Creativity, Innovation, and Design

I got nothing clever. We are still in the process of trying to get our contact to respond but that being said we are prototyping a newsletter and a website.

As the alliteration suggests we finally (kind of) figured out our problem for this semester with make717. We are going to work on their marketing strategy and hopefully work to get out a newsletter, a workshop collection, and new website and a sustainable method to maintain their social media and marketing management.

Applied art isn't easy. In creating the "boxes" which we will distribute across Lancaster to help Libby Modern achieve her vision for It's Modern Art we have had to confront a number of challenges. There are obvious challenges we must confront such as meeting our partner's lofty goals for the aesthetic of the boxes, enabling the boxes to change, and making the boxes intriguing. However, there are other less obvious challenges which we've discovered like making interacting with the box an intuitive experience, designing them so that they may resist bumps and scrapes in the wild, and making 6 unique objects. Never the less, we will rise to these challenges and our final boxes will be all the better for it. Sincerely your's, I'MArt

For these two weeks, we started to compile data and research for our presentation last Friday. Most notably, the first week was when we spoke to Cal and Nick (Chestnut Housing board members). From their feedback, we realized that for Chestnut housing to undertake another social mission (having a community center) along with their affordable housing mission was not feasible. From speaking with Cal, we realized that there were different viewpoints throughout the board and that having the space become a community center was just a vision to some parts of the board, while others wanted to be able to use the bar as a space to fund their main mission which is affordable housing. Cal gave us amazing resources such as the layout for the bar as well as what the bar can realistically become. From speaking to Nick, we were able to get a well rounded perspective on the bar. For a while after the meetings we thought that we would just be tasked with finding a renter for the space, and that's no...

Oct. 26th, 2017 On Wednesday morning, Emily, Ben and I met with professor Ardia. After the meeting, we figured that we should define the problem more specifically. Awareness problem or focus problem? Emily and Ben got feedbacks from professor Gagnon. He said that our presentation was good, but we can make it visually more interesting. Ben created a mascot for the museum (attached below). We are going to come up with more ideas about campaigns. Moreover, we consider talking to science teachers.

In preparation for our midterm, our group was able to pinpoint our progress, our mission, and the hurdles in between. Being able to present in front of the class gave us an opportunity to show our ideas in a concise and clear way. Our first idea was the Magnetic Track: Our Second Idea: Our Third idea: At the end of our presentation the class gave us great feedback and other things to consider. As we deliberate after our presentation, we realize that time is our biggest constraint. THis week we are getting the materials in order to buy online. Most of our materials are coming from: https://www.apexmagnets.com Once we get those materials, mainly the magnets for the track we can start testing them out.  Emily has planned to meet with us on Wednesday to go over some logistic of the testing phase. Till next time: Jonathan, Betty, and Warren

We surveyed the area around the bar this week. Ryan and Rifutal surveyed residents of the neighborhood, and I spoke to businesses in the area. What we learned: Residents very receptive of a space that benefitted the community Learned that there are a lot of kids in the area - high school and younger Bar is close to McCaskey HS multiple of day cares and study centers near the bar AND corner stores, barber shops, used book store Resident's ideas: safe space for children to have fun in  free day care center so parents can work later grocery store After thinking about the neighborhood and what we heard from the residents we have decided on our BIG IDEA for the bar.......REC/COMMUNITY CENTER This would be a space where children could play safely. Students could use the wifi and do their homework here. Community events, meetings, and activities could be held here for adults and children alike. We would offset the costs of utilities, wifi, and taxes by implementing...

Our community partner is Chestnut Housing Corporation. This is a nonprofit that provides affordable housing to those in need by purchasing homes and then renting units out at below market rate. We met with Sue and Tashya to discuss Chestnut Housing's new bar - what they're planing on doing with it and how they want to proceed. We met at the bar with the board members and were very surprised regarding their lack of information with the area and what they wanted the bar to do. Here are some pictures of the bar: The first picture is from the front of the bar to the back, while the latter is the reverse. It's pretty dark in the first picture, but there are two bathroom as well as a commercial standard kitchen in the back. When spoke to them, the only thing we knew for sure is that they wanted the bar to serve the community in its own way. Some ideas we brainstormed about were: Laundrymat / Computer bar Organic Produce Store Internet Cafe We were told that they h...

On Wednesday, after playing email ping-pong with our contact Emily, we were able to find a time to go down to the Science Factory, check out the facility, and converse about our new mission. The Science Factory impressed us tremendously. As a multifunctional venue, the Science Factory hosted over 40,000 people last year. The growth has been unprecedented and challenging to keep up with. Fortunately they have been granted the extra space to expand, allowing them to add new and ambitious exhibits. They have a hefty fundraising goal of three million dollars and have raised 40% of their final goal. This November they are having a variety of events, such as last Friday's auction and open bar event. Their big event for the month is a day of fundraising on the 19th! A week before, they are having a Star Wars themed weekend, in which they hire jedi's, decorate the exterior, and change normal exhibits to Star Wars theme. This is where we come in! Our mission is to create two o...

As it turns out none of us are competent in reading directions and ended up in downtown Lancaster, which is a solid mile and half away from the makerspace. So when we finally arrived the makerspace we understood why they were associated with Thaddeus Stevens, they basically were across the street from the campus. The makerspace is housed in an brick warehouse looking building, that once was a hospital. The building was indistinguishable other than the small sign for Make717 on the doors. We were greeted by the cofounder, Bruce, a teacher at Thaddeus Stevens who created Make717 in his spare time. During the two hour conversation we talked about the beginning of Make717 and took a tour and just gathered a ton of info about these retired men working in this makerspace.

After meeting with Terry Kraft, the Executive Director of the North Museum, we had three possible problems to pursue: 1. How to boost awareness in the local community? 2. How to measure the effects of the North Museum's programs, such as STEM sisters, that re meant to have long reaching impact? 3. How to better catalogue and store Museum collections that are not on display? As a group we decided our skills are best suited to help with the Museum's awareness problem. We have put together a plan to gather data to better understand the depth of the awareness problem. We started interviewing people this week and hope to conduct more interviews this weekend. We have gathered student data, and now hope to gather family and locals data. We have identified these demographic groups as our main target for whatever awareness campaign we undertake. Our data collected thus far suggests most people have heard of the Museum, but have not visited and do not know what is in the Museum. Th...

The past few weeks, we've had the opportunity to meet with Libby Modern, owner of It's Modern Art  on West Chestnut Street in Lancaster. As part of the course, we are on a mission to work with Libby in trying to achieve her goal: creating a sense of community rooted in the concept of art and its power and function in society. One of Libby's favorite ways to accomplish this involves using shock to disrupt the habits that are ingrained in individual people and society - she wants to create experiences that "wake people up" from everyday life. In terms of activism, she also wants people to be aware of politics and the power art has in expressing emotions and evoking emotional responses. Our task now is to think outside of the box in terms of how we can create an impact to further Libby's vision while considering the constraints of time and budget. At the moment, we are considering potentially helping Libby in terms of redesigning some of the physical aspects of...