OSM Showcase Displays Student Work

On Friday, Nov. 22, approximately 75 student-tenants who utilized the Old Stone Mill this fall to pursue their creative projects showcased their work at Crossroads. The Old Stone Mill facilitates student pursuit of extracurricular creative or entrepreneurial ambitions by providing students with office space and external resources.

Director of Programs on Creativity and Innovation in the Liberal Arts Elizabeth Robinson noted the diverse range of interests at the showcase.

“What I absolutely love is the range of activity at Old Stone Mill,” Robinson said. “There are musicians, artists, writers, students using the kitchen to explore new kinds of cooking, as well as entrepreneurs and students starting new organizations.”

Jack Cookson ’15, a co-founder of Middlebury Foods, presented at the showcase. Middlebury Foods seeks to address the problem of food insecurity by providing community members with an easier way to access affordable and healthy foods.

During Middlebury Food’s inception, Cookson noted that Old Stone Mill provided a vital role in connecting its seven founders.

“We were using it as an office space,” he explained. “Finding food distributors, finding storage space and doing some initial marketing” was part of a normal workday made easier by the Old Stone Mill.

Linnea Burnham ’15 used her Old Stone Mill space to prepare the wool of sheep she had sheared for sale and knitting at local markets.

“The Old Stone Mill is great because they’ve given me the space to do this,” Burnham said. “This is a very labor intensive and messy process, and there is no way I would have been able to do it in my room.”

Others, such as Annie Bartholomew ’17, presented work focused less on profit and more on personal interest. Bratholomew constructed a guitar that was featured at the showcase, and noted that the act of creating does not have to relate to a particular business or money-making project.

“I want to continue building guitars because I really like it,” she said.

President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz attended the showcase and noted that student projects in tandem with the Old Stone Mill are consistently impressive.

“As always, we hope that the Old Stone Mill will be a generator of creative and innovative pursuits,” Liebowitz remarked. “I think that it’s filled that objective very, very well.”

Robinson explained that before the founding of the Old Stone Mill, many of these projects would have had difficulty finding space to flourish.

“One of the best things about the Old Stone Mill is how it gives students a nudge to be creative,” she said. “It says, ‘we have space, what can you do with it?’”

Many projects that began at the Old Stone Mill have grown considerably since their inception: Quidditch, the Solar Decathalon teams and publications such as Middlebury Geographic have their roots at the Old Stone Mill.

The Old Stone Mill student board member Jake Nonweiler ’14 encouraged individual students or student groups with business or project ideas to apply for space during J-term. For more information, contact oldstonemill@middlebury.edu and go/osm.