Bucketworks

Overview

Bucketworks is a creative resource center located along a challenging ethnic boundary near downtown Milwaukee. The School Factory implemented the Bucketworks open design for creativity, developed its standard curriculum offerings, and its membership programs.

Background

In May of 2002, School Factory founder James Carlson began the construction of Bucketworks on the first floor of the Mandel building, located at 1319 N. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. The previous occupants of the building were print-media related businesses, and therefore left behind a treasure-trove of creative materials such as paper, plastic, ink, rollers, and other basic materials such as wood and metal. A 3,000 sq. ft. workshop was constructed on the first floor and stocked with tools, tables, and other equipment for creative production. Melissa Merline participated in the exploration of these materials and in the design of the space.

Shortly thereafter, Alexei Easton joined as the first member of Bucketworks. He established a music studio on a raised platform in the workshop. During this phase, James, Melissa, and Alexei spent much of their time exploring the tools and materials, but began to wonder how to engage others in the project. By Melissa Merline’s suggestion, in October of 2002 Bucketworks began a creative program called Personal Alchemy. This program developed basic creative sensibilities in its participants, addressing the reasons for being creative as well as a language for safely discussing creativity. The course attendance peaked at 35, and was curtailed over the holidays for re-development.

Analysis of this program’s effectiveness led us to discussions about trying it again, and broadening access to a wider variety of potential participants. In the spring of 2003, we began an extended campaign at a variety of local venues to encourage enrollment in Personal Alchemy. Two different ‘messages’ were used to promote the program. One messaged was based on overcoming a fear of creativity, and the other was an invitation to play with creativity. The same program was offered to each group of enrollees, but those who enrolled based on the ‘fear’ message had a higher attrition rate. The two class groups were combined into one group which completed the program.

After this program, which concluded in the spring of 2003, we began to focus more on development of the environment itself. The first “version” of Bucketworks was only one room 3,000 sq. ft. in size. This room was renamed the “Workshop,” and was imagined to be a more highly structured environment with specific work areas named “factories.” The initial factories included the Vision Factory, filled with visual art materials and work surfaces, the Thing Factory, filled with power tools and hand tools, the Media Factory, with computers, the Idea Factory, a meeting room with whiteboard, light table, surround sound, and video projector; the Sound Factory, a rolling cart with oscilloscope, microphones, and amplifiers.

By this time, Bucketworks had colonized an additional environment which was named the Playspace. The Playspace was to be a more free-form, random environment.

Today, Bucketworks has 450+ members, an art gallery, theatre, woodshop, recording studio, dance studio, business center, graphics workstations, jewelry, painting, pottery, and computer lab in a downtown facility served by a dedicated staff. Five businesses make their homes at Bucketworks, and five theatre companies do as well.

To learn more about Bucketworks, visit the Bucketworks website at http://www.bucketworks.org.