Creative City Blocks

Youth Educational Development Building Blocks
For this project, I will create an original line of children's building blocks made from salvaged wood. My goal is to educate children about where the wood came from and where it was going (i.e. the landfill) if I had not reclaimed it. I will create and include a mini-book with every set of blocks that explains the problem of useful waste in our landfills. I aim to nurture children’s creativity and imagination, fighting back against this age of electronic toys. These blocks are designed to inspire creative, free, and abstract form building. By playing with them, children will ideally cultivate new and innovative ways of thinking, which they will need one day to deal with the complex problems passed on to them by previous generations.

The name of my project, “Creative City Blocks,” is inspired by The Creative City concept developed by Charles Landry in the 1980s, which has since become a global movement reflecting a new planning paradigm for the development of cities. Wikipedia describes it as “… a clarion call to encourage open-mindedness and imagination implying a dramatic impact on organizational culture. Its philosophy is that there is always more creative potential in a place. It posits that conditions need to be created for people to think, plan, and act with imagination in harnessing opportunities or addressing seemingly intractable urban problems.” For such a concept and future to become a reality, this type of thinking must be fostered in our children at the earliest possible age. These blocks are designed to encourage children to embrace and engage in their own creative potential and become the architects of the beautiful, balanced, and magical world in which they hope to live.