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Upcoming Workshops and Events
Sign up to get started on a creative STEAM activity with the PLIX team!
Be inspired by thoughtful STEAM library programs from the PLIX Community in this STEAM Showcase
Latest and Greatest from the PLIX Community
Co-enthuse with our newest intern about hands-on STEAM learning, flying bisons, and making things light up!
The PLIX team is delighted to announce our fourth cohort of Library Ambassadors to spread the joy of creative STEAM learning across the U.S.
We're delighted to announce our second cohort of PLIX Creative STEAM Learning Interns!
MIT Open Learning’s Public Library Innovation Exchange collaborates with libraries and MIT researchers for playful hands-on learning experiences.
Celebrating the past 4 years, our first-ever PLIX impact report showcases a vibrant ecosystem of programs and resources for STEM equity in libraries.
Reflecting on the PLIX Intern journey this year, learning about creative learning education and thriving in public libraries
Be inspired by the photos and reflections of our PLIX Creative Learning Ambassadors’ STEAM library programs designed for their communities
Through a framework embodying creative learning, our Brazilian friends at Instituto Catalisador use their Circles of Invention to integrate reading, making, and narratives to bring OctoStudio to low-income families in São Paulo.
PLIX Interns Daphne and Kailey reflect on facilitating Paper Circuits for the first time!
Our 2025 PLIX Creative Learning Interns are a select group of MIT undergraduates interested in teaching and learning in creative ways.
In a Walk with Ease program for older adults, PLIX ambassador Janea Coker, Barry Lawrence Regional Library, used PLIX Data Gems to introduce data literacy skills, and fostered community connections along the way.
Different ways the PLIX team and PLIX Library Ambassadors have facilitated OctoStudio programs in public libraries, through the lens of creative learning.
The PLIX team is delighted to announce our 2024-2025 cohort of PLIX Library Ambassadors.
Reflections, challenges, and facilitation tips from sharing Data Gems at a middle school summer program
Engage your diverse library audiences through STEAM learning with PLIX and MIT in this year’s PLIX Ambassador Program
The design of a new PLIX activity focused on data entry-ways!
PLIX Mentor Renaté adapts creative learning for a diverse audience
Mentor Interview: Melissa Sprenne and her love of making things glow with PLIX Paper Circuits
Meet the amazing library professionals joining us as PLIX Ambassadors this year!
Grow your confidence in STEAM activities with PLIX!
These are some of our favorite moments from this summer’s PLIX Play Cafe
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PLIX team shares their favorite library memories.
Celebrate Earth Day 2023 with these sustainable remix strategies!
Explore a conversation on sustainability in libraries
Our hybrid workshop approach for community-building workshops
Come catch up on the latest Facilitating Creative Learning workshop!
Shine a light on Women’s History Month with PLIX!
Weaving Native Symmetries at the ATALM Conference
How can we encourage healthy eating through sound?
In Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the small library explores the PLIX inflatables activity as a way to engage youth with the value of native flora and fauna of the Ozarks.
A small, rural library in Lake Andes, SD makes plans to collaboratively design and create a quilt inspired by the PLIX Beautiful Symmetry activity.
PLIX seeks library colleagues to join an effort to better understand the needs of rural and/or tribal public libraries and co-design a toolkit of learning resources explicitly tailored to them.
Our first cohort of Ambassadors is here! They collaborate with PLIX to build a network of library professionals who advocate for creative learning in communities and libraries by taking on leadership roles in local communities as well as online.
We are thrilled to announce our newest program: PLIX Creative Learning Ambassadors.
PLIX seeks library colleagues to join an effort to better understand the needs of rural and/or tribal public libraries and co-design a toolkit of learning resources explicitly tailored to them.
Read about our Inflatables beta-testing process from Spring 2021.
For the fourth and final edition of our meet the co-designers series, we’re featuring Jean Slavkovsky from Homer Public Library!
Check out a series of four audio-only chats about creative learning.
For the third edition of our meet the co-designers series, we’re featuring Claudia Haines from Homer Public Library!
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For our second edition of our meet the co-designers series, we’re featuring Dave Fink from Michigan City Library!
We're kicking off a new series about some of the librarians who've participated in the co-design process with us. For our first edition, we’re featuring Allie Affinito from The New York Public Library!
Reflections from our professional development workshop for creative STEAM learning in public libraries
This grant will enable the PLIX team to deliver in-person and online workshops to build capacity for 300 library professionals to implement creative STEAM learning programs in their libraries.
Open questions, tips & suggestions from the PLIX Team
Reflections from our first-ever PLIX Workshop in Akron, Ohio.
Members of the PLIX team discuss creative learning in libraries at the Festival of Learning 2019 in Heidelberg, Germany.
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Our PLIX Kits are designed to make it easy for librarians to offer creative learning programs to their patrons.
What do tiny satellites, computers that grow plants, and an animated orange cat have in common?
Recently the Media Lab has expanded beyond academic and corporate collaborations to join forces with public libraries for the Public Library Innovation Exchange (PLIX).
Media Lab researchers are teaming up with public librarians to design new projects and programs for libraries.
Staff met with Carla Hayden to discuss the Public Library Innovation Exchange.
Public libraries and the MIT Media Lab are kindred spirits. Together, we hope to design new programs for libraries around the country.
Past Workshops and Events
Have you ever listened to a word so much it becomes a musical sequence of sounds?
After we implement an opportunity, how can we be thoughtful about next steps?
Deepen your understanding of Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) in this hands-on workshop with special guest Dr. Jaleesa Trapp!
Craft and doodle to grow symmetries and play with numbers!
Reimagine familiar games to design new games, and learn the FUN-damentals of artificial intelligence along the way!
Join PLIX and special guest ✨Eric Schilling 🛹 of the OctoStudio team, to design games that blend real world objects and stories from our cultures.
Apply for the PLIX Creative Learning Workshop Series (Oct 16 – Nov 13th)! Deadline Sept 25th.
Create different ways to playfully track scores with friends!
Level up STEAM learning by combining for complexity in this Beautiful Symmetry exploration with tessellation stamps!
Level up summer STEAM learning with a variety of example types!
Sign up for the PLIX Community Showcase, to be inspired by the incredible library professionals and interns who ran a PLIX activity this year!
Try a paper-based animation tool to model physics phenomena… just in time for National Library Week's "Drawn to the Library" theme
Explore our understandings of trust in collective human knowledge by in this playtest of telling creative truths and lies
Reimagine and revisit maps of places you’ve loved, in poetic language!
Sneak between the pages of a story and give characters a sidequest!
Play with pneumatics, the power of air, to make visible your mind-body connection!
Take ownership of your own data and collect them in your pocket!
Join us this October to try out Paper Circuits with chenille stems and create a haunted neighborhood!