Taking a closer look at benthic macroinvertebrates through playful art and science.
At the Macatawa Water Festival, our hands-on art activities were all inspired by bugs this year! We learned a bit about the life cycles of some macroinvertebrates in our watershed and participants could practice drawing several at different life stages, using our tutorials. We went “fishing” for hand-crafted macroinvertebrates (designed by the talented Ava Kathryn), and then identified and graphed our findings in order to hypothesize about the cleanliness of our water system (we even had some real swimming bugs in our water, which was pulled from the Black River!) Participants also designed and printed their own Frankenbugs to take home, using our hand-carved stamps of bug parts. It was a fantastic day to celebrate macroinvertebrates and learn how to be better caretakers of our watershed!
