Youth Programming at the Community Center
A focus group of SYNERGY club students identified priorities for the proposed Valley Community Center.
Youth Programming at VCC
A takeaway from our feasability study and community meetings is that there is a big opportunity for youth and teen programming in the Valley. Adults often try (in good faith) to articulate needs on teens behalf. We are curious if there is a productive/safe means of hearing it directly from teens? This Is Stillwater founder and youth advocate Michael Manore was approached by Valley Community Center and he proposed we conceptually:
Have VCC host a series of sit-downs with middle & high school students to frame and spark the conversation
Challenge them to organize & launch a method of surveying (using their preferred methods) & communicating amongst themselves on what THEY would like to see in a community center
Possibly/preferably have a teacher (in each school) nurture them along without dictating the 'how'.
Have them present their findings to the Board.
Out of that process one would expect to find a couple of youth standouts passionate to be part of the Community Center development journey.
Valley Community Center Board Chair Dianne Polasick and Project Manager Shari Mogren recently met with Michael Manore and SYNERGY club advisor Julie Balfanz, Technology & Innovation Specialist at Stillwater Area Public Schools to discuss opportunities to partner with and learn directly from students. Shari attended a SYNERGY Club in February to meet with the students, and was blown away by their ingenuity and enthusiasm.
The SYNERGY Club students had recently participated in DaVinci Fest on January 25th and (for fun!) developed a few concept models of the community center developed in Minecraft. They were able to display on the large, interactive TVs a culmination of a first run at a design sprint challenge. Teams evaluated the topography and location of a few proposed community center sites, and built a concept which leveraged the unique assets of the properties.
Here they are showing Shari around the Valley Community Center as rendered in Minecraft:
“The students were excitedly showing me around the virtual Community Center, which they had built as a SYNERGY club project (for fun!) in Minecraft. They showed me the pools, the atrium, the cafe, and, the pièce de résistance: the axolotl tank. Their enthusiasm and earnestness in their work made my heart soar.”
SYNERGY club students have been exploring how to converge the micro-design efforts of the younger students at Stillwater Middle School using Minecraft-Education with Michael's This is Stillwater real-world efforts, and have begun transposing (through engaging conversation) preliminary site plans into Minecraft. It is fun seeing the renderings in 3D. Note: renderings and programmed elements are conceptual and not considered final.
The next step for the SYNERGY Club students is to prototype 3D concepts of different possibilities of youth programming that could take place in the community center space. They might also be able to demo an example of a 3D walkthrough that could be showcased using a VR headset (Metaquest 2). How cool is that?!
The SYNERGY club meets twice a month at the Stillwater middle schools and is a wonderful space for kids to connect with one another, create, share ideas, experiment, and learn from each other. To learn more, please contact Julie Balfanz, Technology & Innovation Specialist and SYNERGY Club Advisor at balfanzj@stillwaterschools.org. To learn more about This Is Stillwater’s important work please visit thisisstillwatermn.org.