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This is Fronteras A Changing America.

I'm KC Counts.

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Cruces Creative's offers a makerspace, education and sustainability in the community.

We're talking with Lea Wise-Surguy, Cruces Creatives Executive Director and Patrick DeSimio Sustainability Director about how they do it.

But first, TV Production Manager Christian Valle gives us a tour on this episode of Community Connections.

Cruces Creatives is Las Crucess local makerspace where we empower the community through tools, space in a community to make most anything.

One of the first things you're going to find are our tools and our space.

That will include a dedicated kids classroom, a room with textiles and multiple sewing and looming machines, dedicated electronics room which I'm in right now to be able to do all sorts of coding electronics.

We have 3D printers here and laser cutter on site, and then also our woodshop and bicycle shop in the back.

There are lots of ways to get involved, and one of the first ways, it's just coming in to use our tools in our space.

And whether you're using that for a school project, a new skill that you want to learn or you're wanting to start a new business, we have members here that do a little bit of all of that, and to get involved in that way, memberships are the way to go.

Memberships give you access to the facility, and there's two ways to actually get a membership.

One is to have a paid membership.

In two, we offer volunteer membership.

So if you come in and regularly volunteer with us, you can have a free membership.

Oh, the woodshop is fun.

I have fiddled around with wood for years just doing stuff at home.

Never had the equipment that we have here.

There are people here that can help you out and show you the ropes, and we've got a lot of equipment that you wouldn't run into anyplace else.

It's enjoyable helping other people to do.

You know what their projects are so they can succeed.

And they can they can get things done and that keeps them coming back here Cruces Creatives also, and it's worth your while coming down to see it.

We have a lot of opportunities for creating and that's what it's all about.

We have dozens of events and classes and programs throughout each month, and anybody in the community is welcome to join.

Additionally, you're welcome to donate tools, time, or funding.

One of the great things about our space is that we're community built and community led, and a lot of the tools that we have here today were actually donations from our community.

Cruces Creatives is located at 205 East Lohman, right outside of downtown.

We hope to see you here.

To be able to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at crucescreatives.org or visit us on Facebook or Instagram.

And out of any of the impacts that I've seen out at Cruces Creatives is the ability of creativity to bring people together.

We're all creative and it has a shared language where everybody can talk to one another.

Well, Lea Wise-Surguy and Patrick DeSimio, thank you both for joining us.

A great introduction from our TV production manager, Christian Valle their of the facility.

And, it was a surprise to see everything that's going on there.

I want to start with some of the programs, that you host at Cruces Creative, beginning with those education programs.

And let's talk a little bit about, since we're entering, you know, those, spring, we're in the spring and heading into summer, when I know a lot of area students will be looking for things to do.

And I think you've got some options.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So, we have three main education programs that we run.

Our first one is our STEM, or STEAMM programming.

So science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics and an extra M for making.

So we really want to emphasize with our students that they get to use their hands, they're using tools and they're learning skill sets along the way.

So with a lot of our STEAMM programing, we're in afterschool programs, we actually work with NMSU's Stem Outreach Center to work at multiple schools throughout the city.

And then we partner with them to do often a lot of, summer camps, I believe we have ten programs coming out for the month of June this year.

Inside of those programs, Pat, if you would share.

Absolutely.

So within these programs, kids get to learn by actually making things.

There's all sorts of research literature showing that kids learn better when they get to apply, what they learn through real projects and through makerspace.

What better place can you have to make real projects happen.

So the kids get to do things, like exploring electric gardens, making their own sort of wonderland or fairyland with flowers that unfurl or light up little servos, little LEDs, little speakers, animatronic alebrijes.

Last year summer camp, I remember walking through the makerspace and seeing a group of middle schoolers excitedly working over their papier maché machines connecting the final wires, putting the finishing touches of paint on.

And I saw this absolutely gorgeous kind of hybrid snake eagle, maybe chicken combination that had, it had an impressive waddle on it.

A chasneagle.

Not just an eagle.

Right?

It was.

It was a chicken hawk.

I was blown away by it.

And then I saw its wings flap.

So it wasn't just this beautiful piece of art, but it had the animatronic aspect.

There are illuminated manuscripts that the kids get to make, hydraulic puppetry, all sorts of things for all sorts of different ages.

And going off of that, some of the things that are also wonderful is, thinking about any of the electronic components, the mechanical components, they're actually building those pieces.

So we hand them wires, we hand them motors and, battery packs, and we teach them how to actually build circuits and let them build those together.

Sometimes we're teaching them coding along the way.

And what's fun is like, especially with our electronics, like we're starting like, third, fourth graders and being able to say, you can solder, you have the ability to do technology right now.

What ages are served in your education programs?

So various it by funding, but we have served anywhere from kindergarten all the way up to high school and even, early young adult.

Freshmen and sophomores in colleges to, we remember, some engineering tours where, some, first, I think summer before second year, undergrad engineering students got to come by and get elbows deep in machinery and I remember especially one engineer saying, “man, this is great.

We never actually get to build stuff.” Well, why don't we go back to that origin story of the maker space and how it all came together?

Absolutely.

Thanks for asking.

So it was back in 2009.

I was working on my Bachelor of Fine Arts, and I was realizing I was about to graduate and I was going to lose access to all of the tools and the spaces and the community that made my art possible.

And, in what was a really unfortunate moment I lost my dad very suddenly and in a really unexpected way.

My family had won a lawsuit.

It was a great amount, but so.

I, I grew up in rented homes.

Like the biggest thing we ever owned was a vehicle, right?

Like I, I thought when I was going to grow up, I was going to work in retail and like that would be enough and like, whatever.

Right?

But this was, like, first off, my heart was broken because I loved my dad.

He was he was the best person in the world that I knew.

Right.

And then on top of it was this unexpected funding that I had never imagined would come my way.

And I wanted to do something good.

And also because it had happened, like through the military, right.

So like this was taxpayer dollars.

And I was like, I want this to go back to the community, right.

I wanted to solve what was my issue of like, how do I keep making the arts?

And I want this to do something good.

So back in 2009, I actually started this journey of like, okay, I want to make a makerspace.

I want to bring tools and community and spaces together.

And so I had this just absolutely long journey where I, I spent a long time trying to figure out where did I want to be.

And I searched all over the country, did it like a whole summer where half of it was data crunching, where I wanted to find a medium sized city.

So a lot going on.

It needed to have a growing population.

Fastest way to tell the economics of a city.

A diverse population.

A diverse population.

Openness.

Sounds like it might have helped you write the list?

No, actually.

A university of at least 10,000 students or more.

So you got like, awesome academic things going, along with a bunch of other things that I was looking at.

And then I went on an 8,000 mile road trip, and I everyday I stopped at one of the cities that made my list, and I would check them out, I would see how.

Like, so I would stop at the downtown, downtown library, and I would see how well did they fund their public institution.

I pull out their city budget for three consecutive years.

Like, do the numbers match?

Are they in the black or the red?

Are they looking at quality of life?

What are their long term plans?

How familiar are the people?

How clean the streets?

Because I knew I had one chance to pull this off, right?

And out of all the places I went to, I fell in love with Las Cruces back in 2009, and I was really lucky I met Pat, who were, were married.

I'm very, very lucky that, to be with Pat.

And in 2011 and I said, Pat, I, you're awesome.

You're amazing.

But like, first real date I was like, I gotta let you know, I'm moving to New Mexico and I'm starting a makerspace, and like, this is this is a very wild idea, that Im gonna do.

Do you actually want to come?

It wasn't a wild idea because she had some very compelling data.

Going through a city's, you know, budget for the last three years.

I mean, I go some place, oh, the weather's nice.

Yeah, I can put down roots here.

You know, a lot went into your choice, obviously.

And so you thought since she had put all this work and effort into creating this plan, that it must have been a pretty good.

Well, we run pretty parallel paths.

I was running a nonprofit fencing club teaching kids discipline, athleticism, strategy, and I have this lifelong bad habit of reading things.

And so being aware of the challenges facing our society and our world, I wanted to do something that could make a difference.

So I was working with a group of college friends to, turn abandoned lots into community gardens, fix up houses back in Dayton, Ohio, and, had been thinking more about cooperation and resource sharing and the best ways that we could gather people together for cooperative work and creativity to make things better.

And so when we got together and Lea had a very well thought out plan to get things started and a very promising location, knowing that our, area, originally of southwestern Ohio, wasn't well positioned for letting us do that work.

It was a little scary, but very exciting too.

Right.

So once you came to Las Cruces, and you mentioned funding earlier because programs depend on funding.

How did, how did those pieces all come together for you?

Absolutely.

So to begin with, I was very, very lucky to get into the MFA program here at NMSU.

I'm very happy to be an alumni.

Which they taught me like the next steps of what I actually needed to be prepared and to really step out into the community to say we're trying to do something big.

We're trying to do something important.

And at the very, very beginning.

So, within the sense of the funding that did come to my family, it was essentially the equivalent of what would be like a universal income.

So it was enough that we could just about live on it if we were very, very tight with absolutely everything.

So like they gave us the labor of time or the gift of time.

Right.

And then we pulled together a board.

We had one donation of $3,000.

And then we were very, very lucky to, our building, was owned by an individual who was willing to let us move in to the building and to a ramped up rent scale.

So we started in a 12,000 square foot building, $3,000 and team of volunteers and my dad's old tools.

And that was absolutely at when we first first started.

And we had to go through a process of almost like a, stone soup.

Exactly.

And for me, so I really consider us a makerspace 2.0.

So there is an original makerspace where it's the tools in a space, but we've tried to bring a ton of intentionality that is very, very community based.

It's about building people together.

And with that sense of like we did that stone soup and everybody brought a little bit that they had.

It also let the makerspace be literally of the community, because it was their interests that filled the space.

As we learned, in the piece, from Christian Valle at the beginning of the program, people are encouraged to donate old equipment that they might have.

That's, I'm assuming, in good working order.

All right.

Most of the gear that came in we needed to fix up.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

And so that's that that kind of feeds back to the, original mission, right, of letting people get hands on experience and creating and making and fixing things.

And we've talked a little bit about education, about kind of the younger side of the folks that you serve.

But why don't we talk about, some of the older adults, that might find something interesting at Cruces Creatives.

Absolutely.

And so, of course, we have our adult programing so like adult stained glass, there's 3D printing, there's art classes, there's woodshop programing and so if you take a look at our events calendar, there is oh my goodness.

Oh there are hundreds and hundreds of rooms.

Yeah, I, I stopped counting every year just because there were too many.

Well, you mentioned a 3D printer.

So I want to talk about how technology has changed and, you know whether there are opportunities for A. I. in what you do?

Interesting question.

So it's definitely something that we're looking at.

We've had one of our long term board members, team members who helped us do really innovative programing in the past, like being able to use mycelium or mushrooms to make, replacements foam.

Right, and we've done that with students before.

We've done different things with like algae.

And then, well, so I don't know if you know this or, like, talking with, John.

So he has been looking about whether we can make some programing to also help teach kids how to interact with A. I. So he's been doing a fun thing where he's been teaching A. I. to watch memes online, turn those memes into like an item an object, 3D prints, and then every day it goes back to look for more memes.

And so he's hoping to turn that into a program.

And who is John?

John Simmons is one of our board members and, one of our, inventors in residence.

Right.

Wow, that sounds exciting.

and you mentioned mushrooms, and I wanted to take the last few minutes that we had to talk about sustainability, kind of, and I think, Pat, you play a big role in that in terms of how you interact with the community and sustainable agriculture.

Yes.

So the title Sustainability Director refers both to grant writing and more conventional sustainability, taking care of the natural environment, ourselves, the whole ecosystem.

And within that, our overall mission as a makerspace is to help people make things and make things better.

And so obviously that ties into regenerative agriculture and sustainable agriculture, through the notion of work parties.

So, you know, for thousands of years, people have been getting together for some of the major events of agriculture at the harvest festivals, the planting times, you would have these community events where people would come together, get needed work done, get to know each other, celebrate and have connection and practical work at the same time.

It turns out that works extraordinarily well for sustainable, environmentally friendly agricultural practices, because for an environmentally friendly practice to work, it has to take the environment into account.

And because the environment isn't the same place to place, even necessarily from one farm to its neighbor.

Well you can think about how the landscape changes from the river valley up to the slopes of the Organ Mountains alone.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, how appropriate is it that the first airing of this program will be on the last day of Earth Month.

So great topic for, for that period of time and people can learn more about it.

And for the last couple of minutes here, I wanted to save a little bit of time for your neighborhood resilience program because I think, you know, going into neighborhoods and realizing that some of your neighbors might need some help with something around their houses.

And if there's a place to go, maybe to find some help with that is really valuable.

Yeah.

So, growing off of the approach of the agricultural work parties where a farmer or a rancher helps their neighbors implement a sustainable practice.

Biochar, a specialized composting.

passive water catchment systems.

We realized that the same approach could be really beneficial in urban areas, especially in some of the older housing and built up environments where there isn't shade.

As the climate heats up, as we face worsening water scarcity and as utility costs keep going up, what we can do, especially in older neighborhoods with more restricted incomes, could make a life saving difference even.

And so there are all sorts of proven technologies, like solar screens, which are basically sunglasses for windows, that can reduce indoor air temperatures by 25 plus degrees, or water efficient toilets that save tens of thousands of gallons a year compared to, conventional older models, to just weatherstripping and ceiling.

All of these are DIY suited projects, but it makes a really big difference if you've got an experienced person, an experienced maker who's worked in construction, who can guide you through all of the idiosyncrasies that so many of our charming homes have to reduce indoor temperatures, to blunt heat waves, to save water, and to save on energy costs.

Really excited to launch that program later this year.

Well, Lea Wise-Surguy Executive Director of Cruces Creatives and Patrick DeSimio, Sustainability Director at Cruces Creatives, thank you both for being with us.

Thank you so much for having us on KC.

Recently, the mayor's top teens were honored for their achievements in academics, extracurricular activities, and service to the community.

KRWG Public Media Membership Coordinator, Liz Liano, talked to each of the standout students, and we'll hear from all of them, beginning with Samantha Brasher.

Welcome to Mayor's Top Teens.

I'm Liz Liano, and today we're going to be talking to Samantha Brasher.

Hi, Samantha welcome and congratulations for being a Mayor's Top Teen.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's great to have you here.

So, like to hear a little bit about some of the activities and things that you've been up to.

So what are the things that you do at, at your high school?

So at Las Cruces High School, I play, basketball.

I've been playing for four years now.

We actually just had our last game.

It was, it was really a bittersweet moment for me but, it was really fun experience.

I also, I participate in our school's, science club, MESA, and I've been the president for two years.

We do like weekly meetings and participate in lots of, like, STEM related activities.

And then we also go to statewide competitions.

So last weekend I was just in, Albuquerque for, our MESA, our science olympiad competition.

And that was really fun experience.

I placed in, three categories.

So it was really fun.

I also do French Honor Society and National Honor Society, at Las Cruces High School.

And I do lots of community service, and, yeah.

That's wonderful.

That's quite a list.

So you said you compete with the Science Olympiad?

Yes.

So what is competing with that look like?

So there's basically a bunch of different, topics that you can compete in.

I did like remote sensing, for example.

And you just go in there and you take a test and they'll place you, yeah, it's it's really fun.

And then as a team, we get placed as well.

So a lot of STEM related activities such as that.

That sounds really cool.

And what do you do in the French Honor Society?

I promote like, love for French language and culture.

So we recently had, like a crêpe fundraiser where we made crêpes and we sold them.

And we've gone around to visit like schools and promote just love for different cultures.

Very nice.

And you said you also, do some community service.

Yeah I do.

I like, during like the holidays I like making like Christmas cards for hospitals, and I've.

I do like a toy drive with MESA every year and we donate to Jardin de los Ninos.

Very nice.

And how long have you been doing that?

Four years.

Four years?

Yes.

Your whole high school?

Yes.

Wonderful.

And, how do you plan on continuing community service when you leave high school?

I hope to keep helping out like those in my community.

Or if I end up moving away, I'll try and find, like, a group that I can that I can help out.

I like working at my mom's school, just helping, kids, like, learn.

It's really, an eye opening experience working with, like, a younger generation, I guess.

That's sweet.

You said if you move away.

So where do you plan on going to school?

I'm still considering my options.

I haven't really decided yet.

Maybe Colorado somewhere, but I don't want to move too far.

You want to stay close?

I do.

For your family?

Yeah, for my family and my friends.

I'm scared of leaving.

Oh, well, I'm sure we'll ever wherever you go, have wonderful opportunities.

And what is it that you want to end up studying?

I'm going to go into computer science.

Hopefully with a focus on artificial intelligence.

Oh, interesting.

And what do you what do you hope to do?

I, I've always really loved programing, so I want to keep, keep up with that, and, I, I want to make A. I. safer because I'm worried about, its effects on, like, the human brain also, and how it could deteriorate society.

And I, I want to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Wow, wonderful.

Well, it seems like you have your hands full with a lot of different aspirations.

I wish you all the best, Samantha.

And once again, congratulations on being a Mayor's Top Teen.

Thanks to our media membership coordinator, Liz Liano and all of our top teens, you can watch these interviews as they become available at KRWG.org.

And thank you for watching and for supporting local programing like this.

You can watch episodes of all our local programs at KRWG.org, where you can also sign up to receive the Friday News Wrap, our weekly newsletter that helps you catch up on our local coverage for the week from KRWG Public Media.