Design and Resources

We have a way to go in terms of design but it's good to start mapping out the container in terms of space which Martin has done here- seeing what will work and what won't.

We've been on the hunt for materiels and came across aluminium laminate offcuts from the sign shop which we can get for free - James kindly picked up some. I also went to visit Heinz who has a business making furniture for daycare centres - they have lots of useful offcuts but they're not cheap (compared to free - although I suspect we may be able to work on that) but could be a backup option (I think we can find somebody/company who may be able to provide plywood offcuts for free to a community project). To a degree the materials we can get our hands on are going to dictate the design but the challenge will be to do something surprising and creative with those materials - to turn them into something super cool (something that has the ‘wow’ effect as Marcus put it) that will get people thinking differently about those things we discard. If you have access to resources that may be useful or if you have contacts please let us know.

Cawthron

Last week I had a good meeting with Jess Ericson , a marine biologist at Cawthron specialising in how external stressors affect shellfish physiology and health (https://www.cawthron.org.nz/our-people/jess-ericson/). As well as her scientific work Jess is also interested in public engagement in citizen science projects and we discussed possible ways in which the Earth Lab project may be able to provide those opportunities as well as the possibility of using resources at Cawthron, such as monitoring equipment for example, for projects in the Earth Lab. It was a useful and positive meeting - watch this space.