camp firebelly + the causeway challenge

Jul 31 2014

Camp Firebelly was one of the most educational, exhausting, challenging and exciting things I have ever been a part of. Think Project Runway meets Design and Non-Profits, and you will have a vague idea of the whirlwind we experienced. I came home tired, inspired and eager to help my fellow Chattanoogans get creative to improve this city.

Everything we did at Camp Firebelly was a surprise. We were constantly getting in the car, unaware of where we were going or what we would be doing. So, I was equally surprised when two of my friends from Chattanooga, Kate Creason and Megan Deal of Tomorrow Today (now located in Cincinnati) showed up to lead one of our workshops. Our task: to create and implement a civic intervention in 36 hours. Each team randomly selected objects that outlined our constraints. Yellow had to be our main color. We could only use typefaces starting with the letter “A”. We had a budget of $10. And our instruction was to “Animate something inanimate”.

My partner, Al, and I decided that we wanted to find something in the city that was no longer being used, and re-imagine it’s purpose. We learned that Chicago recently sold its parking rights to a private company, leaving unused parking meters all over the city. Through our research, we also happened upon several citizen warnings about bees taking over the empty parking meters to build their hives inside of the hollow steel shell. The bees were one step ahead of us–takingsomething unused and repurposing it into something useful again.

We connected two unrelated things, bee hives + abandoned space, and designed an abstract structure on one of the old meters in front of an abandoned lot, to draw attention to the unused space, with the hope of inspiring someone to follow nature’s lead and make the space useful again.

On August 1, Causeway is releasing applications for our first Causeway Challenge. We are asking: What would you do with $2,500 to create a more connected Chattanooga? We will award the top 20 ideas with $2,500 to implement their idea. Connection can take place between any two things. The possibilities are endless, and sometime that makes it hard to get started. Stay tuned to hear about a few things I learned at Camp Firebelly that might be helpful when thinking about your idea for the Causeway Challenge.

Originally published at www.causeway.org on July 15, 2014.