A Tinkering World Tour: Season Two

Earlier this year, along with an inspiring group of collaborators and participants joining in-person or asynchronously, we ran a second season of the online tinkering world tour workshop. In this five-week project we visited kitchen tables, classrooms, museums and makerspaces around the world and learned from a collection of artists and educators. 

The goal of this project was to get inspired to identify some of the common elements of tinkering that are the same all over the world. And as well, we wanted to get a sense of the special materials, projects and ideas that are unique to each of the locations. In this ‘season’ we virtually visited Emilia-Romagna, Kathmandu, Puebla, Sao Paolo and even makers exploring “outer space.”

I wanted to share a quick video showing some of the highlights of the experience. In each session we had a couple of presentations, virtual tours and then made time to engage with some materials ourselves, putting ourselves in the shoes of the learner. It was really powerful to see the ideas that presenters explained put in practice when we build handmade faces, pulley systems, mars habitats and investigating everyday materials. It was an inspiring journey around the world when so many of us were stuck in one place during the pandemic. Hopefully in the new year things will open up a bit and we’ll have the chance to visit some of these stops in person, but even so this world tour proved to be a wonderful chance to connect with tinkerers all around the world. We’re already looking forward to the next iteration of this project.