Blue School Building Open for Public Tours as Part of Open House NY Weekend October 11 and 12

New York City, October 9, 2014 (Newswire.com) - Blue School, nonprofit private school for age 2 through grade 8, will be open for public tours during Open House New York Weekend (OHNY), offering the opportunity to view the school’s facility located at 241 Water Street. 

In 2011-12, Blue School collaborated with architecture and design firm Rockwell Group to transform the historic Seaport building into a cutting-edge learning environment. David Rockwell serves on Blue School’s Advisory Board and his firm partners with Blue School on an ongoing basis to study the relationship between space and learning. Blue School's facility reflects its educational methods. It is flexible, built for collaboration, and constantly evolving based on the needs of teachers and students and the research that demonstrates how children learn best.

Guests of OHNY are also welcome to join Blue School families and friends as they participate in the school’s 2nd Annual Cardboard Challenge in partnership with the Imagination Foundation. The challenge will be to create musical instruments out of cardboard. 

What:  Public tours of Blue School’s building and Cardboard Challenge activities for all ages

When: October 11 and 12

            Building Tours: 10am and 1pm, Saturday and Sunday

            Cardboard Challenge activities: 10am–3pm

Where: Blue School, 241 Water Street, NYC 10038

Free. Open to all ages. Supplies will be provided for the cardboard challenge.

ABOUT OHNY

For two days every October, OHNY Weekend unlocks the doors to New York’s most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve New York. From historic to contemporary, residential to industrial, hundreds of sites across the five boroughs are open to visit, with tours, talks, performances and other special events taking place over the course of the Weekend. OHNY Weekend deepens our understanding of the importance of architecture and urban design to foster a more vibrant civic life. Visit www.ohny.org to learn more about the city-wide event.

ABOUT THE GLOBAL CARDBOARD CHALLENGE

Inspired by the short film, “Caines Arcade,” the Global Cardboard Challenge is an annual event presented by the Imagination Foundation that celebrates creativity and the role communities can play in fostering it. Kids and grownup kids of all ages are invited to build anything they can dream up using cardboard, recycled materials and imagination. www.imagination.is  

ABOUT BLUE SCHOOL

Blue School is a nonprofit private school for age 2 through grade 8, located in downtown NYC. 250 children age 2-grade 5 are enrolled for 2014-15, and the school is currently accepting applications for its first 6th grade class, which will enroll in fall 2015. One middle school grade will be added per year – 6th grade in 2015, 7th grade in 2016 and 8th grade in 2017. Blue School is renovating 233 Water Street, the building adjacent to its current facility, to house grades 6-8 while a more permanent home for the middle school is acquired. The school is deep in the design process for the new space, and schematic renderings can be viewed at www.blueschool.org/middle-school.

Every day at Blue School, masterful teachers balance opportunities to expand student’s academic mastery, creative thinking, and self and social intelligence. Through a singular marriage of methods that combine cutting-edge innovation with tried-and-true practices, academic seriousness with the necessity of joy, creativity, and exuberant play, Blue School ensures the traditional goals of schools, and all the aspects of a complete and balanced education. Blue School graduates are flexible, adaptive, joyful, and creative thinkers, ready to engage with what comes next and succeed in high school, college and beyond.

Blue School was founded by six accomplished artists, including the three original members of the Blue Man Group. They had always been interested in the challenges and innovations in the world of education; in fact, the Blue Man Group founders have often said that if their creative impulses hadn’t found expression first in performance art, they could have emerged in the creative of a school. Blue School’s founders consulted and collaborated with the best thinkers in the fields of education, neuroscience, child development, and creativity to help bring their vision to life. While the playgroup they started in 2006 has since matured into a thriving pre-primary, primary, and middle school, the imaginative spark of the Blue Man DNA continues to animate daily work at Blue School, from structured play in the preschool years, to acts of inspired innovation in the older grades.