Lori Walsh: Following the inspiration of Beverly Ann Miller, the BAM Foundation was formed. Today we talk about an opportunity to enjoy Summer BAM Camp. It's a virtual 12 week summer camp that you can jump in and jump out at any given point. One of the coaches is Jordan Deffenbaugh, and he joins us today to shed more light on this innovative way to enjoy summer camp for kids. Jordan, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Thank you for having me.
Lori Walsh: So we would so much like summer to be normal, especially parents who are trying to figure out what exactly, not only so that you can work, but also summer is a time for fun. It's time for friendship. It's a time for learning new things. And then, uh-oh. So, let's talk a little bit about families looking for some of those quality summer opportunities and how a virtual camp can meet that need.
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Okay, so, well, how this works is we at the BAM Foundation, or the BAM Institute of Civic Biodesign, a newly founded institute here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. What we want to do is we want to use gardens as a learning tool and a framework for making sense of the world. And what that means like in a more practical sense is what we're suggesting is we want each of the campers that engage with us to start a garden, to start growing something. By starting a garden, they can observe growth, they can observe emergence, and what results, and there's so much to be learned from our environment, from our ecosystem, that it then opens up so many more doors beyond that. And so in terms of talking about like, well, we lose the traditional summer camp as we know it, but that's nothing to say that we can't explore the world.
I think back to when I lived by the Sioux River, when I was like, say five or six, I would explore the woods. I'd walk around. I'd look at the soil. I'd pull over rocks. I'd try to understand the world at a very ground level, and so that's what we're hoping to do with this. We're hoping to shed a light on things like that are so granular, like soil, but then connect them to big things where throughout the weeks we're going to focus on food. We're going to focus on energy. We're going to focus on shelter. We're going to focus on transportation, all sorts of things that are civically engaged, so to speak.
Lori Walsh: All right. So they sign up and you can come in, you can come out, there's a paid version, a free version. Walk us through some of the details of the camp itself.
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Yeah. So how this works. Basically, Monday night, the Friday before the camp, you'll sign up, you can engage in the free version or you can join a team, and what that means is we are going to allow people to engage in all of our content and participate in activities just by following along on social media and whatnot. But then we're also, if people want to pay $25 a week, they will have access to, or their child, will have access to these chat rooms that we have. We'll assemble teams that will develop prototypes for ideas to go, to work, to fix some of the challenges that face us in regards to food supply, water supply, energy, all of these things.
And so Monday is a day of inspiration. We sort of get in our space of try to understand what we're going to do the week. Next day, we began to research. We begin to take in information about what's going on in the world and what's going on locally. Also, finding ways to engage with their neighbors, obviously safely, to talk about their feelings on that particular thing. How are they being affected by food supply? By water supply? By energy supply? Then we get into our, onto Wednesday, which is more about ideating. We take all that inspiration we have, and we begin processing ideas. We start throwing things on the wall, see if they work. If they don't, that's fine. We move on. We iterate, iterate, iterate. And then onto Thursday, we begin to implement. We begin to create something that is deployable. We begin to create something that actually could exist in the real world. And we do that same thing on Friday. Friday culminates at about 5:00 o'clock. We're going to do a live stream broadcast through some of our social media channels, and the teams are going to present their ideas.
What we're going to try and do is we're going to engage as many public officials, experts, anyone that we can muster to engage in what's happening there to possibly then also give them notes, give them ideas of where this can be implemented in their communities. And, if everything goes to plan, what I would love to see is that these kids are inspired enough to get to the end of this week and actually want to try and make that thing happen. We're going to do this for 12 weeks. The idea is to get this civically engaged energy amongst our young people, because they have time, and if they have time, they can do stuff. We just have to give them a little bit of direction. So that's the overall idea of the virtual camps.
Lori Walsh: Why gardens? Why start there? Why is that the foundation for all these different jumping off places?
Jordan Deffenbaugh: The research and development lab of nature is about 3.8 billion years old. It does it right. We are merely mimicking nature when we make anything, so if we have a deeper understanding of how things grow, how things mature, how things spread and root out, that how we can see collective emergence, or fractalization, when we observe those things, we begin to have a deeper understanding of the core elements of our world and how things actually come into being.
And this might be a way to also explain a civic biodesign. Civic biodesign is as a new term. It basically combining biodesign and civic. Biodesign, specifically, is an emerging field that's been coming about since about the 1990s, where we use, designers, use organic material to create things. So you could see, I was at the Dutch design week in Eindhoven last year in October, and I saw with my own eyes, mycelium concrete. Concrete made out of fungus. I saw clothing made out of apple pulp. I saw people studying an ant colony to begin to understand how to build better organizations, like business organizations.
There is a massive exploding field that is biodesign that's going on all over the world, but I haven't seen much of it be present other than maybe some biotech in the Midwest. And so a team of us, a team of educators and engineers and biologists got together, and we created this thing called civic biodesign where it's like, okay, how do we think about civic things, the things that allow us to thrive as a society? How do we begin to connect those sorts of things with the realm of ecology? And understanding this 3.8 billion year research development lab, how can we gather so much wisdom from that and begin to design our own systems in a much more resilient, robust matter so that they not only will take stress, but they'll be able to encounter stress and become stronger because of it?
Lori Walsh: One of the things about this camp is if when we spark those kinds of questions is similar to school, similar to just being in a family, but these are maybe things that the rest of the family hasn't thought of. So it's not the same thing as sort of saying, "I'm going to drop my kid off camp and at the end of the day, I'm going to ask them how it was, and what did you make or, what did you learn?" Your child's going to ask you some questions about things and have some ideas that maybe push you out of your regular zone of comfort in what you already understand. Talk a little bit to families about how it's okay to say, "I don't know. I haven't thought of that before. I haven't thought of where my water comes from before or where my food comes from. I haven't thought about that kind of, what the house was built out of back in 1950 or whenever it was built." Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the family participation, because this seems like it could be, ideally, a family journey as well as a camp for kids.
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Absolutely. Absolutely. That would be ideal if that were to happen. Well with a garden, a garden is a family task that puts food on the table. So, I mean, there might be a week where we engage a child in doing some water harvesting. Well, they could possibly, I mean, parents could potentially help on that project and begin to understand like, okay, how do we collect water and maintain it? But I think you hit the nail right on the head as is is it okay to not know? And my big answer is yes, it is absolutely fine to not know. In fact, I think it's one of the most wonderful feelings to encounter a new idea, to that moment of like, "Oh, I didn't know that. That's amazing." It shows you that there's so many things out there in the world to discover. And I would love, if there was a parent that was along for that journey as well. That's ideal.
And there will be, I mean, don't get me wrong. There is going to be things that people have not really encountered around here that are going to take place in this camp. Permaculture, the permaculture principles are going to be heavily influenced, are going to be brought into this camp heavily. And I know quite a few people when I say permaculture, they have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Really what that is is how do we create and use ecosystems to our advantage without extracting resources to the point where they become completely unsustainable. And this applies not just to the ecological world. I believe this applies to society as a whole. And so if the parent is along for the journey, all the better, and honestly, if they want to engage with us coaches and talk about these things, I will gladly talk to, I'll talk their ear off if they want me to.
And that, what you're getting to, is the core of this. While this is a summer camp geared towards ages eight to 14, this is the beginning of something new that is coming to Sioux Falls in the form of the BAM Institute of Civic biodesign. We are interested in changing the way we build societies, and looking at how we can make not just sustainable societies, but regenerative societies, societies that give back way more than what they take away. And so this is a first step, and then we got more up our sleeves for down the road, but this is what we're doing this summer.
Lori Walsh: Tell me if you think that this is a really opportune time to have this conversation, to have virtual camps, and to talk about civic biodesign. Is it something that you say, "You know what? This is a", my family started calling it the pandemic plus moments where there's just some things that are really great that are coming from this that we're enjoying, and then there's definitely minuses for sure. Is this a pandemic plus, or is this an opportunity right now, or is it a challenge and it would be really easier to have this if you weren't facing some of the restrictions that we're all facing right now?
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Obviously there are challenges that come from this time, just inherent challenges, but I'm going to tell you in terms of talking about these ideas, it's never been easier. Now, more than ever, people understand that we are interconnected and interdependent. If I was trying to communicate this without this happening, it would probably take me years to get to the point where I am now. People now more than ever understand that we live in a fragile, fragile world, that if one thing breaks down, it can cause a multitude of other things to break down. So in terms of having a conversation with the general public, the pandemic has made this entire experience easier to do. Now, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I mean, don't get me wrong. We're talking about like, when we engage in these camps, we're talking about some of the big wicked challenges that are facing humanity. We're talking about loss of fresh water. We're talking about degradation of top soil. We're talking about a collapse of food supply chains. Those are not necessarily bright, shiny, things, but we have to face it at some point. And I think we're doing children a disservice if we do not engage with them on these topics, because they will be ill prepared when they have to go out into the world and actually do something about it. So I'd rather them just start doing it now.
Lori Walsh: And hopefully this is the generation that solves some of those problems. If they start thinking about this process of innovation and ideation and there's a whole lot, they learned from the process itself to apply to other things. Jordan Deffenbaugh, we hope to have you back and talk civic biodesign in the future, but as we let you go, tell people where they can sign their kids up for Summer BAM Camp or where they can learn more about being a coach or a volunteer being part of this process. Where should they go?
Jordan Deffenbaugh: So the website is Civic Biodesign, that's biodesign.org. And that has all the information anyone needs to engage. If you want to enroll your child, if you want to engage in the pre-camp, want to become a coach, want to donate, support, all that stuff right there on the front page.
Lori Walsh: Jordan, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time. See you next time.
Jordan Deffenbaugh: Great. Thank you.