It’s a sunny afternoon on Bell Avenue in North Braddock, and a bunch of kids have gathered around a wooden table set up in what a year ago was just another empty lot.
Now the lot is a kid-driven community garden, and on the table is a microchip called a MaKey MaKey attached to a laptop. Wires that stick out from the MaKey MaKey are clamped onto cherry tomatoes. When the kids squeeze the tomatoes, different musical notes play.
"Each circuit needs to be completely closed in order for electricity to pass all the way through and for the computer to receive the signal," said Kelvin Rojas, a computer scientist who is leading the kids through the technology workshop at the garden. "So all you're doing is your using your body to complete the circuit between you and this little black thing."
This garden project — called Gardweeno — is the brainchild of Lindsey Scherloum and Zena Ruiz, two North Braddock artists who wanted to engage the kids in their neighbourhood.