CARDBOARD CHALLENGE

Can you make an arcade game or something else interesting out of cardboard?
This is a very open ended design challenge from the Imagination Foundation, with a fascinating story.
It sounds like a fairy tale.   Once upon a time, a 9 year old boy named Caine created an elaborate set of arcade games using mostly cardboard, tape, time and lots of imagination.  The arcade, located in the front of his dad’s auto parts store in Los Angeles, grew more and more elaborate, but never attracted any customers.  Until one day, a young filmmaker named Nirvan Mullock came to the store, looking for a door handle for his car, and became the first customer of the marvelous arcade.
Nirvan was entranced with the arcade and its earnest young proprietor.   With help from Caine’s dad, George, Nirvan hatched a plan to get a bunch of people to come and play the arcade, and made a short, incredibly sweet movie about the results:
Some amazing things have happened in the intervening year.

• The movie went viral on the Internet with more than 2 million viewers in the first week (and another 5 million since) and raised over $200,000 for a college fund for Caine.
• Kids around the world (encouraged by wonderful parents and educators) started building cool stuff out of cardboard and sending ideas and pictures to the Caine’s Arcade web site.
• A creative funder (the Goldhirsh Foundation) awarded Nirvan a substantial challenge grant to start an organization devoted to creativity and imagination.
• In the first 2 months, a school pilot project reached over 100 schools in 9 countries.
• A rousing collection of education visionaries endorsed the project.  As luminary Sir Ken Robinson said, “One of the greatest challenges we face in education is tapping into children’s natural powers of creativity and one of the appeals of Caine’s Arcade is it’s demonstrating how deep those powers are, and how readily people will rise to the challenge if you give it to them.  And I think if we can make that systemic in our education systems, we’ll transform the world for our children and for ourselves.”
• With a new movie Nirvan and his new Imagination Foundation launched the Cardboard Challenge and Global Day of Play.
• And today, October 6, 2012, the first Cardboard Challenge was celebrated at more than 200 events in 38 countries.   Follow the Imagination Foundation to find out more about this phenomenal movement/celebration of children’s imagination.

Kudos to Caine and all the imaginative kids in the world.  And bravo to Nirvan Mullick and his new foundation. The idea, as Nirvan says, is not only to give kids the tools to build the things they can imagine, but also to imagine the world that they can build.
Now go build something interesting out of cardboard.