My Goal
All of my goals can be boiled down to a single one: I am working to build a little Christmas town in the mountains. The initial underlying goal was to provide artists and artisans a place to do what they love while offering them a chance to make money doing it.
Over the years it has developed further into an immersive make-believe environment where I use storytelling to weave a fictional but plausible history and background for the aesthetics and design of the town and community. The story provides design inspiration, as well as motivating story for the spaces and fictional characters that are a part of and inhabit the community.
Also included in the town is a network of means and methods providing for long term mental health, material support, and education of the community.
I have been diligently developing a working prototype. It has taken on the form of the "Blackburn Manor," which is primarily a haunted boarding house populated by dark creatures. The story and spaces also include a smattering of unique imaginary institutions and businesses inspired by made-up characters and events. While entirely make-believe, these are each reflected in actual real-world spaces that the public may interface with in order to be able to experience parts of the fictional story, immersing themselves as if its happening in real-time.
These spaces and stories are in the process of being embodied as a book and tv series. For now, however, it is just a physical space and its connected events.
You can engage in these events by navigating this website or through the thirdofeight.com homepage.