When you visit the brand new Department of Making + Doing (DMD), a wall of cards asks visitors, "What would you like to make or do?" The hand-written answers include "snowshoes," "a treehouse for my daughter" and "outdoor chess tables." One of them reads "Robot Zebra." 

This collaborative lair at the University City Science Center was made possible by a recent Knight Arts Challenge grant. One of the key partners in DMD is Breadboard. Founded in January of 2010, Breadboard offers a net of ever-expanding interdisciplinary programs operating at the intersection of art and technology.

"We're trying to convene communities around creative applications of technology," explains Director Dan Schimmel.  

The organization takes its names from a reusable device that allows experimentation with temporary electronic circuits. For Schimmel and program manager David Clayton, the hunt for "the curious creative" means no suggestion is too zany. 

"A Robot Zebra could be great in Africa," muses Schimmel with a laugh. "It could be used to stalk the poachers who are stalking elephants." 

After all, inspiration can come from the fanciful. As Clayton puts it, "A lot of the technology…that really changed the game," like cell phones or MRIs, "was developed by people who grew up watching Star Trek." Who knows how many gadgets Spock and Captain Kirk's interplanetary intercoms and scanners inspired? 

"The sooner you give [young people] access to the tools to actually act on their imagination, the sooner they're going to start developing things that could be pretty important for their generation or the next," adds Schimmel. 

Putting the power of building and inventing into the community's hands -- with tools like lasercutters and 3-D printers -- is part of Breadboard's goal.

Artful Science

The Science Center's Esther M. Klein Gallery (EKG) -- which Schimmel calls Philadelphia's "very first program that mixed art and science" -- is the program's progenitor. (Before launching Breadboard, Schimmel directed Esther Klein; Clayton continues to curate some of its shows.) Breadboard's three-pronged mission includes EKG exhibitions, artist residencies and educational outreach (with partners like the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, PECO and others).

"People often ask the Science Center, 'Why do you have an arts program?," says Jeanne Mell, the vice president of marketing and communications at the Science Center. "What's the connection?'"

She argues that adding art to the education equation is crucial to readying kids to join the high-tech economies of the future. "Breadboard gives [us] the chance to engage kids early," adds Mell. "To get them excited about things by taking a totally new avenue to get there."
 
Two summers ago, Breadboard hosted an all-student show. The kids involved were taking geometry and geography. Their math teacher partnered with a Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership (PAEP) artist, and the class created thirteen-foot-high cardboard polygon structures based on different points they knew in Philly.

"They became these giant geometric flowers," recalls Clayton. The project integrated spatial thinking with geometry, geography, art and the thrill of creating a physical product.

Students aren't the only ones to benefit from the technology and teaching Breadboard offers. The organization has a longterm partnership with the public prototyping lab NextFab Studios (the Department of Making + Doing occupies their former space; NextFab moved to a much larger facility on Washington Avenue).

According to Clayton, NextFab staffers have remarked that artists produce "some of the most interesting projects" to come out of that studio. Schimmel loves to see the unexpected emerge -- like jewelry from 3-D models "based on algorithm math." Artists aren't necessarily aware of the functional limits the engineer declared for the gadget. 

"They're coming at it from a different direction," explains Schimmel. "They might push the capacities of the tool or machine in ways a designer or an engineer or architect wouldn't think of."

Breadboard's laser cutter is the most popular machine for artists because of the versatility of materials it can work with, including paper, felt, fabric, leather, soft metal or wood. "In theory, you could etch something on a tortilla chip," says Clayton.

He added that the "DNA" of NextFab and Breadboard is "lowering the barrier of accessibility to new tools and technology," for both youth and adults. Many people are aware of cutting-edge rapid prototyping tools like 3-D printers, but seeing it on TV and walking into the NextFab studio is the difference between seeing a car and getting behind the wheel. 

A $100,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation makes this technology even more accessible to the public -- the Science Center is teaming up with Breadboard, NextFab, the Public Workshop and the Hacktory to occupy the new DMD space. The cards on the wall are the first step in determining what kinds of programs and projects DMD will offer. 

Schimmel said the Knight Arts Challenge grant will not only support new programming, but also go toward hiring a dedicated DMD program manager who will coordinate the four partners. 

Ideas in action

On May 11th, when DMD opened its doors for an official launch, it was teeming with local families and volunteers from all four organizations. 

Sixteen-year-old Alexa Eddy, a sophomore at Science Leadership Academy, took Flying Kite on a tour of the current Public Workshop project, which builds benches out of salvaged and recycled wood. They hope to sell them in the future.

"We don't want to waste anything at all," she explains.

Eddy said the program -- which taught her all about sawing and chiseling by hand, as well as blueprints and calculations -- has helped her come out of her shell.

"More kids should totally get involved with this kind of thing," she says, adding that she used to wonder if sawing and building were jobs just for men. "Now I feel like I can do anything."

Timothy Bieniosek, a volunteer with The Hacktory, worked on the other side of the studio at a crowded table strewn with batteries, wiring and colorful dough, some for conducting electricity and some for insulating it. 

A professional software engineer, Bieniosek recently took a class at the University of Pennsylvania in educator methods for teaching electrical circuitry to kids. He made a small, hand-sewn monster of purple, green and gray felt, with four tiny LED lights on its front and a battery pack with a minute computer hidden in its leg, to program the lights.

As he tinkered with his whimsical doll, Bieniosek said that working with The Hacktory is about "believing that the students have as much to teach the teachers as the teachers have to teach the students."

Clayton also emphasized that openness as the cornerstone of the Breadboard mission, at DMD and beyond. That's where the Robot Zebra comes in -- along with everything else we can't even imagine yet. 

"We'd rather ask, 'What would you like to make?'" says Clayton. "It's better to leave the door open to people's creativity." 

The University City Science Center has partnered with Flying Kite to showcase innovation in Greater Philadelphia through the "Inventing the Future" series.

ALAINA MABASO, a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist, has landed squarely in what people tell her is the worst possible career of the twenty-first century. So she makes Pennsylvania her classroom, covering everything from business to theater to toad migrations. After her editors go to bed, she blogs athttp://alainamabaso.wordpress.com/. Find her on Twitter @AlainaMabaso.