Hilltown Families 
Cardboard Challenge Unleashes Creative Free Play
Kids Can Grasp the Spirit of Community Collaboration Through Creativity & Recycled Art
The Cardboard Challenge makes a great intergenerational project for families and community organizations to participate in, combining creative free play with recycling and design skills!
Have you heard of Caine’s Arcade? The spirit of Caine’s creative genius comes to communities worldwide through the Global Cardboard Challenge! An event that combines creative free play with recycling and design skills, the Cardboard Challenge welcomes folks of all ages to exercise their own Caine-like creative genius to make masterpieces of all shapes and sizes using recycled materials – specifically, cardboard!
Though the Cardboard Challenge is technically an event, it’s one with lots of flexibility. The challenge begins in September (so it has already started!) and comes to a close on October 11th. Participation is simple – gather up some cardboard, bring along some cutting and sticking supplies, bring some creative friends, and build away! The Cardboard Challenge makes a great family project – simply raid your recycling bin and see what it turns into. Teachers, youth groups, and community organizations can easily participate in the creativity-filled event – simply organize a date, time, and place (perhaps on October 11th to match up with the event’s official closing), and bring enthusiastic folks together to build.
The nature of the event is such that it lends itself to intergenerational collaboration. Not only can adult participants share their creativity with kids, but their skills using tools like box cutters, tape, and glue can be instrumental in allowing youngsters to achieve the cardboard creation of their dreams. The spirit of the event is to enjoy creating with recycled materials, and community collaboration is an important element of this process. The combination of the unique creativity of a young child (or a group of young children) and the skills and determination of tweens, teens, and adults is sure to result in surprising and fantastic results. You never know – you might end up with a new piece of furniture for your house or a giant creature to decorate your porch with.
If you’re planning to participate, don’t forget to register your event with the Imagination Foundation. Signing up helps the foundation to keep track of how many people participate each year, and they’ll also be able to add another geographic location to the log of participants worldwide. Additionally, send some photos and videos of your creations and the creative process your group follows to our friends over at Permie Kids! Sharing work is a great way to connect with others participating in the creative madness that is the Cardboard Challenge, and assisting with Permie Kids’ archiving of the event means you’ll not only be creating, but also contributing to a collaborative project. Your creations will instantly become part of something larger – a community creative effort, connected through the internet!
[Photo credit: (cc) Hakee Chang; Connie Tsang]
