I feel like I learned a lot about community through this project. One of the main things that I learned about community was that people really do like to interact with complete strangers, at the same time though, they don't since it isn't easy to simply start a conversation with a random person, but are willing to create community with complete strangers with little help. Some of the ways a public place creates community are sitting space, how it looks, the location of the area, the amount of open space, and many other things, just like some of the things William H. Whyte described in his film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. At the Town Green interactions between people happen all the time; between vendors and consumers, dog walkers, and during events. Having a common interest or sharing a common feeling, strangers tend to talk to one another about it. With our product (which is a form of a "musical garden"), we were hoping that strangers came together and have something to talk about, or interact by playing with the instruments. We did get some results during an event at the Town Green, which was the parade/Earth day event.
Having roles for each of the members really helped in assigning people what to do without telling them to do it, which saved a lot of time and allowed us to work more effectively. Everyone wanted to help get it done, which was a big factor in the overall success of the project. Another reason our group was functional was because we had such great leaders. They kept us on task, and were not too over controlling,as well as trusting us to complete whatever job we were given. We had three final products overall. Each of them came out great. I worked mostly on the flower drum with Karina and Taylor, while Atreyu and Andrew worked on the leaf xylophone, and Bryant and Allegra worked on the smaller flower drum, as Grant and Christophe were team leaders, helping everyone of the team. There could have been changes made in the construction of the instruments to make them sound more "musical," but we did the best we could. Overall I feel that the prototypes worked successfully and created community.
Having roles for each of the members really helped in assigning people what to do without telling them to do it, which saved a lot of time and allowed us to work more effectively. Everyone wanted to help get it done, which was a big factor in the overall success of the project. Another reason our group was functional was because we had such great leaders. They kept us on task, and were not too over controlling,as well as trusting us to complete whatever job we were given. We had three final products overall. Each of them came out great. I worked mostly on the flower drum with Karina and Taylor, while Atreyu and Andrew worked on the leaf xylophone, and Bryant and Allegra worked on the smaller flower drum, as Grant and Christophe were team leaders, helping everyone of the team. There could have been changes made in the construction of the instruments to make them sound more "musical," but we did the best we could. Overall I feel that the prototypes worked successfully and created community.
