Who is Professor Blue?
A case study.
You will be tested on this.
Professor Blue started off as a microbe of an idea, by Maria Laskar, a theatre director, writer, producer from Montréal, Canada. She holds a degree in teaching arts to children from McGill University, as well as a degree from the National Theatre School of Canada.
She wrote, directed, and toured with a troupe of actors for a children’s musical called Camera Crash.
Professor Blue received funding from:
- The Director’s Grant from the Arts Council at MIT
- The Earth System Initiative at MIT
- Civil & Environmental Engineering at MIT
…to develop, write, film and produce a series of short videos on water themes geared toward children, based on the research of Professor Heidi Nepf at MIT.
And then
- Maria made a visual installation and showed the videos, in conjunction with Professor Blue World Headquarters (a subsidiary of Slippery Banana Peel Industries, Inc), at the Cambridge Science Festivals in 2008 and 2009.
- Maria also wrote a Professor Blue performance piece for a live audience at the Museum of Science in Boston.
- The videos were displayed on donated computers in the installation (to highlight ewaste problems from so much technology), as well as streamed them on the MIT video platform at TechTV. The 4 videos (3 podcasts and the teaser) were viewed more than 33,000 times.
Funding
Professor Blue received generous funding and support from the following organizations and companies for additional expenses related to creating and displaying the videos at the live performances:
CALQ – Council for the Arts, Quebec
VWR
Ambit Creative
GovConnection
Dell Computers
The Home Depot
Gadgets – Boston (JP)
DVDs911
Civil & Environmental Engineering at MIT
…to develop, write, film and produce a series of short videos on water themes geared toward children, based on the research of Professor Heidi Nepf at MIT.
[su_animate type=”slideInLeft”][su_list icon=”icon: hand-o-right” icon_color=”#201aac”]
- CALQ – Council for the Arts, Quebec
- VWR
- Ambit Creative
- GovConnection
- Dell Computers
- The Home Depot
- Gadgets – Boston (JP)
- DVDs911
- Civil & Environmental Engineering at MIT
[/su_list]
…to develop, write, film and produce a series of short videos on water themes geared toward children, based on the research of Professor Heidi Nepf at MIT.[/su_animate]
The videos are registered and trademarked in Québec, Canada by:
Later
Professor Blue Podcast videos were played exclusively on a video platform dedicated to children – BatteryPop.
Isn’t there a Book?
After the video hoopla, Maria went to work for the David Suzuki Foundation, writing radio capsules on the environment for the general public. This gave her the idea to write a children’s book.