The Tinkering Workshop Book Tour Gets Underway
Today marks one week since the release date of my new book, The Tinkering Workshop. It’s been so fun to share this collection of playful art, science and engineering explorations using everyday materials with families, educators and makers.
Right now, I’m in the middle of a two week book tour in California where I’m hosting events at museums, libraries and schools, each with a mix of hands on workshops, discussions about learning through tinkering and chances to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. Here’s a little recap of where we’ve been so far and a preview of upcoming events.
On The Tinkering Workshop launch day, I had a workshop with students at the Changemaker Lab at Live Oak School building sky trams. And after the tinkering session, to celebrate the release of the book, I hosted a virtual launch party with a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the book, presentations by educators and artists featured in the pages and discussions about how educators might adapt the explorations in the book to their settings.
On Wednesday, I headed down to the peninsula for a workshop at the Redwood City Public Library. It was an amazing event with about 75 people in attendance building cardboard crank sliders. I love making and tinkering in the library and was so happy to run the event in this inspiring makerspace.
On Thursday I stopped by The Exploratorium, the science museum where I helped start The Tinkering Studio and co-developed so many of the ideas in the book with the team of artists, scientists and educators. It was so awesome to be back in the workshop space testing out wild windmills with visitors in the afternoon! After that drop in session, we led a book launch event for the Bay Area Maker Educator group with a sampling of five activities from the book which led to a discussion about adapting and remixing these explorations with students across a wide variety of settings.
And from Friday to Saturday I was at Bay Area Maker Faire sharing the book with attendees and leading hands on workshop for visitors. I have been presenting at Maker Faire since just about the beginning so it was so great to be back at the faire. For the Friday session I set up cardboard crank sliders as well as a few other explorations and then during the weekend we focused on glow city, making a collaborative installation from cardboard, copper tape and LEDs.
It was so amazing to see kids and families working together to create the light-up city installation. There was lots of working through challenging moments, iterating on designs and proudly adding the various elements to the city.
At the end of the faire, workshop participants had created an astoundingly beautiful and complex city. I think this really sums up the idea of The Tinkering Workshop book. While we set out the materials and the initial prompt for the project, I could have never imagined all of the personally meaningful and innovative creations that populated the installation. With the book it’s the same thing and I hope that people construct new and unexpected designs.
This week there are three more book tour events in Southern California. If you’re in the area it would be great to see you at one of these events:
10/22 at MOXI in Santa Barbara (1:30-4:00pm) *requires museum admission
10/23 at Timbre Books in Ventura (4:00-6:00pm)
10/25 at ReDiscover Center Mid-City in Los Angeles (3:00-8:00)
Finally, I just waned to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported the book launch and tour in these days. I’ve really appreciated all of the help from reposting the book on social media, letting me borrow materials, jumping in to facilitate one of the activities, sending positive messages and joining one (or more) of the events. It means a lot to have the community of makers and tinkerers behind this project and helping to spread the word about these playful explorations of art, science and technology.