Play a harp that produces words rather than music. Make shoes out of recyclables. Better yet, examine a wall that plays dub music. These are among the 50 new experiences you can get your hands on at the Weston Family Innovation Centre, the dramatic new addition to the Ontario Science Centre.
“In the newly completed Weston Family Innovation Centre an artist’s studio meets the factory floor,” said Lesley Lewis, CEO of the Ontario Science Centre, at its preview event on July 26. Indeed this is a place where the boundaries between music, fashion, art, technology, and science start to fuse.
Open to public on July 27, the Weston Family Innovation Centre is the cornerstone of the $47-million Agents of Change initiative. In 1999, recognizing the rapid rate of technological change and increasingly complex scientific issues, the Ontario Science Centre began the Agents of Change transformation project in order to create experiences that would foster skills and attitudes to drive innovation, inspire, and empower the next generation of innovators.
“The Ontario Science Centre is the perfect place to engage and ignite the passions of future innovators,” said Caroline Di Cocco, the Ontario Minister of Culture at the preview event for this 25,000-square foot space. It is the first cultural attraction in Toronto designed specifically with teens and young adults in mind.
The center aims to encourage young adults to find practical solutions to current world problems, merge art with science, and develop the skills and confidence to express ideas and think differently. Other areas that have also been constructed as part of this gigantic project include KidSpark and TELUSCAPE, an outdoor exploration plaza that will be open in September 2006.
“Innovation powers our world. But it takes inspiration, experience, and creativity to stimulate true innovation,” said Galen Weston, President of the W. Garfield Weston Foundation, whose donations largely funded the Agents of Change initiative. “We are very pleased…to be part of the Ontario Science Centre’s new approach to engaging and inspiring the next generation of innovators.”
