genzai·chi

We need questions. We need answers.

I’m working on a massive Creative Partnerships project in a Leicestershire primary school with several other practitioners from various disciplines including, music, dance, architecture, story-telling, illustration and greenwood structures. Our brief: to make sure the staff can do what we do after we’ve gone.

We’re starting off on two threads of enquiry. One is to look at how we can encourage more imaginative play amongst the foundation level classes (3-5 years old) and the other is nominally working with years 3 and 4 (7-9 years). I say nominally, because actually I think we’ve discovered it’s more about exploring how the teachers can move away from teaching for a specific outcome and move more towards child-led learning where the outcome comes out of the process.

Last week this message was delivered in assembly:

The message delivered to the pupils last week

On Friday the pupils worked with some of the practitioners on brainstorming their initial ideas and questions.

Tomorrow I will go in and liaise.

Today I am trying to plan the day without actually planning the day.

It’s counter-intuitive and a bit scary, but we need questions and then we need answers. In that order.

hippo joy

hippo joy from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

I’m liking this circuit-bending stuff. It’s making me do things I don’t want to do.

The particular comfort zone edges I’ve noticed are:

• Restraining myself from immediately unscrewing the back and tinkering with the innards without having properly explored what the ‘normal’ behaviour is first. I must make more of an effort to document this too.
• Choosing the 3 or 4 bends from several that I’ll try and work with. This is usually a balance between the “awesome!” and the practicality of getting wires and soldering irons where they need to get to. I ‘lost’ a really nice bend in the hippo – the behaviour changed when I soldered the switch wires onto the board. I’m starting to get into the habit of making audio recordings of the initial noodling noises.
  hippo joy:

• Revising the previous decisions, based on what switches you can accommodate in the shell.
• Making the first incision. Usually my electric drill is hilariously large compared to the toy I’m working on: one of these days the toy’s just going to disintegrate. It’s also a very definite point of no return.
• I’m slowly getting better at drilling holes a few sizes too slow and then taking them up to size with a file. Neater results, but there’s still room for a lot more improvement. I’ve also started thinking a bit more about the feel of the switches – adding in rubber o-rings to cushion body contact points etc.
• Similarly for the first solder, but given extra edge by the memory of all the circuit boards I’ve managed to kill in the past.
• I’ve circuit-bent a few toys now, all with similar push-to-make switches and body contacts. An important edge is coming up where I’ll have to learn new stuff. With the hippo bend I made myself repurpose the existing switches. It’s a bit of a bodge, but it was worth the brain-wracking to come up with a (hopefully more than temporary) solution that a) works and b) is satisfying in the way that it looks and touches.

A Flickr set of images showing the hippo’s internal gubbins is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157622183430094/detail/