The PASEO 2025 Education Program
PASEO 2025 STEAM DAY
Friday, September 12
The PASEO 2025 STEAM Day event will bring together over 200 students from seven different Taos County schools, ranging in age from 12 to 24 years old. STEAM Day includes 12 workshops and presentations by PASEO 2025 artists and partners located in Taos Plaza.
This year’s STEAM Day will explore all kinds of thresholds—especially where education, art, science, and math overlap—through hands-on experiences with some of the 30 incredible STEAM artists participating in the festival. Students will have the opportunity to rotate through interactive workshops with artists working in augmented reality, projection mapping, kinetic sculpture, biometrics, and more.
Check out all the workshops listed below!
Miguel Gonzalez | The Curious
The Curious is a great way to introduce students to the intersection of art, sound, technology, and architecture. Here are some ways to connect it to the classroom:
STEAM Connection: Discuss how artists use technology and coding (LED programming, sound-responsive sensors) to create interactive art.
Science Connection: Explore how light and color mix to create chromosaturation, and how our eyes and brains perceive shifting hues.
Music & Math Connection: Show how patterns in sound can be translated into patterns of light using rhythm, frequency, and amplitude.
Movement Lab | Dream Within A Dream
What does it mean to dream? To drift into sleep, to imagine a new future, to hold a hope inside you. Dreams happen in both our sleeping and waking lives they’re like bridges between what is and what could be.
Dream Within a Dream turns a building’s portal into just such a bridge. As you step through, you enter a space filled with whispers and voices, dreams spoken by others, both nighttime visions and daytime wishes. These sounds swirl around you through hidden speakers, blending into live music and the movement of costumed dancers.
You don’t just watch, you get to become part of the dream. At a special “dream collection station,” you can record your own dream. It will join the evolving “dream choir,” weaving your voice into the performance. In this way, the installation grows and changes each night, just as our dreams do.
The Harwood Museum of Art | Molly Casey
Workshop Theme: Art as Connection
Objective: Students will understand how museums preserve the past while encouraging creativity in the present.
Activity: Create art alongside museum educator Molly Casey. Students will experiment with the idea of Thresholds, crossing between history and the present, tradition and innovation.
Jessica Shen | You Are Here
you are here is an interactive LED installation that visualizes human presence in real time. As participants enter the space, sensors detect their movements and translate them into radiant waves of light, rippling outward as though emanating from the body itself.
When two visitors approach one another, their colors merge and intermingle, an ephemeral reflection of human interaction, intimacy, and shared experience. The work transforms invisible social and emotional connections into visible light patterns, sparking awareness of how individuals affect and influence one another in shared space.
you are here reminds us that our presence matters, that every step ripples outward, and that in relationship with others, something new is created.
Learning Themes: The science of sensors and LED light, Translation of human movement into data, Interpersonal connection as an artistic medium, The blending of engineering, coding, and creative practice
Twirl | Sock Tales
Have you ever wondered where your missing socks go? Do they vanish into the great unknown, or are they secretly waiting for their chance to become something magical and socktastic!?
Twirl’s Sock Tales invites you to step into that mystery by transforming lonely, lost soles into playful puppet friends. Puppeteering is the ultimate threshold-crossing act where lifeless objects spring to life, creators become storytellers, and audiences suspend disbelief to step into fantastical worlds.
Sock Tales is perfect for sparking imagination, collaboration, and storytelling skills in students. Here are some ways to extend the experience in the classroom or at home:
Ask: “Where do you think missing socks go?” :Invite kids to imagine secret lives for socks adventures, jobs, personalities.
2. Storytelling & Performance: Create mini puppet shows in pairs or small groups.
4. Reflection & Sharing: Talk about how everyday objects can hold stories if we use our imagination.
Learning Connections: Language Arts: Narrative building, dialogue writing. Art: Craft, design, puppetry. Social-Emotional: Teamwork, empathy, role-play. STEM tie-in: Problem-solving (engineering puppet mechanisms).
ArtSoul | Personal Thresholds
Personal Thresholds is a psycho-drama workshop that invites teens to explore their own emotional, social, and developmental boundaries—literally and metaphorically. Using techniques from theater and role-play, participants act out scenarios that reflect the theme of “thresholds”, the moments of change, decision, or growth that mark transitions in life.
Through guided exercises, teens: Step into imagined scenarios to explore challenges and choices. Engage with peer perspectives to build empathy and understanding. Reflect on their own feelings, reactions, and personal growth. Use movement, voice, and improvisation to give form to abstract concepts
The workshop is designed to be interactive, supportive, and non-judgmental, encouraging participants to experiment safely, express themselves fully, and see the power of art as a tool for reflection and communication.
Imagine! Children’s Museum
Imagine! Children’s Museum brings interactive, hands-on STEAM experiences to life for festival-goers. The installations encourage students to:
Explore scientific concepts in a tactile and visual way, Experiment with cause-and-effect, motion, and design, Solve challenges using creativity and collaboration, Connect their observations to real-world applications.
Learning Themes: Experimentation and observation, Design thinking and problem-solving, Hands-on exploration of physics, biology, and engineering concepts, Collaboration and communication skills
True Kids 1 | Taos, New Mexico
“Technology Thresholds” | Interactive Performance & Installation
True Kids 1 explores the thresholds created by technology, the points where our digital lives intersect with the real world. The installation and performance challenge participants to consider questions like:
How does technology change the way we interact with each other? What new opportunities or risks arise when we cross from offline to online spaces? How can we use technology responsibly and creatively?
Learning Themes: Understanding the social and ethical implications of technology, Exploring cause-and-effect through interactive digital tools, Collaborative problem-solving and creative thinking, Reflection on human behavior in digital vs. real-world contexts
