Innovation Project

Brainstorming Ideas

For our Innovation Project, our challenge was to use art & technology to share our favorite hobbies.

To get started, we brainstormed all the things we love to do in Warroad–like fishing, playing music, hockey, gardening, biking, exploring the forest, and more. We found out we have a LOT of hobbies! 

"Building" our Hobbies

Next, we each picked one of our favorite hobbies and built it out of Legos!  When we put all of our Lego builds together we created a Lego "Village of Fun!"

Using Technology

In each section of Legos, we placed QR codes that lead to our webpage–where we made YouTube videos and resources for each of our hobbies, so people can learn more about all the fun things to do in our community.

Visit each "hobby page" by clicking the links below:

We thought it be nice to actually have our QR codes around Warroad, so that people could scan the codes to find fun things to do.

Where could we put the QR codes in Warroad that would get people's attention?

We came up with the idea of having a...

"Sculpture Walk in Warroad" 

We can showcase our hobbies using new pieces of public art around town in popular places–like at the docks where people go fishing, by the hockey arena, near the forest trailhead, along the bike path, and more! 

On each art piece, we would attach a QR code that gives people resources and information about that activity.

 We also created a map to show where each sculpture is located, so visitors can take a "sculpture walk" to view them all.

Map of Proposed Locations of Public Art with QR Codes:

Here are some examples of how other communities have placed QR codes on public art:

Sharing with our Community

Our team held several "open houses" to propose the "Sculpture Walk in Warroad," where we put on a skit to talk through our ideas. 

We presented to our family & friends, to our classmates at school, at the public library, and to the City of Warroad Administrators & Development Team.  

Here are some pictures of those events and a video of our skit:

People really seemed to like our idea of using art and technology to engage others and get people excited about our hobbies. 

What else could we do to move this project forward? 

We continued working on our website and interviewing more people about our hobbies. The more resources we could add, the better! 

Our team also expanded our knowledge of the artistic process, to understand how public art and sculptures come to life!

The Artistic Process

1)  Inspiration

Our team did a lot of reseach looking at sculptures and public art online to get ideas of what types of art would best represent our hobbies! Here are a few examples of what inspired us:

2)  Sketching Ideas

After we found some inspiring images, we each did several sketches of what we would like our sculptures or public art to look like. We learned that no idea was a "bad" idea, and through the process of sketching, many ideas can come to mind. Here are a few examples:

3)  Making Sculpture Models

Using our sketches as a guide, we created small clay models of our sculptures. We learned that many artists use a small model before making a large sculpture. Our team had fun getting our hands dirty!

What do we hope to achieve through this project?

More people enjoying new hobbies in our community.

More public art around our beautiful city.

More resources available for people to try new hobbies & enjoy what they love.

Thank you!

Team Warbotics
Warroad Lego League