With the increasing shift from STEM to STEAM education, arts-based approaches to science teaching and learning are considered promising for aligning school science curricula with the development of twenty-first century skills, including creativity. Yet the impact of STEAM practices on student creativity and specifically on how the latter is associated with science learning outcomes have thus far received scarce empirical support. This paper contributes to this line of research by reporting on a two-wave quantitative study that examines the effect of a long-term STEAM intervention on two cognitive processes associated with creativity (act, flow) and their interrelationships with intrinsic and extrinsic components of science motivation. Using pre- and post-survey data from 175 high-school students in Italy, results show an overall positive effect of the intervention both on the act subscale of creativity and science career motivation, whereas a negative effect is found on self-efficacy. Gender differences in the above effects are also observed. Further, results provide support for the mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between creativity and science career motivation. Implications for the design of STEAM learning environments are discussed.

Creativity and vision capability are common to many disciplines and are involved in artistic and scientific thinking and activities. Scientists and artists are often asked to see and think beyond the perceivable reality, to imagine aspects of things and events, which can be better seen from an unusual perspective. "Art & Science across Italy" [1] is a European science communication project lead by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in collaboration with CERN. The main idea is to put in practice the basic concept of the STEAM field in which neither STEM nor arts are privileged over the other, but both are equally in play. Therefore, our aim is to engage high school students with science using artistic languages, regardless of students' specific skills or level of knowledge. Aspiring to create an informal learning environment conducive to nurturing creativity, inquiry and enjoyment in science learning, the project is premised on the view that, since "science is an activity that involves creativity and imagination as much as many other human activities", arts-based activities may constitute a suitable approach towards integrating creativity, imagination, and science in school settings. The project is now running the third edition (2020-2022). Here we will describe the methodology used, how the project is structured, and some results obtained in the first two editions in which more than 7.500 students coming from about 200 Italian high schools participated.

As particle physicists, also science communicators who work on the communication on particle physics are always involved with the traces of something. Images have an increasingly important function in communication through both traditional and new media, and play an even more relevant role in building a good storytelling. Anyway, that's a well-known evidence, particles and forces of nature are not generous in offering images of themselves, and although they determine our universe and even our existence, they are not really familiar objects. That's why building a good storytelling about particles is always a new challenge: that's well-known for those who work in the Communications Offices of Scientific Institutes devoted to research in this field, who have to deal daily with both the constraints of institutional communication and the need to communicate an accessible message in a passionate way in order to reach and involve ever new audiences. Research and experimentation of different ways to communicate have led to the birth of conference-show projects, in which performing arts intertwine with the storytelling of science. But also art exhibitions that, thanks to a proper scenography realized through videos and interactive multimedia installations, seek to create realistic environments. Thus, the interweaving of different communication languages-from the dialogue around science ideas to the use of metaphors, images, cartoons, or artistic multimedia exhibits and performing arts-can lead the public to the discovery of some of the most fascinating ideas of contemporary physics like the discovery of gravitational waves, the search for Dark Matter, but also Albert Einstein's General Relativity or wave-particle duality.

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