This is Part I on our experience working with schools to create solutions for outdoor classrooms. Stay tuned for Part II:  Outdoor Classrooms for Portland Schools.

Transformit was asked to provide quotes for dozens of outdoor classrooms to be used at a public school in Maine. The Cares Act had provided the township with a budget to work with, and they needed to research the best places to invest their resources. Cindy and Tom came out the next day to spend two hours walking the Elementary, Middle, and High School combined campus. It was a hot day, and you could certainly understand that the students would need shade in order to concentrate and even see their laptops. There were many wonderful ideas and requests for us to consider:

We designed our ready-made collections of stretch-fabric elements to help designers bring shape into their event or built environment. Sometimes that project entails defining space within a larger room or shaping the size of a room to fit form to function.

Our collections of Ready-made fabric designs feature elements from eight to thirty feet tall that are ideally suited to defining space, building moveable walls, or creating smaller “rooms” within a larger space. When paired with lighting, these artistic fabric elements that physically shape the room, can also shape the visual environment with color and form. They also add some acoustic absorption to a room, often a welcome addition when there’s a gathering of people in a large hall.

One of our favorite venues locally for creating rooms within a room is a 26,000 square-foot, former locomotive repair facility that was renovated and reopened as an event hall in 2017, Brick South at Thompson’s Point. We first worked in Brick South when Sea Glass Events brought us in to create a room layout for WEX, one of their corporate clients. WEX wanted a fresh and creative environment for an off-site company meeting, and loved the industrial space of Brick South, but they also needed ten conference rooms, a 250-seat theater, a dining room, and a social space.

Event producers the world over are good at gathering people together. But once together, what’s an event producer to do if they also need small rooms for private meetings and don’t have many options? Gemma Godfrey of The Whitfield Group (www.whitfield.bm), an event company based in Bermuda, got in touch with us recently to share how Transformit’s Lyrics and Lotus Leaves helped her meet just such a need for one of their clients.