Do you ever rethink?
Try rethinking something which has been there all the time and then combine it with recycling.
At the creative part of Roskilde, Musicon, they have done exactly this for a while, and recently the good people out there decided to take it one step further by hosting a hackathon with the headline “One Man’s Thrash …”. As a great fan of both hackathons (watch the DIY-part on this blog) and Musicon I was there.
The hackathon was skillfully hosted by Thor Rigstrup Larsen and Anders Graabæk. It consisted of 5 steps:
At the first point, we had a visit from several sources of inspiration as well as representatives from the cases to work with, thrash all included.
A cool lady who has actually put her words into action in rethinking and recycling is Stine Brynskov from Applemoster. A year ago she had the idea of turning windfalls into delicious apple juice. The apples will be everywhere on the ground, but the point is to stop looking at it as waste but to see natural resources for good use.
About 60 people attended the hackathon and being one of them I included myself in a group to work with for the next 28 hours (yes, it is not as much time as a regular hackathon, but our hosts thought it to be more effective … which turned out right).
My group decided to work with sorting of thrash in the new area of Musicon. With a lot of new residents moving into the area during the next decade we needed to think of a way to begin good thrash-habits – and keep them. A lot of braining to do while we had dinner.
And after dinner … more brainstorming. We ended up with 3 headlines to work from; design, experience (oplevelse) and sharing economy (deleøkonomi). Followed by a billion sticky notes, flying ideas – and also beer. After all it was Friday night.
At 10 o’clock we decided to call it a night – no stay awake-nights for this group. Refreshed and ready to shine we met up again early Saturday morning. However, a little frustrated because we still needed the firm goal to aim for at the presentation later this day.
But nothing has ever been that bad that it cannot be solved. After a few more hours of discussion, acting, writing and drawing we agreed on building a trash-trolley for sorting.
So far, so good. Next challenge turned out to be our prototyping workshop; to put our clever thoughts into something concrete to touch and see. We had 5 minutes on each task – drawing, building and cartooning the story of our thrash-trolley … watch this prototype 🙂
The Orange Makersspace was kind enough to borrow their machines and skillful makers to help everyone make their prototypes real. We could work in wood, textile and almost anything else that we might find necessary. Being in a group with skillful designers we did quite well on our own, and we also named our trolley “Waste Buddy”. So, meet our new friend:
Adding to the story we decided on difference theme-houses to drop the waste, once it was sorted in suitable boxes on the trolley. That means you can actually take your “Waste Buddy” out to meet your neighbours at “hen house”, “farming house”, “repair house” or even “picnic house”. All depending on your space – less waste, more space.
Since the hackathon took place at the same time as the annual Rabalderfestival it was a perfect opportunity to test the water among what might be future residents of Musicon. Asking a wide range of people passing by I noticed that common areas with outdoor furniture, repair houses and playground for the children were among the most popular places to meet neighbours – and therefore a good idea to consider in our theme-houses for dropping of waste.
As hours passed by it was time for the team to get really serious. We needed to pitch our ideas in front of a panel of judges to enter the competition of 10.000 DDK! We had a great pitch trainer in Jacob Vahr from eGro, but the final session of our work was quite stressful as we needed to do many last minute changes in our pitching. However, my group had the coolest pitcher, so even when we did not win the money we still had a great opening for future dialogue with Musicon and the authorities at Roskilde Kommune.
The team that did win have done great work. Students of Vallekilde Højskole has created a line of bags designed to get rid of the waste from Roskilde Festival. And the festival does produce a lot of waste, especially from air mattresses which the guests leave behind when the festival is over. That is why it is a good idea to use the fabric of these mattresses to create bags for cleaning up. Personally I liked the one which was big enough to carry away your tent, even when you don’t want to pack your tent completely tight (which is always quite an effort the morning you leave Roskilde Festival).
Good thinking and congratulations to team “Bag it up”.
Their victory did not stop our team “Waste Buddies” to celebrate a very good days’ work with something as extraordinary as homemade raspberry beer from another start up in Musicon Mikrobryggeri.
Yes, creativity does live in Musicon. Cheers!
Want to do more creative work at Musicon?
Then visit the Orange Makerspace. They invite everyone for open Maker Days on Wednesdays (equal weeks) and Thursdays (unequal weeks). Meetings are usually from 5 to 8 PM, and there will always be kind and helpful people present.
Read more about future activities of the Maker Days on Orange Makers Facebookpage.
