Professor Dave Hall pointed his phone camera at the cover of an issue of The New Yorker. The image quickly came to life as the once still woman stepped through the doors of a black and yellow subway train. The image swirled into the New York skyline in a brilliant vision of augmented reality. At The Center for Design Control, you can learn how to create one of your own.
CDC is a creative space geared toward design students who want to polish their artistic skills and learn more about what it means to be an artist today.
CDC will host local artists as lecturers and Skype in artists from across the country. Students will also have the opportunity to become teachers. If a student masters a certain technique they will be allowed to give their own lecture on the subject.
“We got inspiration from Center of Disease Control for the name,” Hall said.
Butte and CSU Chico Professor Daniel Donnelly along with Butte Professor Dave Hall transformed a suite in The Garden Walk on Main street – which was originally intended to be a simple office – into a creative space for students to stretch their creative legs.
“We are a gym for creativity,” Hall said. “I want students to come here and build their creative muscles.”
CDC will offer three different kinds of classes: Learn, Make, and Earn. Learn classes will consist of a lecture of sorts and will cost around $5 to attend. The Make workshops will be an open lab where students can bring in their laptops and get help with projects they learned how to do during the Learn lectures. They will cost around $15 to $20.
“We’ll focus mainly on using on demand services like TeeSpring and StickerMule,” Hall said.
“Earns” will be a time where after creating a product, one can learn the social media marketing skills needed to promote oneself. They will also offer a monthly membership similar to how a gym membership works.
“When you learn how to do your own marketing, you don’t have to be a starving artist anymore,” Hall said.
The Earn sections will specifically focus on how to use cost effective marketing options like Facebook ads.
“I just wanted an office,” Hall said, as he stepped out from behind a podium, which he hopes will one day be covered in student made stickers.
Instead, Hall found another teaching opportunity.
On March 3, CDC will host an explanation of their purpose and March 4, they will host their first Teach session.
Anna Porretta can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_arts on Twitter.
