Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Take a Slow Ride Down Riveropolis”.
So i’m gregory gavin and the project here is called riveropolis and riveropus is an idea. It’S also a company. So the idea is to engage people of all ages with running water into a creative and social atmosphere where they take risks to do things that they might not do. If there wasn’t this anomalous water feature in their midst, so i grew up playing in creeks and i’ve always returned to creeks to um, get inspired. It’S sort of like part of my creative process as an artist and as an entrepreneur, and i also had a nephew who um had a lot of behavior issues, and i saw him playing in a creek for two hours that was coming out of snowmelt, which was Really cold and he was supposed to have a short attention span, and i was amazed by how long he spent time floating little pine cones. And it really stuck with me when i saw that – and i thought that’s something that i could maybe bring back to the city – you might ask: is this a science education or is this just playing around, and so i would answer that question by saying that it Might be more profound for kids to directly discover the way the world operates. The way the water is moving, the way um objects are responding to the water buoyancy, weight, floatation, eddies and things like that without loading them up with a lot of language and so they’re um sort of unconsciously entering into a design process, because they’re building a raft Or a boat and they’re watching down the river and they’re, seeing how it behaves and then maybe they’re changing it to make it behave in a way.
That’S more satisfying like it goes farther down the river or doesn’t get stuck in the eddy or it doesn’t get stuck in the waterfall. So this could look like cooling around and messing around which it is, but it’s also a kind of design process where you go from a design and then testing that design and then redesigning what you’re building i’ve seen people respond to riveropolis in one way, which is That i hear people saying to their kids, we’ve got to see more of the fair. We can’t stay here all day, so i think that’s a sign that it’s very engaging, i have to say, i’ve been bringing this to schools and museums, and also i teach at a camp in the summer, and i’ve very rarely come across a kid who’s not engaged By running water, .