How Mead Students Created the Future Splash Pad
For the City Times
The future of Mead Field will be unveiled on Thursday, March 9. Here is how dozens of local students put together what will ultimately become the Mead splash pad.
On February 20, 2017, Mayor Vruwink along with City staff welcomed the Constitutional Convention group from Mead Elementary Charter School for a real-world designing session in the council chambers. The sole purpose, for splash pad development near the adjacent former Mead Pool.
Mayor Vruwink and Public Works Supervisor Joe Terry directed the presentation in which students watched videos focused on five different themes and their related features. The concept to building a great splash pad is believed to have components for all ages so that includes three basic sections: toddler, family, and teen.
Once the presentation was complete, the students moved on to an exercise learning splash pad scoring and limitations with Joe Terry. The splash pad scoring and limitations exercise took what the students just viewed in the presentation and put it into real-world perspective for them.
The students got to vote for their favorite features and discuss if and how it could fit into their splash pad plan. They reviewed things such as budget/cost, maintenance, water flow, and location of the feature on the splash pad keeping with the three sections of toddler, family, and teen.
Once an option was chosen, Terry entered it into a spreadsheet where it instantly calculated all the factors of said option. The students could then see if they were within budget and in line with water flow.
Once they chose all the options they wanted, the students could then review their work and add, delete or change things as they saw fit to stay on track. After they completed this exercise, the students split up into two groups to apply everything they just learned into two activities of designing a splash pad and voted on a theme.
Mayor Vruwink and City Clerk Paul Przybelski took charge of the voting on a theme activity in the council chambers. This allowed students to sit in the chairs just like an Alderperson, review the themes, and vote on their favorite one. Some considerations were: “should we have one theme, multiple themes, or no theme at all?”
The second activity, conducted by Joe Terry, Jen Clark from Mayor Vruwink’s office, and Travis Plowman, the City’s Multimedia Specialist, took place in the first floor conference room and consisted of the students designing, drawing, and virtually building their splash pad.
The students reviewed each feature that they liked the best and figured out where they would place it depending on the category it fell in between family, toddler, and teen. Plowman then demonstrated it on the virtual splash pad.
City Staff immediately took the findings from this planning session to MSA Professional Services to use for further input on the design.