What’s Happening, August 2015

Welcome back to our ongoing series highlighting “What’s Happening” at our Maker VISTA sites. Each monthly post will quickly introduce what our subsites have been up to during the past month (or two!), and include a link for more information.

Maker VISTA is dedicated to eradicating poverty and supports Maker Ed’s mission to create more opportunities for all young people to develop confidence, creativity, and interest in science, technology, engineering, math, art, and learning as a whole through making. Maker VISTA members develop the capacity ofpartner subsites to enact this mission by building infrastructure, expanding partnerships, securing resources, organizing maker education training, and linking communities to the maker movement.

To learn more about the Maker VISTA Project, click here.

To learn more about our Maker VISTA Members, click here.

Lighthouse Community Charter SchoolLighthouse Community Charter School has been using Agency by Design’s thinking routines. Educators easily integrate these routines into any subject — even those not typically associated with making, like the Humanities.  Check out this blog post that new Maker VISTA Member Cissy wrote for on Lighthouse Creativity Lab’s blog.

RavenswoodOf all the work that Victor and Montana have been doing at Ravenswood City School District this past month, the Makerspace at this elementary and middle school shared-campus has seen the most dramatic transformation. In a month, they transformed a totally empty room to fully furnished, complete with equipment and decorations just in time for the beginning of the school year. Victor and Montana have been working closely with middle school Design Technology teacher David Hicks, to creating a colorful and stimulating environment for his students.

Art 120 has a brand new websiteArt120Logo – courtesy of our Maker VISTA Member Philip! The new website is more user-friendly and easy to use and emphasizes the important parts of the site such as the calendar and the blog. On top of the website updates, Art 120 collaborated with 8 volunteers from Unum (a local Chattanooga, TN insurance company) and Green’s Eco Build and Design for United Way Day of Caring and paint the walls of the Southside Maker Arts Center (SMAC). Not two days after they finished painting the walls, the SMAC was transformed into an amazing Pop Up Gallery. Any artists’ who sold work donated 40% of their profits towards Art 120.

Overall, the Maker VISTA Project is in an exciting transition. We have Maker VISTA Members at 7 new school sites all across the country, and can’t wait to hear about the impressive impact that each of them will be making in service year ahead.


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