The event will be held on Saturday, June 2, 2012 at SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art) at 750 Marguerite Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27106.
9:00 – 9:30 AM: Arrival and Registration (please pay your $10 in advance here. The small fee will help us cover food during the day, materials, and wine during the finale)
Coffee, doughnuts, mingle
9:30 – 9:45 AM: Brain Teaser / Ice Breaker
9:45 – 10:15 AM: Welcome and Introduction
• What is the Imagination Installation Project by Cheryl Schirillo
• What is Community Design Studio by Lauren Frye
• Presentation of Creative Brief (our goals for the day)
10:15 – 12:00 PM: Charette* Session 1
• Broad discussion of challenges, brainstorming, and sketching within small groups
• Goals: a wide range of rough ideas, focusing more on questions than answers, “what ifs?” rather than “what?” or “how?”
*a description of a charette is at the end of this document.
12:00 – 1:00 PM: Working Lunch
• Participants enjoy a complimentary lunch
• Presentation of Earth Day Art Installation (The Dream Tent)
• FAQs
• In-progress review (participants walk around and review pin-ups)
1:00 – 2:15 PM: Charette Session 2
• Idea selection, refinement, tighter sketching with a focus on conveying ideas clearly
• Goals: 2–4 specific ideas, polished sketches, focusing more on answers than questions, more on “what?” and “how?”
2:15 – 3:00 PM: Next Steps and Thank You
• Next Steps/Where Do We Go From Here?
• Closing comments, presentation of “awards”
3:00 – 4:00: Pin Up of Resulting Works
• Mixing and mingling with wine and cheese as we walk around and look at all the amazing ideas the teams generated. Team Leaders will present their works informally during the mingling.
To register, or for more information return to the main events page here.
*What is a Charette? (The event format the Imagination Design Marathon is built on)
A Charette is a meeting that uses intense effort to solve any architectural, artistic or design problem within a limited time. From a creative standpoint, a Charette can be divided into three portions:
1. Listen. Listen to what the stakeholders in the Project have to suggest (in this case the Imagination Installation). Work together with them to come to an understanding about the project, what their goals and limitations are, and how these might fit with your ideas.
2. Envision. Imagine together all of these various considerations to come up with a realistic and creative proposal which will be interesting while at the same time financially, responsibly, and otherwise feasible.
3. Draw fast! The ability to work with creative team who can bring ideas to a tangible design sketch quickly, allows for instant communication.
A Little History on Charettes
The term “Charette” (little cart) appeared in the late 1800′s. Architecture students at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris who needed to rush their designs to their instructors, placed their drawings on a cart which was called a charette. Later the word broadened in meaning and came to describe any intense, short-term design project. Today the word is used by the architectural and design community at large to describe any intense, on-the-spot design effort.
