This week’s MakeThings newsletter is about my trip to Orlando, Florida to see the grand opening of Mayor Clayton’s WonderLab at Give Kids the World Village. WonderLab is special in a number of ways but its origins and its development reflect the talents and purpose of the Orlando maker community.

Table of Contents

• Mayor Clayton’s WonderLab is a new kind of makersp …

• A Tour of WonderLab

• The Team

Mayor Clayton’s WonderLab is a new kind of makerspace for kids

First, let’s get something out of the way. Who is Mayor Clayton? Well, here he is.

That’s perhaps a good way to introduce Give Kids the World Village, where the new WonderLab is located. The Village is located on 89-acres in Kissimmee, Florida near DisneyWorld and other theme parks. If you’ve heard of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, then you might know that it serves kids with critical illnesses and their families. Make-A-Wish is a wish-granting organization and they send kids to Give the Kids the World Village to fulfill the wish, offering families week-long vacations at no cost. They come to stay in one of the 166 colorful, whimsical villas. They can visit nearby theme parks, eat in the cafeteria on-site, and as I was told repeatedly, they can have ice cream anytime they want.

Increasingly, families are spending more time in the Village, which can be a calmer, less crowded experience than Disney World. Ian Cole, the longtime producer of Maker Faire Orlando, started the project that would become WonderLab, based on the Village’s themes “creating happiness, inspiring optimism and igniting an enduring sense of hope.” He believed that those themes could be embodied in a makerspace designed for kids, one that accommodated children with special needs and offered meaningful hands-on experiences. Cole said (in a press release) that “WonderLab was designed to spark new interests, excitement and hope for teens and tweens who visit Give Kids The World Village as part of our ongoing effort to create magical experiences and unforgettable memories for every member of the family.” Cole is the Chief Innovation Officer for Give Kids The World Village.

A Tour of WonderLab

Outside of the WonderLab, you see the red, yellow and green Wonderbots.

Walking inside, you are greeted by an animatronic version of Mayor Clayton that moves its arms, nods it head and welcomes everyone. It’s one of several Spark-e animatronic figures donated by Garner Holt Education through Imagination.

Next is one of the thematic elements, the Brilliance Bottler, which is powered by “kids’ wonder, imagination and possibility.” It was designed by Evan Miga, whom you’ll meet later.

At the Brilliance Bottler, kids push buttons to play games that increase the flow of liquid in the tanks that are “connected” to the pulsing neon tubes that run throughout WonderLab. There are six different rooms or areas such as Tech 101 where you can use 3D printers and use 3D printed handlooms; the Test and Try lab where children can operate two Spark-e animatronic figures; and the Volts and Bolts Studio, which has animatronic birds built from a kit.

The design of WonderLab is careful not to shout out like a cartoon. There’s lots of wood and the colors are nicely balanced to leave room for the child’s own imagination. The tables are at a height that can accommodate children in wheelchairs.

WonderLab has a built-in audience from the families who come to live in the village. Each week, a new group arrives. Christie was excited that they will be able to see how things are working and make changes.

WonderLab will also need 8-10 volunteer staff each day. Fortunately, a lot of what happens in the Village depends on volunteers who fill over 1800 shifts a week. One of Ian’s strengths in organizing Maker Faire Orlando has been building a committed team of volunteers to run the event, and volunteers I met were amazing.

The Team

Holding on to the overall goal for WonderLab, Ian recruited people he knew through Maker Faire to contribute their talents and creative vision to WonderLab. Ian found a design architect for the project in Evan Miga and an educational experience designer in Christie Miga, a former teacher who specializes in experiential education. Both Evan and Christie had exhibited at Maker Faire Orlando, originally building cardboard robots. Christie joined the team to focus on how children will experience WonderLab and develop hands-on activities. (She is also documenting the creation of WonderLab and will be sharing videos on YouTube soon.)

Evan is an imagineer, an art director at Walt Disney Studios and he worked on the Guardians of the Galaxy exhibit. He wrote a 150-page specification, outlining the concept and visual design of WonderLab. He built an extensive 3D model that informed the work of architects and builders.

Angie Mendenhall joined the team after graduating from the Entertainment and Technology Center at Carnegie-Mellon. She worked on interfacing a Midi controller to the software that operates the Spark-e animatronics figure, creating a easier-to-use tactile experience to move the figure’s head, mouth, arms and legs. CJ Gladbach from the Indianapolis area is someone that Evan connected with online because of her excellent Blender skillset. She created animations of the Wonderbots that appear on screens throughout WonderLab.

Matthew Lish, who works at Sesame Street in NYC, adapted the Wonderbots as physical puppets.

For me, another wonderful thing about WonderLab was the team who came together and worked tirelessly to bring this project to life and fill it with their creative ideas. Candy Cole, Ian’s wife, said that Ian had worked every weekend since February. WonderLab is also a wonderful experiment, a fresh look at designing interactive space for kids that can be a model that others can learn from. I kept asking Christie this question: why can’t more kids have access to a space like this in schools and libraries and even community centers?

WonderLab is perhaps a way to get kids off screens and get them interacting with the physical world around them while exercising their imagination and discovering their creativity, which is something they can share with each other. WonderLab gives new twist on an old phrase —“it takes a Village with a WonderLab to raise a child.”

Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

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