Las Vegas, NV: Building a team, and then a city

We’re a few days into the second swing of our Sparkin’ Across America Summer Road Trip and we’ve got a lot to report!

First off, the size of our team has grown by a full 33 percent!  We’ve got a new Sparkee on board, Rachel, and are so excited to travel the country with her.  Rachel just spent the past couple months teaching 7-13 year olds about innovation and design at Nueva School, and will be joining us until the beginning of September when she has to go back to school at Northwestern.  You can read a bit more about her here.

But now onto Las Vegas, where we found ourselves no less conspicuous than everything else for a change.

Rachel wasted no time at all in contributing to our trip in a major way with an awesome idea for a new workshop.  Last night the SparkTruck was booked at First Friday, a street fair in downtown Las Vegas, and we needed to come up with an activity that would be fun and buildy, yet also allow for drop-ins and different levels of engagement.  Rachel came up with a cool workshop where we’d let kids (and some “kids at heart”) collaborate on building, crafting, and laser cutting a mini-city.  

We thought our friends at Downtown Project would appreciate our particular slant to the project.  Instead of having kids build an imaginary city, we had them think about what they wanted their own neighborhood to look like.  From the looks of things, the new Las Vegas won’t even need casinos and nightclub to keep people entertained with all the robots and dinosaurs roaming the streets!

An army of city builders descended upon the SparkTruck to reimagine Las Vegas with us!

While most kids took their structures home with them, here’s what the partially finished city looked like.

With our mini “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign of course.

It was great to see all of our friends at First Friday, Downtown Project and SynShop, and meet a new one from 3rd Ward.  We hope to meet up again soon!

We’re on the road now to Denver by way of an awesome theme motel in Seligman, AZ.  Tomorrow we’re back on Route 66 to get some kicks, so check back for updates!

- Jason