This project is to set up an event in a community and brings in the neighbors and get to know each other.
Cedar Park Apartment Complex is located on Hoosick St. and 21st St. It is an apartment complex that holds 10 buildings with minimum 140 apartment units. All 10 of the buildings surrounds an inner open space in this complex. This inner outdoor space actually creates a very nice courtyard for the residences to hang out.
However, this courtyard space has not been used very productively from the residences. Not only the residences don't use the courtyard, the residences don't have much interaction with their neighbors either.
So, I am proposing a small social gathering within this Gazebo space on Saturday afternoon - April 19th 2008. I served free strawberry smoothies for the community for whoever comes to the events. I used " Kinko's" - a chained business company that produce fast printing with all sizes of prints world wide - to make and produce 50 copies of the invitation of my proposing event.
The images on the left side is the copy of my invitation that is made from "Kinko's" selection of default invitation. There are actually multiple ways to design the invitation from Kinko's and they will print it out, but I chose the fastest way to get my invitation done.
It is double sided, and I fold the paper into half. The messages of the enclosed invitation is as following:
It is my pleasure to invite all of you to attend "Smoothie Saturday" to celebrate mid Spring. Since the weather is getting warm, I think this will be a great opportunity to meet and have a social gathering with all of you.
The ideally place for this event is the Gazebo in our center outdoor space.
Please feel free to come and say hi!
I will be providing free smoothie in the event.
After I printed out 50 copies of the invitation, I started to post them with tap on top of my neighbors' doors just so that they will see it for sure when they are accessing their apartments.
I prepared the amount of smoothie ingridents for only 20 people because I was not sure if there will actually be people showing up for the event. Since I have never seen my neighbors before, there is possibility that no one will show up for the gathering. The images on the left shows the process of me making the smoothie on Saturday morning. This is my first time making them and I had practice a couple times to get the right taste of a good smoothie - sweet and fruity.
At the beginning of the event, there was no one showing up. I called 2 of my friends to come support me. But just within 20 minutes, 4 of my neighbors came out from our apartment and attend the event. They each live across the hall way from my apartment, the one on top of it and the one that is on the same floor as my apartment. In the images they were also walking their dogs. It was a relaxing times. I get to meet and know my neighbors.
They all had at least one cup of my smoothie. It was a fun time talking with each other.
Most of them are working already, but the man wearing black shirt is still a student.I was standing inside the Gazebo which provides the shadows not to melt my smoothies that fast.
After talking with the first crowd of the group, the second group of my neighbors came to the event too. This group of crowd lives on the bottom of the same apartment I live in. The residences are a married couple and the other 3 people are their sister, sister's fiance, and their friend who comes to visit every weekend.
The lady who lives in the bottom floor actually enjoyed the event a lot. She was complaining how our apartment complex never held an event like this to get each other to know the neighbors better. She actually think this is a good idea of gather the residences and it should be something our apartment managers should be doing for the futures.
In general, this even was successful. Although only 4 apartment residences came to support the event, but it shows that people still care about having a more social and closer distance with their neighbors. And without an aesthetic form of event can still attract people's interest to attend an event.
