By Kenji Saito | Representative Director
Please find a Japanese version of this report here.
From August 2 to August 6, 2019, we held the first summer camp this year, the term 1 of Academy Camp 2019 Summer - REINVENT THE WORLD, in Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC), Keio University and TOKYO BIG SIGHT, where Maker Faire Tokyo 2019 was held. Twenty children from Fukushima and Miyagi (ones moved from Fukushima) joined the camp, including one high-school student as a sub-leader, the role for elder participants of Academy Camp to experience works of the camp staff.
As our previous report described, one of the objectives of this camp was to come back to Maker Faire, an event to "celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset" (Wikipedia), as makers (exhibitors) instead of visitors. We went from Fujisawa to Tokyo for two consecutive days for the event, where we exhibited a workshop called "Let's make rolling e-sports!", in which we improvised rules of e-sports using robotic balls, and played the games with the visitors (mainly children).
When we first came up with the idea of doing this, even our staff members were unsure if the children could take the responsible role as exhibitors. But the outcome was just fascinating. Our maker children were mostly autonomously taking care of the steady stream of visitor children, and the maker children enjoyed being exhibitors so much that they almost forgot time.
During the camp, we also visited Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation), played SIG (Sociological Imagination Game) being developed to imagine lives in year 2050, and enjoyed firework. Finally, we tried to reinvent the future by each drawing a roadmap to tell their own milestones towards year 2050, which we showed among one another to become witnesses - so that they are not just writings but promises.
We are glad that it looks as if the children are making a successful transition from visitors to makers of their own future.
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