In September 2019, Luca Damasco and Zachary Rispoli spent a week in Denver as COSA Contributors in Residence. Their 9-day visit was twofold, involving work on their creative tool and engaging students of all ages. They are the creators of Wick Editor, an easy to use, open source web based interactive animation tool. It is focused on bringing many of the basic features of a tool like Flash back into the hands of everyone, including K-12 students.

With COSA's support, they provided free workshops to 6-9th graders at Denver School of the Arts, 1-8th graders at Aurora Frontier P-8, and college level students at University of Colorado at Denver and at the University of Denver as well. In total, they taught about the uses of Wick Editor and covered other open source tools to over 300 artists! Not only was it an educational opportunity for the students, but it also provided valuable feedback on features and processes that will help Wick Editor improve in future versions.

Luca and Zach also spent time focused on problem solving around issues of being open-source while protecting their intellectual property, and how to become fiscally sustainable. COSA listened and learned from their concerns and processes, providing some insights from other projects and brainstorming other opportunities. We see this as a project to watch, having been founded on strong values of education, accessibility, diversity, and creativity! (Not to mention it is a really fun tool to use!)

These Contributors in Residence were supported by the Madden Center via a Mellon Foundation Grant