Doodling is now a team game on the University of Miami campus. Thanks to the creators of
U-Doodle, a project “promoting social interaction and collaborative creativity,” students can enjoy a break from calculus and anthropology to add colors and illustrations to communal canvases.
The idea for these group scribble sessions took shape during a dorm conversation between co-founders Jordan Magid and Marc Fruitema. Magid was interested in creating more spaces where students could engage in community-building. Fruitem, a perpetual doodler himself, dreamed up the idea for these spaces to be centers of uninhibited doodling. The result was public doodle sessions where participants are encouraged to create their own drawings and add to each other's.
U-Doodle also seeks to reignite students’ passion for the arts, especially because most of them haven't taken art classes since elementary school. “In second grade, they take away your colored pencils, and there’s no more art,” Magid says. So budding doodlers can now find a U-Doodle station on campus once a month, stocked not only with colored pencils, but crayons, markers, pens, and paints, too. As the winner of GOOD Maker's
Art Every Day challenge, U-Doodle will use its $500 grant to expand its offerings to other campuses and host more sessions.
Want to learn more about GOOD Maker? Drop us a line at maker[at]goodinc[dot]com, sign up for our email list, or check out the current challenges.