Field Notes · The ReCreate Project
The hidden potential of contributor identity.
What prison workshops can teach us about human capability — by Rusty Clifton, Founder, The ReCreate Project.
A correctional officer in a Midwest facility once walked me down a damp concrete tier and pointed to a small metal box resting on a grey bunk. It shouldn't have been there — a functioning radio, wired together from salvaged television components, headphone wire stripped from cheap commissary earplugs, and a tuning coil wound by hand.
"Give an engineer an unlimited budget and three months, and they'll spend six weeks debating specs. Take the budget away and tell them the oxygen's failing — like Apollo 13's ground control — and a fix shows up fast."
Constraint doesn't kill problem-solving. It's often the only thing that switches it on.
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