Dream Blog
Read about Dream Tank news and recent events,
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Dream Tank News: Boulder Startup Week & Regenerative Future Summit
Last week, Boulder celebrated its world leading startup culture with over 200 events in five days! Galvanize is one of our sponsors and Jim Deters, founder of Galvanize, and Emilie Kintner, Director of Galvanize Boulder, led a talk at the 3 year birthday party during Boulder Startup Week. Galvanize is a great resource for startups in Boulder. We are excited to have Dream Tank at Galvanize July 24-29 and launch more amazing kid-led ventures!
According to their website, since Boulder Startup Week in 2016, it has acquired additional companies (to bring the total to 41) and expanded its network footprint by 10,000 miles (122,000 route miles total). This kind of opportunity allows companies to network in fields they never would have expected to connect with. Each year holds unique experiences, professionals, and memories. Dream Tank is looking forward to bringing even more youth voices and ideas into Boulder Startup Week next year and beyond!
Community Night: Youth and Innovation
Philip Weiser is a professor of law and telecommunications at CU. He is leading a new innovation and entrepreneurship initiative on campus, and recently announced his run for attorney general of CO! (Dream)maker Emma Kraft joined him during Boulder Startup Week’s community night at the Boulder Theater to talk about youth innovation and Dream Tank! Full video will be published next week, stay tuned!
The first annual regenerative future summit was this week! From May 15th-17th, leaders shared their ideas about forward thinking to make a sustainable future. Our CEO Heidi Cuppari had the pleasure of speaking about consciousness leadership in business.. and invited everyone to take a stand and start listening to the world’s best innovators – kids!
Check out Heidi’s speech in the video below:
14 Youth-Led Startups Launching in Boulder
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
– Buckminster Fuller
Innovation is critical for our future. Yet, our current education systems are teaching memorization versus critical and creative learning necessary for our rapidly growing world.
That is all about to change.
14 young leaders from Colorado have emerged from the Dream Tank, where they have been incubating and designing an innovation that helps people and the planet. With their imagination, productive use of technology, and strong community allies, the Dreamakers have each uncovered a unique way to shape the future. The ventures will be revealed on Innovation Night April 11th. Get your tickets and bring a friend! Kids under 16 are FREE.
The night will feature innovation in:
- DESIGN & MAKERS
- INVENTIONS & TECHNOLOGY
- SOCIAL ACTION & ANIMAL RIGHTS
Meet Cartoonist and Comic Book Illustrator and Writer, Matea Chavez-Grandits
Matea will be launching Quirky and giving live demonstrations on how she learned character design and development by following her passion and natural gifts.
See how the Koala Girls are Taking Action for Endangered Species
10 yr old Della Beers and 11 yr old Sophie Feller are teaming up to raise awareness and protect the Australian koalas whose habitat is rapidly vanishing.
Learn how Minecraft Builders is using Tech to Protect Animals
Find out how 8 yr old Ian Feller and 9 yr old Ayden Dedrick-Fodeman used the popular game of Minecraft to convince the School Board and City Council to save an Owl Preserve in Boulder County!
WE INVITE YOU TO
Show Up. Be Inspired. Laugh. Cry. Dream Big.
Innovation Night
Be Inspired. Be Activated. Laugh. Cry. Dream Big.
Are you ready to enter the Dream Tank?
For the past 8 weeks, the Dreammakers ages 8-14 have gone through a DREAM-DESIGN-LAUNCH process whereby they fused their dreams with solutions to help people and the planet. The process culminates on April 11 in this event’s Pitch Night where kids share their Dreams with the community for feedback and support.
If you believe in the genius of kids, please show up and support them! We invite you to help us expand our community and share this with other parents, business professionals, startup and tech folks, social impact innovators and investors, philanthropists, educators, and other kids and students.
We expect this event to sell out. So, grab your cape, your imagination, your open heart, reserve your seat, and then buckle your seatbelts for blastoff!
Come see the first public showing of HOME OF THE OWLS on a big screen!
Celebrate the Story Architects, Dreamakers’ who wanted to avoid the “Bored Room” when they grow up, so they started a production company.
They love Film, Music, Fun, Animals and Entrepreneurship. At Dream Tank, they fused their gifts to take action on a local issue by making a short Documentary Film. Hear the story live from Anya and Summer
on April 11!
Suggested donation:
$11 ADULTS
$5 HS AND COLLEGE STUDENTS
KIDS UP TO AGE 16 AND DREAMAKER PARENTS ARE FREE
P.S. Dream Tank is now on Cubspot, the best place for busy parents to find & book their kids’ programs in one place (for free)!
Victory for the Owls!
Boulder County Planning Commission Rejects Development Proposal in 5 to 4 Vote
Dream of a Twin Lakes Owl Preserve and Open Space moves closer to reality
(Boulder, Colorado) In a historic vote that resolves one of the biggest environmental controversies to have taken place in Boulder County, the Boulder County Planning Commission has rejected a land-use change proposal to build 300 apartments on the site of the proposed Twin Lakes Owl Preserve and Open Space. The decision has been widely praised in Boulder which places a high value on open space and natural areas.
Community members and environmental groups are supportive of affordable housing, but are delighted that the proposed development will be relocated and not be built on key owl habitat that is home to the most visited owls in Colorado. Boulder County Parks and Open Space indicates that 100,000 people visits occur each year at Twin Lakes in north Boulder with many specifically to see the great horned owls.
“The proposed Twin Lakes Owl Preserve and Open Space will be a wonderful place for people and owls,” explains Ken Beitel, Chair of Wilderness Conservation for the Twin Lakes Owl Preserve and Open Space organization, “We are grateful for the Planning Commission’s wisdom in protecting this remarkable ecosystem for future generations to come.” Dozens of species live on or use these meadows, including bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, great blue herons, geese and osprey, as well as red foxes, coyotes, mink, raccoons, tiger salamanders, western painted turtles, rabbits, bats and other mammals.
The night before the Planning Commission vote, Boulder Valley School District students, fellow Dreamakers, and Owl Preserve representatives presented at the monthly school board meeting and invited the Boulder Valley School District to help protect the owls by creating an Owl Education Center at the Twin Lakes Owl Preserve.
Among those giving testimony at the school board meeting were grade 5/6 students Anya Smith and Summer Cuppari Gould of Dream Tank who just released the Twin Lakes Owl documentary “Home of the Owls”. Featuring the remarkable perspective of a hunting great horned Owl, the documentary has gone viral on You Tube with more than 700 views in 3 days. The program can be viewed at www.BoulderOwlPreserve.org
“We had a warm welcome from the Boulder Valley School District the day prior to this historic vote and board members expressed interest in touring the proposed Owl Preserve and Open Space. We appreciate their willingness to discuss the potential creation of a BVSD Owl Education Center,” explains Ken Beitel, “Open to the community and complete with nature trails, interpretive signs and guided hikes, the Owl Education Center could become one of the most loved elements of the BVSD school district as 10,000 students and teachers each year experience the magic of baby owls learning to fly and the life-cycle of these wild great horned owls.”
If the proposed partnership with BVSD and Boulder County and the Twin Lakes community proceeds, several thousand BVSD students and community members will work with ecologists over the next year to restore the 20 acre Owl Hunting Meadow to native short grass prairie with abundant wildflowers. Half of the Owl Preserve board members are BVSD students who will guide the organization in providing educational experiences valuable to young people.
To learn more about this story, read the Daily Camera: http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_30798565/boulder-county-planning-panel-rejects-twin-lakes-land