible social media ads in the newspaper yeah and you know it was really interesting as we also had a lot of cooperation with other other people who are involved in other festivals so our top was really helpful in helping us kind of look at what are the logistics of doing something like this and also sent our calls out to the people that they are calling and we sent it out to the vermont arts council and so we really tried to tap in to the other organizations that have some experience with pulling something like this off so oh well we have people who do very traditional work drawing and painting we have people who are three dimensional sculptures we have filmmakers and photographers  people working in the sort of new fields of three d printing and technology glass making glass making or glass fusing glass so it's really covers a lot of a lot of areas you know it's either people who are exploring the stem fields through traditional means or using what would be traditionally thought of materials in  industry in an artful way or just really using technology to create things or to do things creatively that haven't quite been done in the same way before so it's really you know a it's really as blended as the steam fest name is so it's not use the subject matter or science and technology it's mechanics the use of that in making or it is in some ways it's definitely a way of helping people understand that artists oftentimes are really deeply thinking and creating meaning out of what they know within science or technology or math or you know a lot of art making is actually engineering i sometimes refer to myself as an artist who should have been an engineer my background was in metal sniffing and also sound and video installation so it's really seeing from a different perspective a through a different lens of what actually is are making about and what actually is looking at science about from the lens of scientists or engineers so there's really a lot of crossover and creativity which we traditionally i think in some real ways seem to compartmentalise out and so what we really want to do is pull this back in together so that people can see in a different way what they their workshops they're going to do a demonstration or set up an exhibit which is which is an interactive sort of thing and i think that's the best way to subscribe they call it magical music and that's something that they will have coded to enable children or anybody who visits it to create music by touching different objects in this exhibit will also have a light up wearable station for people to create their own sort of wearable where  through the village as they go to the festival wearing these sort of l e d light things we have the college of science and engineering will have set up their fab labs or a little mini example so that they can demonstrate how art can be created through science specifically and technology we're actually going to have five steam pods i think i should let you talk about the dangerous so the steam pods are five inflatables there are ten by ten rooms that inflate that will have some sort of interactive in each one each one represents one letter of steam so we have an amazing art teacher who are a math teacher i should say who has who teaches a curriculum through math at the essex elementary school i think it's us excel mentary and she is creating a whole set of tesselation xfer people to be able to use inside the pod to to create a tesselated interior of this pod which is geometric shapes that fit together with with no gaps and you sort of rotate them around very mc escher if you know who mc escher is and then we'll have an engineering pod which is sort of an interior structure which will be built by people who enter the pod we have a science pod which we believe is going to end up being related to the science of emotions and chemistry and the art pod will be art in conversation so really asking a lot of questions around what does a more creative essex look like because essex is our is our home and the technology  have and idea around what that's going to look like in terms of having groups of people activate technology together to create to produce a result so the steve jobs are really a way to experience yes steam fields in a way that you wouldn't normally think of so it's an experience we're going to be there's an empty storefront on park street in the four pearl street building and know it's pretty cool i understand that it's going to be a beautiful website really well done and it carries people could see it carries us through all the different things that the people going to be performing and and the various  starts at four o'clock on friday afternoon and since then between september twenty ninth so that's friday afternoon the exhibits the all of the art will be up at that time so people can start to walk around the village and see the different art exhibits at five o'clock that will be when our first band plays that's going to be billy august he's a singer songwriter sort of folk musician he'll be playing in front of the nest bakery and cafe and so he's going to start the music off and we're hoping people will go from there after that music ends to walk towards you know stop and look at some art along the way to the next band which is set up at six o'clock and that will be split tula and he'll be playing outside or sort of in the garage space of mccloy's moving in storage which is a really and conventional place for a band his kind of music is like garage funk so i think it's kind of a fun location for him and he and his band so we're literally going to roll up to you know enter the code like you're into going into your mini storage unit roll up the garage doors and they'll be twinkle lights set up inside there and so he can and then he'll play for forty five minutes and then at seven o'clock the band there's another bexley six thirty yes six thirty we have matt  lot who is a musician filmmaker and he is going to be presenting his music film in sort of cross over our performance music at the darkroom gallery in in  he's kind of r and b they'll both be playing in the the center bay of the essex junction fire station which again is a really fun location and and i'm really really very thankful and grateful for the six functions fire department to be so like to say that all of these musicians are there all create performing their own music they're all like they written their own music and it's all been organized by a woman named hannah housman who is herself a singer in warm water and this is sort of been her creation of music in and of itself so that in the middle of all of that is twenty one different stops of art art and food that people can go to anywhere from earth logic to  library and wearables seven and nine mean streets and i think those are all the oh and the pin the pinball the pin box three thousand r k will be set up at triple hoop arcade triple hoop costume shop on railroad avenue so there's literally there's that's all just friday and i think that we should before we stop there we have to we have to say that steam fest continues into saturday and it's totally in a totally different way you know in the common theme is really like making  creating or process and product so saturday is a different execution of that but saturdays exclusively on railroad avenue also in the village and that will be made up of twenty artists and artisans who will be selling their work in sort of a an art market format will have a performance stage in the middle of the street and then on the other end the railroad avenue will be our very first essex money maker faire and the essex money maker faire is  is sort of a local outcropping of big champlain money maker faire which happens at shelburne farms but the champlain mini maker faire people have been growing their franchise across the state and when they heard what we were doing with steam fest they were really excited and saw the alignment of what this program was about and the said that they wanted to they would be interested in being a part of it and so that's really a big part of why they're with us and so that's going to include  locals as well as sort of people who are sort of do the maker faire circuit but will also have a young student from essex high school who's coming in to show his sort of lego robot hand that he's created and he's bringing in some of his other friends from the essex robotics club and then we also have a really enthusiastic group from the essex high school maker space operates out of the high school library there and they're going to be showing some of the things that they do in that maker space so the essex money maker faire is really what i call sort of like show and tell meets science fair and it's really for people who are into whatever it is that they have created or they're trying to create or tinkering it's all about process you know that the street becomes like really like this manifestation like the money maker faire is about process and the artisans market is about product and in between the performance stage we'll have we'll have two bands from ten to twelve will be  from twelve to two will be a community coffeehouse where we're inviting performers from student performers from all around the region to come and play a song or two or sing perform dance whatever between in that window and then from two to four will be a big band called shake and shake is made up of some students who recently graduated from high school they're all playing at farmer's markets and charities and weddings all around the state so they p there is i think that's a really important thing i mean that's part of what we're doing with the art of destruction is to bring this kind of energy to a six that maybe hasn't been there in the past yeah yeah i mean part of the art of destruction is really to the steam fast is the essex have has opened a secondary space so essex how does a co working space for a sort of more traditional businesses innovation businesses it's on pearl street right and we've opened a second location which is the main street studio which is right on main street which is now a co creative space for our artists artisans makers we have four studio spaces there and we keep getting this question are there studio spaces in essex are there studio sixes in essex and i am a glutton for finding underutilized spaces and turning them into spaces that people can really engage in whatever it is that they want to do there so we're really hoping that we can begin to showcase essex as a creative economy space you know and we're also remarkably at the end of  the train line from new york city so we frequently have artists that are coming up from new york who are stopping right in essex and then going on to the johnson studio center to do reza to see it's up there so we're starting to sort of think about how can essex really be positioned as a creative community and out of that and the creative come economy everything from you know web production and development design to fine arts and fin craft and innovation and making so and we have all of the learning and resource and opportunities there with the tech center and with the the t c is not very far away and so a lot of local manufacturers who are really interested in prototyping in that kind of thing so we can kind of bring all this stuff together in a way that makes it bigger than just this two day event which we hope is sort of a generative spark for all of this told us who's all because they're so i'll tell you that the first person that the first group we went to was the village the village of essex junction and we you know we told them what we wanted to do and very bravely asked them for their support and  creating new things we also have a new organization in essex that is part of an educational institution i think that comes out of shelburne which their new school that they're opening in essex is called steam works and there they're a sponsor we also have which is the vermont arts teacher's association when they found out we were doing the same fast they decided to have their annual conference in conjunction with steam fast so that's good we have that's actually made up of a number of artists and the person who made our poster for this event is the creative director at earth logic and he actually has done a lot of the posters for the first night film interesting you know but so yes so essex hub is a co working space our primary demographic is women though we call ourselves of community of women and friends so we really are inclusive and the people that we invite into our space we provide a very economical space for people to have a home base for their business while they grow or while they begin so that they can become sustaining enough that they can move out into their own working spaces are not particularly new to the working world but they have sort of become a presence in vermont asked how does currently the only co working space and ass excess and so we really are lucky and the fact that we're generating a lot of interest and a lot of people come to our space and love our space and that we've been able to really expand out now into the secondary work space with the main street studio so that's kind of what the essex hub about with tell us now all this in seems like a huge through other opportunities or a need for volunteers yes we will not turn a volunteer away we can definitely use more help we have a we have a link on our website to invite people to sign up to volunteer we're going to need lots of help setting up and a lot of help breaking down both friday and saturday as well as see maybe some attendance to monitor our art make sure it's safe yeah so anybody who wants to volunteer and sort of be part of it and be able to sort of walk around the town and talk to people about work you know move from location to location as volunteers if they'd like to get the set up itself sounds interesting the way it's going to be getting together  day or so before it's going to be a bit of a bit of a sprint you know luckily we've had a lot of artists drop work off already so we're in the process of hanging work and putting work in place so that were we're ready to go you know and i would like to say that some of our locations where we're hosting are also people who are sponsoring us and so nast it's been a sponsor and they're hosting art and music and bilodeau wells and company has also a sponsor and pork and pickles as a sponsor  socialising around the restaurants are participating us yes there's many restaurants are going to have steam fest national for the night so rather than bring in outside food trucks for the event for friday we want people to stop into all of our existing local restaurants and grab a bite grab a drink and walk on to the next place great sounds or go a wonderful combination of things community and our and economic development and promotion of very wonderful place nd julie miller johnson for being with us on positively remonde talking about steam fest thank you for watching