At Bitcoin Convention 2026, BrainSprout enters the artwork gallery as a cultural participant. Based by Bruce Barone and his son, BrainSprout focuses on cultivating inventive literacy and narrative intelligence in youthful generations — a mission that intersects in surprising methods with Bitcoin’s emphasis on sovereignty, accountability, and long-term pondering.
In an period when algorithmic feeds form what younger folks see, consider, and worth, BrainSprout’s work poses a query that resonates deeply inside Bitcoin tradition: How do you train somebody to assume for themselves? This dialog explores creativity, symbolic language, youth training, and why the Bitcoin Convention artwork gallery — an area already devoted to the intersection of worth, narrative, and visible tradition — supplies fertile floor for BrainSprout’s imaginative and prescient of mental improvement.
Inventive literacy has turn into one thing of a buzzword in training circles, however BrainSprout appears to be working with a extra particular definition. What’s BrainSprout at its core, and what does it imply to domesticate “inventive confidence” in a era that has extra entry to data than any earlier than it—and arguably much less capability to interpret it?
Bruce: BrainSprout is about cultivating inventive confidence and demanding pondering in younger folks. We deal with serving to college students interact with large concepts—narrative, symbolism, ethics, expertise—by means of artwork and storytelling. It’s much less about prescribing perception techniques and extra about serving to folks develop mental resilience and creativeness.
The Bitcoin Convention artwork gallery has hosted artists exploring how memes and digital tradition accumulate symbolic which means at web velocity, writers and historians situating Bitcoin inside broader cultural and mental traditions, and the whole lot in between. It’s an area the place concepts about worth, time, and which means collide in public. What made this specific venue fascinating for BrainSprout to indicate up?
Bruce: Bitcoin is greater than a monetary protocol—it’s a cultural second. It represents self-custody, accountability, long-term pondering within the face of an instantaneous, fast-food data tradition. These are concepts we care deeply about in training. The artwork gallery particularly felt like an area the place symbolic pondering and worth intersect publicly. You’re not pitching folks on a product. You’re inviting them right into a dialog about what issues.
Within the digital age, icons, symbols, and cultural references accumulate which means virtually immediately — a sort of visible literacy taking place organically on-line, however with out anybody educating the underlying mechanics. Schooling hasn’t caught as much as this faster-paced media consumption. Artists like Nardo, who has exhibited at a number of Bitcoin Convention galleries, make work that engages grownup audiences already fluent in that symbolic language. How does BrainSprout take into consideration decoding imagery as a realized skill, and the way does that method differ for youthful audiences who don’t but have that context?
Bruce: We’re dwelling in an period the place symbols transfer at web velocity. Memes, icons, cultural references—they accumulate which means virtually immediately. However training hasn’t caught up. Most curricula nonetheless deal with visible literacy as non-compulsory, an elective reasonably than a core talent. We attempt to gradual that course of down and train folks decode imagery, perceive the buildings beneath the floor. For younger folks particularly, the problem is completely different than it’s for adults. Adults consuming Nardo’s work can recognize the irony of a hand-painted meme. A twelve-year-old must first perceive why one thing is humorous, or persuasive, or manipulative—earlier than they’ll start to create on these phrases themselves.
Bitcoin tradition typically talks about sovereignty—self-custody of your keys, verification over belief, private accountability to your monetary future. However sovereignty isn’t only a monetary idea. Different training fashions are gaining traction, from Austin’s Alpha College to the broader homeschooling motion, all rooted in the same intuition: the concept people and households ought to have extra management over how data is transmitted. Do you see a parallel between monetary sovereignty and inventive sovereignty?
Bruce: Completely. Inventive literacy is a type of sovereignty. When you possibly can interpret narratives, assemble your individual frameworks, and assume independently, you’re much less weak to manipulation. That applies financially and culturally. There’s a cause library checkout information was once monitored—what folks learn, what they select to be taught, is a type of energy. We’re making an attempt to provide younger folks the instruments to be literate not simply in textual content, however in picture, narrative, and monetary techniques. These literacies reinforce one another.
The questions BrainSprout appears to be pointing to in its content material — which means, objective, reality, dwell nicely — are the identical questions that non secular traditions, philosophy, and literature have grappled with for millennia. How do you navigate that territory, and the way do you consider BrainSprout’s relationship to these traditions with out being confined by any single one?
Bruce: We’re within the common human questions—which means, objective, accountability, reality. These questions have been explored by means of non secular traditions, philosophy, literature, and artwork for 1000’s of years. We draw from that broad heritage, however our focus is on cultivating considerate, grounded people who can navigate complexity—and likewise dream large. We’re not prescribing solutions. We’re making an attempt to construct the sort of one who can sit with exhausting questions and never collapse into the primary simple narrative that comes alongside.
Artwork historian and Bitcoin Journal contributor Steven Reiss has argued that Bitcoin is the cultural consequence of concepts rehearsed for over a century — from Dada’s assault on institutional authority to the cypherpunks’ insistence on constructing techniques past centralized management. There’s a through-line about resisting what you may name company flattening — algorithmic techniques optimizing the whole lot for velocity and engagement on the expense of depth. Younger folks at present are absolutely immersed in these techniques. What position does creativity play in that atmosphere?
Bruce: Creativity is a stabilizing drive. When the whole lot round you is optimized for velocity and engagement, deep pondering turns into uncommon—and precious. We’re making an attempt to provide college students instruments to step again, analyze the techniques they’re embedded in, and construct their very own buildings of which means reasonably than passively consuming another person’s. That’s not anti-technology. It’s about having the mental basis to make use of expertise deliberately reasonably than being utilized by it.
A lot of BrainSprout’s visible content material is produced by Bruce’s son Brucie Jr., who makes use of AI-assisted instruments to construct the imagery that accompanies the venture’s academic mission — a element that quietly underscores the entire premise. The following era isn’t ready to be taught create. They’re already constructing. Discover extra of BrainSprout’s work at brainsproutkids.com and on their YouTube channel.