WORCESTER, Mass. - Worcester Polytechnic Institute is trying to get more young students involved in stem education, and their mission continued Saturday with the TouchTomorrow event.

STEM is a teaching approach combining science, technology, engineering, the arts and math. Saturday's festival featured hands-on experiments and demonstrations, and a number of exhibits touching on topics like space, robotics, and chemistry among many others. While WPI organized the event, numerous community businesses, schools, and organizations took part as well. The event has been canceled the last two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and WPI was excited to have it back.

"Normally it's on campus," said WPI's director of public relations Colleen Bamford Wamback. "But this year, now that we're able to bring it back, we thought Polar Park is the perfect venue to introduce the families, kids of all ages to hands-on science, technology, engineering, math [and] environmental studies. This turn out is even better than we expected."

WPI says that throughout the day, they estimate more than 6,000 people traveled to Polar Park to participate in this year's TouchTomorrow.