Playful Engineers is our small, family-run arts-in-education business which creates and facilitates programs promoting play-based, curiosity-driven learning, helping kids learn skills, gain understanding, and build confidence, as they design processes, and make things move! In our hands-on programs, the kids are playful engineers, designing and building artful mechanisms that accomplish tasks, send messages, tell stories, and bring characters to life.
Amherst-based teaching aartist Jay Mankita founded Playful Engineers in 2015, after 25 years working with kids and families as a professional musician and educator. Since then, we've presented over 1200 programs, both in-person and virtual, at schools, libraries, camps – wherever kids and families gather. This year, we delivered 64 sessions through the non-profit organization Connected North, for Inuit, Metis, and First Nations students in Northern Canada, more than 300 sessions through both the STARS residency program and the Local Cultural Councils programs in Massachusetts, and numerous programs in Connecticut and New York.
Boston-based teaching artist Merlin Katz has always loved building, coding, tinkering, playing, and sharing his love of engineering. In 2023 he won a LEGO competition and got a job as a professional LEGO builder at the Lego Discovery Center in Somerville. There, and in many other educational programs for the past three years, Merlin has been able to show thousands of kids what they can accomplish through exploration, patience, and play. This is why Playful Engineers was the perfect place for Merlin to go next. As a traveling teaching artist, Merlin brings his passion for fun and building to the next generation of tinkerers at Playful Engineers.
Our in-person traveling makerspace programs will come to your town if you’re within driving distance of our home base, but we’ll present our popular virtual programs anywhere across the globe.
