Truckee Roundhouse 2024 Year-End Reflections
Holy wow, 2024! Witnessing how Tahoe Truckee comes together to be creative is a continued joy and honor. We feel extremely lucky to have such a supportive, inventive, and artistic community. We are a small but mighty staff of two, super boosted by our team of 45 regular and dedicated volunteers. As we mature as an organization, I find myself working more behind the scenes, building important relationships to ensure that we can continue to support our community with the space, tools, teachers, and mentors to empower and transform lives.
Someone asked me recently: What does success look like at a makerspace?
Success at the Roundhouse is so many things, but here are a few of my favorites for 2024.
Success is a young person, detached from their education, reconnecting with what they are passionate about in our Maker-in-Residence program. Ivan is a young man who came to the Roundhouse through our partnership with Truckee River School. Through our Maker-in-Residence program, he had access to a membership and mentors and discovered a passion for graphic design. He reconnected with a vision for his future and engaged with his community to learn career-building skills.
Success is partnering with the Wounded Warrior Project to offer a couples workshop and having a wife tear up in pride at how her husband, who rarely leaves the house because of his PTSD, is laughing, making friends, and trying woodworking.
Success is witnessing two young men, who joined us at our TTUSD Middle School STEAM Academy and then returned to the Roundhouse in high school as summer volunteers, get accepted into Cal Poly and Berkeley engineering programs.
Success is celebrating our volunteer Brent, who came to the Roundhouse seeking meaning and purpose after a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, as he is honored with a Jeff Hamilton Legacy Fund Juniper Award. His dedication to mentoring others, sharing his skills and expertise, and strengthening the trades in our community has inspired many local youth and adults and positively impacted all who know him.
Success is observing high school students, some previously labeled as disengaged or uninspired in school, come alive as they collaborate over six weeks to weld a bike rack for a community service project.
Success is seeing the members of the Ceramics Shop come together to help Sierra Community House meet a last-minute demand for bowls for their Empty Bowls Soup Fundraiser, generously sharing their time and skills to uplift another nonprofit in our community.
Success is witnessing middle school students learning to find their own voices, collaborating and compromising with compassion and empathy while designing a custom bookshelf for their school.
Success is partnering with AIM HIGH to teach students skills in our Wood Shop, and realizing we’re not just showing them how to build a planter box but strengthening their confidence to build a future.
Success is seeing the Roundhouse serve as an open door—a place where someone, whether they’ve been in this country for ten days or ten generations, can forge relationships that break through social barriers—age, education, income, language—and instead focus on the art, ingenuity, and imagination that connects us.
Success is experiencing our volunteers' passion for the Roundhouse as they brave a snowstorm to open up for our members, lay on the floor with a pregnant belly to clean out the clay trap, or devote their Friday night to fixing a broken tool. Their commitment inspires everything we do.
Success is watching sixth graders master a new skill in our Textiles Shop and then help their classmates learn the same skill to create tote bags to give to Foster Care kids.
Success is launching our LGBTQIA+ Craft Workshops and championing community inclusion, belonging, and acceptance.
Making is the tool, but connection is the key.
Thank you for supporting tools to connect, tools to find purpose, and tools to help us all grow.
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year.
Gratefully,
Karyn Stanley
Executive Director
Truckee Roundhouse