This coming Saturday, join thousands of people all over the world in the 2nd annual celebration of cardboard creativity in aid of the Imagination Foundation. Set up after the amazing response to the original Caine’s Arcade viral hit video to “find, foster and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in children around the world”, the Imagination Foundation is challenging us all to get together and build stuff from cardboard instead of just throwing it away (or at least recycling it, one would hope).
Currently there are over 72,000 people registered to take the challenge in over 40 countries, building all sorts of things from arcade games, just like to Caine did, to mazes, cities and buildings. The site has zip-code search to help you find out if there’s something near you — and if there isn’t, then you should totally host an event yourself! This year they have partnered with MakeDo (who have made special bulk packs of their excellent re-clips available) and MattressFirm who have been suppling events with as much cardboard as they need.
Last year my daughter and I built a couple of games and we took them along to a local harvest festival for everyone to play with. We collected a modest amount for the foundation (I think we priced it too cheap), but had so much fun in the process and it was wonderful to see her being inspired by Caine. Over the summer, we started up a diy.org maker club, and so for our challenge this year we’ve decided to take it up a level. We’ve been hoarding cardboard all summer and we’re going to get all of our club members together and attempt to build a geodesic dome based on this one, albeit on a smaller scale — straight swapping inches for centimetres should make it more manageable!
No idea how that will turn out, but it’ll be fun trying!
Get involved now at cardboardchallenge.com and follow along on #cardboardchallenge.
nice post! I must admit I didn’t discover cardboard challenge day until it was really too late (except for a bathroom drinks shelf but that’s not really in line with the spirit of the thing!) but shall try better next year!