STONE CIRCLE DESIGN CHALLENGE FOR UKRAINIAN AMERICAN YOUTH ASSOCIATION - BY AGRISCULPTURE

For Amy Lewis Sweetman, it has been a true honor and a pleasure to be the first and only American ever asked to design and teach a Summer Workshop Program for the Ukrainian American Youth Association - an international organization with branches in 14+ nations.

The Director's challenge to Amy - was to have her design a two and a half hour program where the participants - Ukrainian American Youth Association Students - would create a lasting monument - representing ongoing generations - using indigenous materials from the site.

Stone Circle Design Challenge was envisioned to open young minds to engineering and architectural thought processes via hands-on experiences with natural materials. Given an instruction to collect sticks and stones during the days before our Workshop, a large pile of wood along with mountain and river rocks were gathered.

To set the tone and give a prompt for the evening's Design Challenge, Amy shared a brief version of DO YOU LOVE WHAT YOU DO? - the AGRISCULPTURE story - tracing 16 of her projects from the past 16 years all over the world. Then the Students were divided into four groups - Architects, Engineers, Storytellers and Firekeepers. These four groups were given a one sentence direction, "Make a vertical stone circle (like a donut standing up) using only the available materials you had previously gathered without knowledge of this challenge."

The result - pure magic. A pair of brothers were the first to find a solution - and in turn - they taught the rest of their mates the answer... truly... a model for the world.