In two weeks, students from the Design LAB education program get to show off what they’ve been working on for the past six months.
The Design LAB: Push Play Exhibit is the culmination of their work with the program and will feature their models of play spaces.
Held at Newport on the Levee, the students’ work will be on display from 9 a.m. on May 11 through 11 p.m. on May 16. Then, from 10 a.m. through 1 p.m. on May 17, students will be at the exhibit discussing and presenting their projects.
“The kids are nervous, but they’re also really proud and excited to talk about what they’ve done,” Executive Director Design LAB Christen Lubbers told LINK nky.
Design LAB is a nonprofit organization with 150 volunteers who work with over 2,500 students in schools and organizations across the Greater Cincinnati region. The organization’s mission is to create appreciation, awareness and improve the built environment through education. They work to familiarize kids with careers they might not know about in the trade industry, architecture and engineering, with a focus on socially and sustainably responsible building.
The program runs from December to May. Local professionals in the design and build industry will team with educators and go into classrooms, kindergarten through eighth grade, mentoring students and teaching them about the industry.
In the first eight weeks, students learn all of the foundational basics. They learn about sites and clients and how designers are approached by clients or how they pursue clients. They also learn about plan section elevation, drawings and sustainable building practices.
In the last eight weeks of the program, students switch gears to show what they’ve learned by building models based on an annual theme. This year’s theme is “Push Play,” which organizers say is a challenge for students to “expand what they think of as a play space and who it can be built for.”
One model from each class is displayed at the exhibit.
Lubbers said part of the challenge is to come up with a problem to solve, but that problem can be anything. For example, last year’s theme was “Food for Thought,” and she said one group decided to solve the problem of SpongeBob not having enough seafood restaurants in Bikini Bottom.
“It doesn’t matter what their problem is or what they want to solve,” said Lubbers. “It’s the fact that we’re giving them the ability to talk about problems that they see in the world, and we’re giving them the power to create the solution and to physically build it; they’re not just writing down what they think it should be, they’re physically like putting it together and working through problems and working through the solutions as a team.”
Design LAB board president and VP of Strategy and Business Development at the Huseman Group, Ali Hubbard, told LINK nky that part of what makes the exhibit so special is getting to see the students defend their projects.
“You’re talking to third graders,” said Hubbard. “Put yourself back when you were in third grade, were you able to present confidently about anything? I was making clover crowns in the outfield and doing cartwheels all over the place. I wasn’t standing there communicating about my beautiful design and defending it. It’s impressive what these kids can do.”
The Design LAB education program is completely free, and they want to keep it that way.
The program, Lubbers said, costs around $80 per student, and “we want to make sure it stays free for all of them. We want to make sure that we are reaching the students who need it the most, and therefore, we really feel confident that we need to keep the program free of charge.”
Enter Dine with Design, the group’s largest annual fundraiser, which raises over a third of its operating budget. Lubbers said the event raised around $82,000 last year, which paid for the program for 1,000 students.
“It’s a really dynamic event,” said Hubbard about Dine with Design.
This year, Dine with Design is on May 14. It kicks off at the Gallery at Newport on the Levee, where an award ceremony for the program’s educator and the volunteer of the year will be held. Then, the 300 participants split into groups and go on a restaurant crawl around Newport.
Each restaurant will provide small plates and drinks for participants. This year’s participating restaurants include Pensive Distilling, Shiners on the Levee, Pompillios, Hofbräuhaus, Wooden Cask Brewing and Par3.
The event then ends with a party back at the levee.
Hubbard said that while being a moneymaker for Design LAB, it’s also a fantastic place to network, as some of the decision makers of some of the largest companies in Greater Cincinnati will be in attendance. It’s also a way for Newport businesses to make some money and get exposure, especially after the fire that shut down the Big Mac Bridges southbound lanes from Nov. 1, 2024, to Feb. 9.
“They’ve kind of struggled through the bridge closure,” said Hubbard. “So now this is our opportunity to bring the 300 people through to help spark some economic development.”
Learn more about Design LAB and their upcoming events at designlearnandbuild.org.
