Follow along as we share stories from our female staff, junior collaborators, and alumni about why they love being girls who make things with their own two hands.
Presented with a small stack of lumber, a few hours to build, and the idea of playing pool with bowling balls, today's kids’ creativity and ingenuity took us from a pile of 18 sticks of 2x4 to a fully functioning (and delightfully fun!) game of billiards that featured a pool cue, a bridge, four "pockets" and bumpers.
What a day! From the prompt “Mega-Paintbrush” to the final product -- a print-making machine lovingly dubbed the “Art-ering Ram” -- this project epitomized what we do here at Project Ember. Our prompts serve a specific purpose; push kids out of their comfort zone in terms of scale or complexity...
Welcome to Wednesday, aka Hump Day; the mid-point of, and often the toughest day in, most people's working week. Here at Project Ember, we often encounter our own particular phenomenon on a Wednesday – frustration.
Monday is a day full of firsts - meeting new people, acquiring new skills, discovering the week's project, devising initial ideas - it is full of hope and excitement, expectation and enthusiasm.
Tuesday is a day of action. It is a chance to work from yesterday's plans and use the tools, equipment and materials to create prototypes. It is productive and engaging.
And then comes Wednesday...
Wednesday is the day that ideas come together and ideas fall apart. It is the day when we realise that the first idea is rarely the best idea. It is the day for setbacks and failures and learning from mistakes. It is a day of iterations, adjustments, modifications, innovations. It doesn't always feel like progress. In fact, it can be incredibly frustrating. But it is one of the most important days of the project; for all those reasons.
Alyssa and Sophie encounter the importance of 'undoing'
Decision time for the Tesla Team
Varun and Michael discuss the next stage of the spinning rollers
The power of communication
Back to the drawing board
Logan and Lucas rethink their plans
Back to business...
Anna, Ella, Asha and Zach talk 'Floptopus'
Focus and determination from Devran and Cory
Lucas A takes on his own challenge with a length tangled parachord
It is a strange and interesting paradox - that frustration can be fun. But we can vouch for it; we see it and celebrate it every single day. To us, fun looks a lot like focus, challenge, teamwork and collaboration; resilience, perseverance, curiosity and grit. We see it in innovative new ideas and solutions, in greater knowledge and deeper understanding of a design problem, in a renewed determination to get it right and make it better and, ultimately, in a greater sense of achievement and satisfaction. But don't just take our word for it, see for yourselves...
As we continue to celebrate failures and frustrations and use them as an excellent opportunity for growth, we look forward to sharing the journey with you.
Oh, we almost forgot to mention the other thing we celebrate on Wednesdays...
WOLF SHIRT WEDNESDAY! We hope our campers will help us to continue this time-honoured tradition - keep your eyes peeled in future blog posts.
