Museum of Tomorrow will host an exhibit at David Brower Center that portrays climate change through an interactive approach that people can share with their friends on social media.
Museum of Tomorrow To Host Exhibit at David Brower Center
Pop-Up Sustainability Museum at David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 from March 7 - May 1
Jessica W. Ho and the Museum of Tomorrow team draw their peers’ attention to environmental issues through interactive museum exhibits.
Jessica Ho, 2019 graduate of UC Berkeley’s development practice master’s degree and Museum of Tomorrow founder, noticed a “disconnect between the people who care about the environment and the people who don’t.”
She also noticed what these people have in common.
“Everyone talks about social media,” said Ho. “Everyone wants to post beautiful pictures on Instagram.”
Bridging this gap is Museum of Tomorrow, which Ho describes as a “desirable and eye-catching” pop-up museum that portrays climate change through an interactive approach that people can capture on their phones and share with their friends on social media.
In 2018, Museum of Tomorrow won 3rd place in the Big Ideas Contest, which led to its first exhibit on UC Berkeley’s campus in April 2019.
A blow-up igloo, decorated with balloons spelling “MOT POP,” was situated on Lower Sproul Plaza, one of UC Berkeley’s busiest intersections. When students went inside the igloo, they interacted with different exhibits focused on C02 emissions and plastic waste and learned how they can make lifestyle changes to lessen their own environmental impacts.
Ho explained that her intention for the museum is to draw her peers’ attention to environmental issues, while “also providing a feasible way to address the problem” of waste and emissions.
One of Ho’s favorite exhibits is the Food Tornado. Visitors go inside a photo booth, which displays three protein options: beef, chicken, and tofu. Depending on which button is pressed, different amounts of wind and streamers blow down onto the visitor, symbolizing the amount of CO2 emitted when choosing a protein.
In 2018 and 2019, Balcom, a UC Berkeley PhD student in mechanical and development engineering, won the Big Ideas Contest and Big Ideas Scaling Up for Takataka Plastics, a social enterprise that locally transforms plastic waste in Gulu, Uganda into quality and affordable construction materials.
In early February, Takataka hosted its first community clean-up, where they and volunteers helped clean the local market, bring the collected waste to the Takataka office, and sort it.
When India restricted international plastic waste imports in October 2019, recycling programs in developing countries stalled due to a lack of technology to locally recycle, leaving recycling plants in Kampala, Uganda “overflowing, with tons and tons of plastics,” said Paige Balcom, co-founder and CTO of Takataka Plastics. “And there’s no way to get rid of it.”
Although plastic waste recycling is a challenge in Uganda’s capital city, the problem is even greater in smaller Ugandan towns. “Gulu is a waste sink because trash gets in, but there’s no way for it to get out,” said Balcom, explaining that the nearest recycling centers for Gulu are the plants in Kampala, a six hour drive away.
In 2018 and 2019, Balcom, a UC Berkeley PhD student in mechanical and development engineering, won the Big Ideas Contest and Big Ideas Scaling Up for Takataka Plastics, a social enterprise that locally transforms plastic waste in Gulu, Uganda into quality and affordable construction materials.
By locally fabricating technology that transforms plastic waste into recycled wall tiles, Takataka Plastics is creating jobs for Gulu locals and providing sustainable products for a growing construction industry in Uganda.
After graduating first in her class in mechanical engineering at University of New Hampshire in 2016, Balcom received a Fulbright grant to work for ChildVoice, a Ugandan NGO that supports war-affected children. Deferring a year from UC Berkeley’s mechanical engineering PhD program, Balcom worked specifically with child mothers, calling her time in Uganda “personally transformative.”
When starting her PhD at UC Berkeley in 2017, Balcom decided to change her research focus to issues in Uganda. “I realized that I loved Uganda and the people there,” said Balcom “and I wanted to go back.”
In 2017, Balcom partnered with Peter Okwoko, former lecturer at Gulu University and Founder of AfriGreen Sustain, an initiative promoting sustainable environmental practices in Gulu through education and sensitization efforts. Together, they decided to concentrate on closing a loop in Gulu’s circular economy.
“Takataka does everything locally. We collect the plastics, we sort them and we process them in the same community,” said Balcom. “We are trying to pour as much as we can into the local economy.”
By locally fabricating technology that transforms plastic waste into recycled wall tiles, Takataka Plastics is creating jobs for the Gulu economy.
Besides improving the health and environmental conditions in Gulu, Takataka Plastics aims to create jobs, tackling Uganda’s 60 percent unemployed for the youth by partnering with Hashtag Gulu, an organization that works with kids who have run away from abusive home situations and are often left without food and shelter on the streets.
Balcom and her team are currently working on building machines that can process PET plastic, or polyethylene terephthalate, which is the common plastic found in water bottles.
“Only 20 percent of waste in Gulu is collected, and even that is not sorted,” Balcom said, explaining how Gulu’s plastic, organic, and medical waste is left in a dumpsite just outside of town. “What we are trying to do is very difficult,” said Balcom, “which makes it that much more rewarding.”
China’s plastic import ban has affected the U.S. as well. “Many cities and towns in the U.S. that use to recycle plastic aren’t doing it anymore, and their recycled waste is being sent to the landfill because they can’t export it,” said Balcom. “What I think we can learn from Takataka Plastics are other possible local recycling models.”
In early February, Takataka hosted its first community clean-up, where they invited locals to help clean the local market, bring the collected waste to the Takataka office, and sort it. “It was encouraging to see how many people came out,” said Balcom, “and how much interest there was from people who wanted to help out the environment and their community.”
Partnering with The Market Project, a U.S. nonprofit that supports social enterprises focused on helping people who have experienced trauma, exploitation, and trafficking, Balcom and Okwoko launched their pilot program in Gulu in January 2020 to scale up their prototype machines, produce recycled wall tiles, and sell their products within the year.
“There’s a lot of things I am excited for,” said Balcom about Takataka Plastic’s launch. “I’m excited to be able to give jobs to the kids who live on the streets, build these machines, and just see a clean Gulu.”
Takataka Plastics
Transforming plastic waste into quality construction materials.
With all of the excitement and funding directed at artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and gene editing, it is hard to remember that one of the most consistently innovative and financially robust sectors in the United States is the “creative industry.”
Richard Andrews, Lecturer, Arts Entrepreneurship.
With all of the excitement and funding directed at artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and gene editing, it is hard to remember that one of the most consistently innovative and financially robust sectors in the United States is the “creative industry.”
According to a March 2019 National for the Endowment of the Arts report—the contribution of culture and art to the U.S. economy is $800 billion per year, bigger than economic output of Sweden. The report noted that more than 5 million Americans work in the arts-and-culture economy, generating nearly $400 billion in wages in 2016 from 35 key arts-and-culture fields, such as broadcasting, movies, streaming, publishing, the performing arts, and arts-related retail.
One of the people who knows this information best is Richard S. Andrews, who teaches arts entrepreneurship at Cal. Andrews has worked in arts management for over two decades—serving as associate director of the UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies and executive director of the Eco Ensemble—and has witnessed dramatic changes to the arts driven by digital outreach, distribution, and streaming and the culture of “free” content on the Internet. In an interview in Blum Hall, he pointed out that the vast majority of successful musicians today no longer make their income from song or album sales but from tickets for concerts and tours; meanwhile, streaming services and YouTube have become the new middlemen.
These changes, Andrews says, have increased the need for education not just in arts management but in arts entrepreneurship. Since 2013, Andrews’ courses have attracted students from arts and non-arts majors interested in the tools, techniques, and concepts needed to invent, launch, and sustain a business in the creative sector. He has even written a book on the subject, just out from Routledge.
Explains Richard: “My course is practical and hands-on. We go through the main business idea: What is the product or service you are offering? What problem does it solve? What needs does it address? How will you understand the premise of such a product or service in the marketplace? Can you do marketing analysis? Can you understand competition or partners? The thing about the arts as a business is you’re not necessarily trying to take customers away from the gallery or theater down the street. You might actually be collaborating with them.”
Richard Andrews teaches Arts Entrepreneurship classes and workshops along with guest lecturers.
This spring, with support from the Big Ideas Contest and the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Andrews will teach LS 105 Arts Entrepreneurship Mondays 2-5 pm. In addition, he will offer a seminar tailored to Big Ideas finalists and non-finalists in the Art and Social Change track, which will meet four times during the semester. Students will learn concept development, marketing analysis and marketing plans, fundraising, legal issues, financial management, and then submit a business plan outline and present a short pitch. Guest presentations will include people from California Lawyers for the Arts, crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, and alumni working in various creative fields.
For Big Ideas Director Phillip Denny, the class and seminars are intended to provide Big Ideas applicants in the Art and Social Change track with instruction, feedback, and support as they develop and refine their art-based social start-up concepts. Denny notes that the Arts and Social Change track was developed eight years ago to diversify the ideas, projects, and students coming into the social innovation contest that now attracts 1200 students per year across all 10 University of California campuses and two foreign universities.
“We wanted to get more students from outside engineering and business,” explained Denny. “We wanted to get more women engaged. We wanted to open up entrepreneurship to other parts of the campus. We want to get more out-of-the-box ideas. And that has happened.”
Among the students who have benefitted from both the Big Ideas Contest and Andrews’ arts entrepreneurship class is Skylar Economy, who received her BA in Film & Media Studies in 2016 and has since co-founded Photogénie Films. “FITE Film,” a short documentary directed by Economy about four formerly incarcerated students at UC Berkeley and their path to higher education and success, was honored with the 2016 Clinton Global Initiative Selected Commitment, Fast Company’s World Changing Idea Finalist 2016, and Red Bull Amaphiko Social Entrepreneurship Finalist 2016.
Economy credits the combination of the Big Ideas Contest (FITE Film won first place in the Art & Social Change track in 2016) and Andrews’ course with her setting her on a path to arts entrepreneurship.
“Now I own an art business,” she said in a 2019 video interview. “If you had told me that when I was a freshman in college, I would never have believed it.”
