Maker Trail

The Maker Trail was throughout Downtown Enid
during First Friday & Oktoberfest!

Video by Ty Tompkins, photos by Erin Haney Designs.

We were SO EXCITED to have 1 of 10 projects chosen nationally for this great new project!

Learning through discovery gives us the problem-solving experience necessary to be creative and innovative thinkers. The maker movement, including Makerspaces and Maker Faires across the world, involves independent inventors, designers, artisans and tinkerers creating and sharing.

We took the maker concept and created a Maker Trail with opportunities to explore, create and discover at various stations around Downtown Enid during First Friday on October 6th!

---

Maker Stations

Art Station
The Art Station was located in the Leonardo’s Children’s Museum parking lot, with Adventure Quest open that evening, which is the world’s largest community-built playground. It is also near Creative Arts Enid and our new Bright Future community-painted mural. The activity was a technique called Tapigami, which is building things out of masking tape. Volunteers were from Creative Arts Enid, Leonardo’s and the community. Some people really connected with the idea of creating with tape and had fun making things like glasses and hands.

Cardboard Build Station
The Cardboard Build Station stemmed from our recent giant hammer project, which we built out of carpet tubes and cardboard boxes. The construction instructor at Autry Technology Center ran this station at the Butterfly Project mural, next to the Downtown Kitchen Store, Cafe Garcia and David Allen Memorial Ballpark. Cardboard and tape provide so many possibilities, we look forward to building more giant things!

Circuit Station
The Circuit Station was in the Central National Bank Center plaza, where attendees also enjoyed live music. The unexpected fun of learning about the flow of electric current and lighting LEDs leads us to other ideas on a larger scale for the future, possibly with conductive paint, lights and sounds.

Geodesic Dome
The Geodesic Dome was built during the event on the Courthouse Lawn. This was fascinating to watch, and around 20 bystanders helped lift the last section when it was near completion. After the dome was built, children seemed compelled to run in circles under it, and it became a magical gathering place.

Library Makerspace
The Enid Public Library Makerspace gained new attention by being open during the Maker Trail. They have an abundance of supplies and electronics for learning and creating and and more people now realize what a great resource it is.

Music Station
The Music Station in front of Community Thrift & Gift consisted of a piano to disassemble. Part of learning is tinkering and seeing how things work by taking them apart. We had a lot of great comments from families and we let them take home surprisingly long piano keys to make other things out of them.

Potato Racing Station
The Potato Racing Station, located near the CDSA Non-Profit Center and The Felt Bird, included a 24-foot racing ramp that we borrowed from the Enid Farmers Market. Garfield County 4-H volunteers ran this station and helped attendees carve potatoes into cars, adding wheels, axles and googly eyes. This was a fun, busy station of learning how to make a potato car go in a straight line fast.

Robot Coding Station
The Robot Coding Station at Broadway Antiques & Uniques included 4 Ozobots that follow black lines and codes. It is surprisingly fun to draw a line and instructions in the form of color codes and watch a little robot follow them.

Straw Structure Station
The Straw Structure Station was located in our Oktoberfest area, run by the Northwest Oklahoma Association of Realtors. Building with straws and connectors called Strawbees was enjoyed by a lot of people, young and old.

---

Thank You To

Thank you to Edward Jones for providing the generous $2,500 matching grant for the Maker Trail!

Thank you to Main Street America for choosing the Maker Trail as one of ten projects in the placemaking challenge!

Thank you to ioby, a crowdfunding platform for community-based projects, for providing fundraising assistance!

---

Apprentice Sponsors

"The workforce of tomorrow requires the hands-on, problem solving, creative skills that are learned through making things. The Main Street Enid Maker Trail will provide the chance to exercise critical thinking skills as participants "tinker" at each of these interactive stations."
~ Lisa Powell, Associate Director,
Enid Regional Development Alliance

"At Envirotech we encourage our employees to be innovative and imaginative when solving our client's problems.  Those skills are difficult to teach in a classroom and best developed through experimentation. Yeah, we are the people that take things apart just to see how they work. We are very supportive of the Maker Trail where you can imagine, build and learn!"
~ Jimmy Stallings,President
Envirotech Engineering and Consulting, Inc.

"As a manufacturing company, GEFCO realizes the importance of educating our community to invest in our future.  Main Street Enid's Maker Trail project is a great opportunity for our company to give back to the community.  Our manufacturing plant employs skilled workers that specialize in welding, machining, designing, fabricating, assembling and engineering.  We are hopeful that this project will showcase maker skills and remind the community that these skills are continually needed right here in Enid."
~ GEFCO

"We are sponsoring and volunteering at the Maker Trail to contribute to fun community activities that inspire learning in areas involved in building houses and making homes."
~ Carolyn House, Association Executive,
Northwest Oklahoma Association of REALTORS®

---

Friend Sponsors

"At Corbin & Merz Architects, we are all about MAKING. From brick and mortar to shaping urban spaces, we strive to MAKE our built environment pleasant and habitable. With over 40 years of experience, and located right here, in Downtown Enid, we are your local, friendly, neighborhood architects. Stop by and say hello!
We are proud to support the wonderful Enid tradition of creativity and innovation through the Maker Trail Project organized by Main Street Enid."
~ Corbin & Merz Architects

"Growing up as a young boy in Enid, I was fascinated with making things.  In fact, my brother and I had a bag we named the "Making Bag" which we used  to collect all sorts of odd and ends from around our house. It might be a used plastic bottle, a small box, a scrap of fabric, or some left-over parts from something that broke.  It didn't matter....they all went into the bag. Why?  Because we were "makers."

We dreamed up and created all kinds of interesting inventions from games, to machines, to weapons (we were two boys after all). Most of the time, these things were held together by duct tape and glue, so they didn't last long. But by using our imaginations we developed a set of skills that would last--and in fact surfaced up front and center in our occupations.  

Fast forward 40 years and my brother Kurt is an experienced landscape architect—using his eye for detail and his spatial design skills to fashion beautiful outdoor spaces for people to enjoy. And me? I have spent nearly 25 years as a professional designer creating products, packaging, and printed pieces for a variety of businesses and organizations. Main Street Enid's Maker Trail project is a vital, incredible opportunity for our community!  Our children need to experience the joy of imagining something and then making it actually come to life with their own hands.  I urge you to support this worthy endeavor. It's an investment that could last a lifetime."
~ Kevin Friesen, President / Designer, Friesen Design

---

Community Donors