Author: ted@thebrickyard.org

As we wind down into the Memorial Day weekend, we here at The Brickyard are going to take a few days and, oh, maybe sit on the beach.  OR, take the boat out?  OR fly a kite?  Who knows…  but there’s still a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Events

Don’t forget the Brickyard Night at the Ballpark on June 9th!  Get your (free) tickets here: Brickyard Eventbrite.  The North Shore Navigators will take on the Nashua Silver Knights at Fraser Field – a great chance to sit back, chill out, meet and greet some fellow members and enjoy some collegiate baseball…  the best!

On June 16th we have a special treat, with details still unfolding.  The Lynn Public Library is hosting a Summer kickoff event, and we’ll be there – but by “we”, I mean two of the contestants from the recent Science Channel  BattleBots TV show!  Adam Bercu, with Brutus, and Charles Guan with Overhaul, are making a very special appearance with their bots fresh from filming the new season!

…wait.  What?  We’re bringing actual MAJOR TV ROBOT STARS TO LYNN?  Why yes.  Yes we are.  Details will be announced.

One more thing…  Mid-August, look for The Brickyard at a new series of events, still in the planning stages: SAIL, or “Summer Arts In Lynn”.  More to come.

Workshops

We had a great time with our first series of workshops, and we worked out a few of the kinks…  stay tuned, we’re planning a Summer Series, and the details with be coming soon.  We’re planning on offering some of the same classes we did, because people had such a great time, and a few additions as well.

BrickStarter

BrickStarter is quietly kicking butt over here.  We picked up another $1000, and extended the deadline to May 31st, so there’s still time to get in!  Thanks to all the supporters and donors, as well as our new Charter Members!

That’s it for now…  enjoy your weekend at the beach, in the shop, or wherever you choose to enjoy your holiday weekend, and we’ll see you next week!

OK folks, we’re at that point.  That point at which we’re going to start talking about an actual space, actual facilities and actual card-carrying members.  Here’s the deal.

Within a month or so we’ll have a handful of spaces that will be good candidates.  We’re looking at primarily the downtown Lynn area, but there are a few that are outside that immediate area we’re considering as well.  We are in some negotiations with some building owners that would be in absolutely incredible spots.  Naturally, we can’t really talk about that publicly, but it’s moving along.

What we need now is a handful of people who’d be interested in talking about signing up for a space, and membership in The Brickyard Collaborative.  Our goal is to secure a space, move in our equipment, and lock down some people who would like to be a part of this.  Do you need a shop?  A studio?  Access to equipment?  We basically need to be able to go into a lease fairly confident that we can cover it with at least a few active members.

Sound reasonable?  Of course, what you’ll get is access to all the equipment, storage space, and workspace, according to what you want.  Here are the basic membership levels we’re looking at:

Membership			Rentals Permitted
	Weekday Access	Weekend Access (Sat & Sun)		Rates
Weekend Warrior	None	8 am – 10 pm	Shelf, Rack and Sheet Storage	$60/mo
Weekday	6 am – 6 pm	None	All storage, 50 sf studio, shared 75/100 sf studio	$90/mo
Nights/Weekends	6 pm – 6 am	8 am – 10 pm	All storage, 50 sf studio, shared 75/100 sf studio	$90/mo
Unlimited	24/7	24/7	Any	$150/mo
Day Passes	Mon-Thurs	Fri-Sun	Rentals Permitted
Day Pass 5-Pack	12 pm – 10 pm	10am – 6pm	None	$90
Day Pass 10-Pack	12 pm – 10 pm	10am – 6pm	None	$150

Of course you have questions.  There’s a lot up in the air, we’re not looking for cash in hand right now, and we’d love to sit down and talk about the various options.

If you’re interested, you’ve been following opur progress, or you’re supporting us, now’s the time to have a chat about the details.  Contact us here.

 

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

Lots has been going on here in the Brickyard!  Let’s see…  here’s the rundown:

We’ve officially finalized our Board with the addition of Karen Chacon, an experienced non-profit administrator and developer, committed to all the things we love: youth development, education, community development, diversity and inclusion, and social justice, as well as enjoying a good pint, oh, and baseball.  Meet our Board and our Team here: Meet the Team.

We’re going for it, and launching the Brickyard Free Bikes project.  It’s simple, we teach people how to fix bikes by salvaging cast-off bikes, fix them up, then cycle them back to the community, bad puns included.  Read more here: the Brickyard Free Bike project. Bicycles are high-volume, low yield waste for landfills, and this is a great way to keep them in the community, help people get around, and keep them getting used.

We’ve wrapped up our BrickStarter project, (and continued what seems to be an emerging tradition of bad puns) with over $2500 of donations and membership signups!  This is huge!  Not only does it give us some juice to buy some software and other stuff, but it shows how much y’all are excited about what we’re doing.  THANKS to all our donors and new members!

We’ve had our first weekend of workshops, and are looking for the next two busy weekends – coming up, How to Make Soap, and Breadmaking.  The response has been awesome, and we’re busy lining up the next round.

We’re in the process of placing around $5000 worth of digital imaging equipment into LaVida Scholars in downtown Lynn, so that kids can work with it this summer.  This is a state-of-the-art workstation with a scanner, photo-quality printer, Wacom Cintiq tablet, the complete Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and SketchUp Pro installed.  We can’t wait to get this stuff into the hands of some budding young designers!

Courtesy of the Lynn Area Chamber of Commerce, we have a bunch of tickets for the local Collegiate baseball team, the North Shore Navigators, on June 9th, (first pitch is at 6pm) ’cause you can’t be busy in your shop all the time, now, can you?  We have over 50 tickets available, so sign up on Eventbrite here.  Join us for a great game and some burgers and dogs!

There’s more brewing…  we’ve been saying “stay tuned” so much lately, it’s getting old even for us, but, well, stay tuned!  It’s going to be a busy summer!  We can’t really spill the beans right now about one event in particular, but let’s just say, keep the afternoon of June 16th open.  You won’t regret it!

 

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

OK, work with us on this…  we’re still thinking about the details.  Junk bikes are all over the place, and, well, they’re junk.  They need some work, they aren’t safe or reliable, and they’re really a pain to dispose of.  But, there are folks out there who need bikes to get food, to get to their jobs, to, well, get around.  That’s where we come in.

We collect the bikes.  We teach workshops on how to fix them up and make them safe again.  Then, when they’re all nice and pretty again, we give them to people who can use them.  Seems simple enough.

What we’re thinking at the moment, is to have a little bike rack in the downtown area with a sign that simply says, “FREE BIKES – Take it or leave it.  If you need a bike, take it.  If you want to leave a bike that you don’t need anymore, or that needs work, leave it.”  The rack is chained to something, the bikes aren’t.  We check the rack often, take bikes that need work back, load bikes that are ready to go out on the rack again.  We put stickers on the bikes, identifying them as Brickyard Bikes.

It almost seems too simple.  Too easy.

Let’s count the ways.  We keep a little high-volume junk off the streets and out of the landfills.  People who need transportation get to use the bikes, safely.  We make a little pocket change teaching our workshops, and people learn skills to help themselves and maybe others.   And the cycle repeats.*

Well…  stay tuned.  Email us if you’re interested in this madcap caper, and let’s see what we can make happen.

*Yeah, OK, who could resist that pun?