Helen Weinstein joined the 'Maker Challenge' in which we teamed up to offer solutions to Cambridge's "sticky" problems.   The project was hosted by Cambridge Makespace and organized by a Cambridge arts/tech agency called 'Collusion' founded by Rachel Drury and Simon Poulter, which puts together interdisciplinary and playful projects, working with artists and digital solutions.  In the Maker Challenge we met up on Saturdays at Makespace with a few mid-week sessions hosted at Historyworks, with a focus on having a presentation about our 'wicked' problem ready to showcase at the University's Science Festival afternoon at Makespace with our Collusion teams:

Our team chose to create scenarios for the greening up of a corridor between Mill Road Railway Bridge across Parker's Piece to Great St Mary's.  From Historyworks we built a soundscape to show what the noise levels would be if traffic continued to dominate the landscape, to a medium level produced by traffic calming, to the sounds of wildlife and bycicles and playparks if Mill Road was transformed ino a green park with walking and cycle ways into the city, punctuated by play areas with swings and sandpits, cafes and wi-fi stops.  In our team, Rich Hall, mapped the area in Minecraft, using LIDAR data from overhead flights.  For more about the process find information here.

 

The data once mapped is incomplete on Minecraft, especially because the recreation does not distinguish well between high buildings and trees, so it is necessary to go into each location on Minecraft and 'tidy' the area to make it bespoke to the reality on the ground. This aspect of the project has huge implications which Rich Hall is exploring adding other levels of data from Cambridgeshire sources to enhance our understanding of the ciy and beyond.  Here is a Minecraft re-creation showing the route of the River Cam and the Jesus Green pool area:

These experiments with Minecraft-Cambridge has led to our teaming up with Rich Hall, who came out to our Historyworks 'fun day' at Cambridge Museum of Technology, bringing a recreation of the old pumping station and the river area, which was a huge hit with the children and families who attended! 

Other groups in the 'Maker Challenge' tackled the Market Place and how best to make the stalls more flexible so that the area could be repurposed into cafe and events arena in the evenings.  

Another group, took on the lighting in Cambridge city centre, especially the 'roman candle' lighting along Trinity Street along the front entrances from St John's College all the way to Corpus Christi, and imagined repurposing these lights so that with L.E.Ds they could give off more light and also be used to give information about entertainments and venues.  

The final group had a deep think about the 'sticky' problems in Cambridge of isolation and loneliness often experienced by the elderly, and came up with a great solution for coding posts at bus stops, which could tempt bus users along their route to join in participatory activities, by telling them along the route where there was an activity on within easy walking distance of the bus stops!