The Crafts Center received a grant of $6,718.20 from the Tufts Community Union (TCU)Senate on Nov. 9 to overhaul its supplies for the remainder of the academic year. The managers of the center hope to use this grant to ensure the sustainable, long-term existence of the center at Tufts.
Junior Charlie Wiebe, one of the managers of the Crafts Center, explained that the center has an annual operating budget of $5,200 and requests supplementary budget grants throughout the year based on specific needs. He explained that this year, he and sophomore Miller Schulman, another manager of the Crafts Center, are focusing on general improvement projects and capital investment for the future of the center.
Former Crafts Center manager Nick Lusardo (LA '14) said that he, Schulman and Wiebe last month approached the TCUAllocationsBoard with a proposal for the financing of over 20 new items, including an air filtration system in the wood shop, an etching press, a heavy duty sewing machine and a Silhouette Cameo electronic cutting machine.
The request, which was for over $7,000, included an itemized budget and a timeline for purchases, he said.
“We wanted to do a total update of the entire center," Lusardo said. "That includes use policies, certification processes to use specialized equipment [and] reorganization of the various sections."
After doing a master inventory of everything in the center, the managers looked at what items could be fixed and what things they wanted to purchase anew, Lusardo explained.
"[We wanted to make] sure that we were purchasing things that were durable, heavy-duty, cost-effective," he said. "We wanted to get out of the cycle of buying cheap supplies more often.”
According to Wiebe, supplies are being purchased and installed incrementally.
Lusardo added that he plans to work on these changes throughout winter break in time for a grand reopening of the center in either late January or early February next year to showcase its updates. All of the material purchases are scheduled to be installed by the end of the academic year.
According to Lusardo, this grant has been a step in the overall process of increasing continuity for the Crafts Center.
“When I became involved in Crafts Center my sophomore year, the center itself was kind of falling apart,” he said. “It was really poorly managed, it was really unorganized, there was a lot of theft, a lot of safety issues. That's a liability issue, and in my experience, this is a very important thing for the school to have for the students."
Lusardo noted that when he took on the role of manager, he wanted to make it his priority to improve the overall functionality and accessibility of the center.
Wiebe and Lusardo both emphasized a shift to more informed usage of the Crafts Center throughout next year. Wiebe said he is currently developing a curriculum, new policies, a training procedure and safety guidelines for sections at the Crafts Center, so that all students have an opportunity to be trained and safely use the equipment.
“[The center is] buying all of this new, expensive equipment and overhauling [the] center from [its] basic mission as a free space where members of the community can come together to create and learn, into a more [structured] format of that with more opportunities for people to go from a basic level of knowledge to a higher understanding,” Lusardo said.
Wiebe said he hopes to transition into online training, whereby students could be certified and sign a code of conduct online and then be allowed to use equipment based on a tag to their student identification number.
The Senate used to fund a coordinator for the Center, and the center has since struggled without it, according to Lusardo. He said that having Assistant Professor of Education Ben Shapiro come on board as faculty advisor last year has been a step in the right direction toward increased continuity and sustainability for the center.
“We've seen a huge growth in use and participation in [the] center by a variety of clubs, individuals, engineers -- all kinds of folks from the school,” he said.
"I think that makes sense, given that if this is a space that students enjoy and get a lot of use out of, it's important," he said.
