Another quarter wrapping up and a little bit of time to reflect on the past 10 weeks before starting again. Although this break is still pretty busy with tasks, meetings, and due dates I plan to take a little bit of time to relax. I’m certainly in a different place with my thesis development than I was 10 weeks ago and a lot has happened that I wasn’t necessarily predicting. It seems my project has actually grown its own legs and taken off running.
My one and only true goal this quarter was to complete my prospectus. While unfortunately this hasn’t completely happened (it’s close I swear), other exciting things are happening. For starters on Thursday March 31st I will be competing in the FastPitch competition. The FastPitch competition is “designed to identify promising local entrepreneurs and gain community resources to help start new ventures and grow existing ones in order to impact the local economy.” We receive three minutes to present our idea with no visuals. Tomorrow afternoon (Thursday March 24th) they are actually holding coaching sessions so everyone gets a trial run and comments to make changes.
Another exciting development is next quarter will be devoted to a demonstration project for the design and construction of an exterior magazine receptacle for the WellFED monthly magazine. This project will provide the chance to test the proposed system and the ability for different organizations and individuals to collaborate towards a common goal. I also plan to develop my DECON’11 presentation from this process.
I presented the idea a week ago Monday to a group of Step Up Savannah CAP (Construction Apprentice Program) students to participate in the construction phase of the project. The attention was higher than I expected and Garrison Marr said 8 students showed interest in volunteering. This is great news and I’m hoping the interest levels continue to rise so funding potentials appear.
The first phase of this demonstration project will be occurring on April 2nd from 2pm-4pm at Creative Coast. I will be facilitating a community design charrette (or brainstorming exercises). The main goal is to build momentum and awareness within the community as well as gather potential ideas related to the project’s success once it is placed in the community. Is this object considered valuable? Can it do more? What are the concerns? After this I hope to do something similar with SCAD design students, but with more focus on actual design and using the community feedback.
I also have a meeting with Chris Miller Friday afternoon about potentially collaborating with AWOL. No details yet, but perhaps after Friday.
But the biggest news of all happened yesterday….
drum roll….
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the MFA Design for Sustainability has been PASSED! So rather than fight the system of MFA Industrial Design I most likely will just switch over to the MFA Design for Sustainability (fingers crossed this isn’t a million hoops to jump through). Even so… yay! This means a lot. While it was nice to say I was getting two degrees, is it really necessary? Probably not.
Charisse Bennett 