10 Years of: Events + Workshops

For 10 years, the Hive has served a unique role on the Claremont Colleges campus as a 5C design innovation education center. We provide a place to explore, experiment, create, play, and learn in the classroom and beyond, being home to four distinct makerspaces: the Print Lab, Toolbox, Soundbox, and Sewing Shed. Each semester, we develop and execute a robust calendar of events and workshops, and we watch our spaces come alive as students and community members try new tools, build skills, and turn ideas into reality. Students need a creative outlet amongst the rigor of their schoolwork, but there’s more behind our programming ethos. We strive to increase students’ creative confidence, regardless of experience, and to engage their right-brain thinking. Creative activity activates these areas and primes students for better problem-solving and innovative thinking, allowing them to make new connections and generate novel ideas.

Our offerings are anchored in three significant areas of engagement: Social Impact and Innovation, Career and Professional Development, and Making and Community-Building. From career-oriented talks with innovative leaders to resume building and making workshops, our events are facilitated by professionals, 5C faculty, our full-time staff, and design students. Our makingspace workshops (previously referred to as ‘skill shares’) are led by Hive student staff who guide students through fun-making projects while building the skills needed to use our making spaces independently. We’ve begun to combine everything into a single, unified events calendar to ensure that students have access to as many opportunities to learn and create as possible. 

Regardless of topic, our goal has remained the same: to infuse doing into all learning, to embody empathy, creativity, and action, and to foster experimentation and design mindsets in students. 

Some of our most beloved community-building events embody all three areas of engagement, delivering a dynamic, rich experience for students. Our Tiny Patio Concert, where student musicians perform both familiar and original music for a large live audience, brings together roughly 200 students for an evening celebration of talent and community.

During Maker Market, students and members of the Claremont community prepare and vend handmade art and crafts, exercising their entrepreneurial muscles as they network and sell their skills.

Sparkathon, hosted with Pomona Ventures, is an all-day design sprint where students collaborate and compete to solve unique societal problems. These two photos are from our most recent event (2025, L) and 2019 (R)!

As part of this reflection, we’ll highlight one standout event from each of our three major programming umbrellas. Following each, you’ll find additional examples of events and workshops from throughout the years, spanning 2016 to today, along with photos that show how the experiences we offer have evolved.

Social Impact + Innovation

Startup Salon

Through this event, we support entrepreneurial mindsets and impactful innovation. We aim to build a strong community of students, faculty, and alumni to design for and improve upon problems that matter in the world. In collaboration with StoryHouse Ventures and campus organizations Claremont Accelerator and CMC’s Randall Lewis Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we bring entrepreneurs onto campus to connect with current students. 

Events throughout the years include: The Curious Case of a Venture-Backed Company (2025, with Cameron Hajialiakbar), Startup Studio (2024, with Jane Liu), Uncommon Good Parents Workshop (2022), Design as a Tool for Social Justice (2020, with Tania Anaissie), Just Design (2019, with Chelina Odbert), Product Management (2019), How to Make Your Own Business (2019), Play With Community (2018, with Tucker Viemeister), I am a queer artist of color and I am still alive (2018, with Julio Salgado), Rise of the Creative Class (2017, with Jason Mayden), and more!

Career + Professional Development

Green Careers Panel + Mixer

During this panel, students had the chance to hear career-pathway stories from a range of inspiring professionals in the environmental field, followed by a networking mixer. Professionals from Uncommon Good, Alta Planning + Design, Climate Resolve, and Kounkuey Design Initiative shared stories about their career pathways in design, urban planning, climate resolution, and nonprofit work. They fielded curious students’ questions, speaking to the internal and external challenges and successes they faced along the way.

Events throughout the years include: Empathetic Listening (2025, recurring), Resume + Portfolio Building (2024), Design Thinking Crash Course (2023), Alumni Careers Panel (2023), Visual Thinking Strategies (2020), Designing Your Thesis (2020), How to Change Your Future in 3 Easy Steps (2019), Generative Thinking w/ Jo Thorogood (2018), Building Creative Confidence (2017), Financial Literacy (2017), and more!

Making + Community Building

Shibori Tie-Dye + Cyanotypes

This joint event is a recurring crowd favorite! Cyanotyping is an early photographic technique that produces rich, Prussian-blue monochrome prints. Participants harness the sun’s power to make detailed prints from any object that casts a shadow. Shibori is a historically rich Japanese tie-dye method that influenced 1960s counterculture, 1970s art + fashion, and 2025 artmaking. Participants creatively use various materials and techniques to unfold beautiful, unexpected patterns out of the blue!

Events throughout the years include: Gould Center Artist Chop (2025), Tea + Tangles (2025), Escuela Mexicana Claremont Screenprinting (2024), Blue Tape Mural (2024, recurring), Woodworking (2024, with Vince Skelly), Candle Making (2024), Dia de los muertos craft night (2023), Screenprinting Workshop (2023, with Kareem Collie), Diwali Henna Tattoos (2022), Shoe Painting (2022), Wood Carving (2021), Blue Tape Mural (2021), Valentine’s Day Card Making (2020), Questions to Get to Know Anyone (2020), Sewing Soiree (2019), Lego Master Building Workshop (2019), Food Photography (2019), Bullet Journaling (2019, with Kareem Collie), Costume Making (2019), Silversmithing (2018), 3D Origami (2018), Processing Film at Home (2017), Summer Roll Workshop (2017), Heart Plushies (2017), Drawing in the Dark (2017), Human Loom (2017), Blue Tape Mural (2016), Destroy Cardboard (2016), and more!