The Brickyard: Leverage

A while back we were pitching our grant application at a hearing, and the Chair listened to about half of what we had to say, and said “You have nothing!” It was more than a little disconcerting, because, in fact, we had about 300 followers on social media, we had workshops we’d put together with some money coming in, we had a 501(c)3 corporation, we had a Board of Directors, we had an enormous amount of enthusiastic support from all over the North Shore creative community, and, oh yeah… we had about $20,000 worth of equipment in storage, ready to be used.

But yes, point taken. We didn’t have a space.

Since then we’ve done even more. We’ve built a partnership with the Lynn Library, and helped their QuaranTEEN Makerspace program with cross-promotion and equipment, along with bringing a few workshops to them. We’re working with LaVida Scholars to lend them some of our digital imaging gear, to help them broaden their Summer programs. But this past weekend? This weekend was something else.

Saturday was the launch of the Library’s Summer Reading Program, a kickoff called “Libraries Rock!” To help them attract a few more people, we made a few calls, sent a few messages, and pulled in a few favors. We got two teams from The Discovery Channel’s BattleBots series, now in their 3rd season, to come show their machines. Overhaul, headed by Charles Guan of MIT, and Brutus, headed by Adam Bercu and represented by Amanda Fowler, came with their 250lb battle-scarred robots and talked to the kids on the lawn for over two hours. Overhaul got opened up for the first time since the fights, where we all saw the charred remains of it’s battery packs and drive systems.

You could plainly see – more than a few kids, and adults too, had a few ideas hatching. Amanda and Charles had a mission to get some potential robot-builders started and on their way… and they obviously accomplished it that day.

The Library Summer Reading Program will typically bring in around 30-40 people with some games, the WAAF Street Team, some giveaways and prizes. We counted over 100 people yesterday listening to our presentation, and probably another 50 that came and went. The Reading Program’s signups? …a whole lot higher than usual, to the delight of the Library staff.

So yeah, if you call that “having nothing”, just imagine what we’ll accomplish when we have a space.

For more photos of the day, wander on over to the blog, here: BattleBots Comes to Lynn!

Stay tuned, but in the meantime, as always…

Keep making stuff. Take care of people, play nice and clean up after yourselves.