2009 - The Year in Fractals

We want to share some of the exciting developments of the last year for fractals in education and in our community in general. We’ve grown so much and passed so many milestones, it’s good to pause and reflect on them. It’s great what we’ve accomplished - but we need your help to do more!

Please make a tax-deductible DONATION to support science, math and art education.

Any donations received before midnight MST 12/31 will be tax-deductible for 2009.

THANKS!

And now, a look back at 2009:

• Over the course of the year, we taught ~6000 children and 2500 adults about the beauty of math and science, through fractals. All told, since 2003, we’ve taught over 27,000 kids and 17,000 adults. That’s a lot of excited, inspired, motivated people!
• We sold out all 36 First Friday Fractal planetarium shows (Now 131 total!) There were many reports of people buying ’scalped’ tickets at up to $20. Not that we encourage this, but it’s a testament to the show’s success and the public’s love of fractals.
• We installed the first downtown building wrap - a vision over 5 years in the making, thanks to a grant from Albuquerque’s Urban Enhancement Trust Fund. We also featured the winning student fractals from the Albuquerque Fractal Challenge on 20 billboards, thanks to the fantastic support from Clear Channel Outdoor. And look for more fractal billboards, and building wraps, soon!
• We received a $6540 Albuquerque Community Foundation grant - their third year of generously supporting our outreach efforts to teach fractals in local schools.
• We received a $5000 grant from Xilinx, for the second year in a row, to comprehensively teach the students, teachers and parents at Apache Elementary about fractals. We’re proud to be connected to this school, and this company.
• We received a $25,000 Summer Institute grant from the Public Education Department, which will help us teach 40 Albuquerque teachers science and math lessons, skills and projects, they can bring to their classes, using fractals. We can’t teach all the kids fractals ourselves, but by teaching the teachers, we have a chance to make a giant impact.
• We received $1000 grant from Sandia Labs /  Lockheed Martin - a great first partnership with a major local supporter of science and math education.
• We licensed fulldome fractal content to two planetariums (in Illinois and Pennsylvania), the first time we’ve played our super-successful fulldome fractals anywhere outside NM. We’ve established a content distributor partnership with Spitz Planetariums to help grow this business and spread fractals around the world.
• We had a two week outdoor fractal art installation at the NM State Fair, seen by over 500,000 visitors, and a booth where 24 wonderful volunteers taught fractals to thousands of children.
• We were featured on KOAT Channel 7 (thanks to Intel), in Albuquerque the Magazine, Around 505, New Mexico Journeys, and the Rio Grande Sun.
• We launched a facebook fanpage in our first foray into social networking, and have gained over 1100 fans since April. It’s a great forum for people to share their ideas about - and their love of - fractals.

This has indeed been a whirlwind year of growth and fractal activity. Thanks for your support in helping us reach ever more people with the beauty of math and science. Look for more about our future vision coming up.

And for now…