The Tinkering Workshop Book Tour Continues
After an fun and busy first few days after the release of my book, The Tinkering Workshop, the book tour headed south for some more fantastic events at a local bookstore, museum and afterschool center.
On Tuesday, I headed to Santa Barbara for an event at the Innovation Workshop, a makerspace right at the entrance to MOXI, a fairly new institution that straddles the line between children’s museum and science center. I got a glimpse of the playful attitude of the museum right away with a life-size skeleton reading the book at the front desk.
In the morning I led a professional development workshop for the education team where we discussed the book and had a conversation about tinkering using the HGSE Project Zero thinking routine called compass points. In a short time we had the chance to share what excites us, what worries we have, what we need to know and suggestions to ourselves and others for trying these explorations on the floor of the museum.
In the afternoon we did a cardboard cranky contraptions workshop with a bit of a Halloween theme. The team created some examples including one where the base of the machine was fitted out like a haunted house and three little ghosts swarmed around the castle. I liked making everything a little bigger and easr to use as well as experimenting with the storytelling possibilities of the whole automata.
We had a steady flow of families with kids of all ages who experimented with using tools, building mechanisms and adding playful characters to the creations. It was really fun to work in this dedicated makerspace with tools stations, recycled cardboard bins and tons of inspiring materials. I’m looking forward to see how the tinkering practice evolves in this space.
On Wednesday the tour took me to Timbre Books in Ventura which is a beautiful space on a hip block in this coastal city. I grew up pretty close to there so this event was a bit of a homecoming for me (and I had a lot of support of family members who joined the event as spontaneous participants, facilitators and photographers).
For this event we tried art machines which looked beautiful in a little window nook of the store that we repurposed as a tinkering space! There was an engaged group of makers that had a lot of fun experimenting with circuits, imagining artistic patterns and troubleshooting the recycled material bases.
The conversations around the room were amazing and I really appreciated connecting with a family traveling around the world by boat who had a deep understanding of the idea of hard fun, discussing when to step in and when to step back with a thoughtful parent and embracing the joy of tinkering with a book blogger and her young daughter!
At the end of the event I signed a bunch of books and the Timbre team placed them on the table in their extensive kids section. If you’re in the area, I definitely recommend checking out this inspiring independent bookshop.
The tour wrapped up with a stop at the ReDiscover Center in mid-city Los Angleles! This makerspace, afterschool program and summer camp is chock full of materials, supplies and whimsical touches. I thought that this would be the perfect place to try something a little bigger than the normal tinkering activity.
For the event, we took over a large central space with lots of cardboard, cutters and hardware to make a giant ‘flexible fort’ as a collaborative installation. I set up two other workspaces with circuitry explorations that could potentially be integrated into the cardboard house and balancing sculptures that could be perched on the structure.
There was a great group from another afterschool program called Heart of LA who jumped in and took off with the prompt of building the fort. Some of the participants started attaching walls and roofs to the large structure and others tried smaller scale experiments incorporating lights or buzzers into smaller cardboard house models. In just a few hours the room had transformed from a loose collection of cardboard sheets, tools and fasteners to a strong and beautiful structure. I was really impressed by the way the kids collaborated with each other and iterated on their construction techniques. The ReDiscover team plans to reuse the structure for a halloween haunted house and I’m looking forward to seeing how the ideas develop!
It was also a special event because we had a couple of guest artists from the book who came to share their projects and practice with kids and educators. Aaron Kramer, who helped develop the rediscover center in the first place, arrived with a cork chair featured in the book and showed kids how to make mini versions. Amisha Gadani talked about her defensive dress which we featured in a section about biomimicry as a prompt for tinkering explorations.
The last part of the evening was a book presentation, reception and educator meet up. It was really fun to talk with the group which included making and tinkering luminaries like Dori Friedman, Gary Stager and Sylvia Libow Martinez and discuss ideas about learning and teaching together.
The entire book tour was an incredible experience! Over 10 days I hosted 10 different workshops at venues up and down California and had so many inspiring conversations about tinkering, STEAM and playful learning with teachers, educators, parents and kids. Thanks so much to everyone who came to an event, worked on a project and brought your amazing tinkering spirit to the project. Over the next weeks stay tuned for more book related events (both in-person and online) and ways to keep exploring these ideas together.