In the previous post, I shared about the mini-residency that Kenn from the artist group, ‘A Secret Club’ spent in Freiburg, Germany. In this second post I want to go more in-depth to recap a daylong workshop and tinkering jam session around the theme of “time” that we jointly led at the Spielmobil workshop.

The idea to host a gathering of artists, educators and tinkerers had its roots in several previous projects and initiatives. The most important was the BAME (bay area maker educator) meet-ups that we regularly held when I was living in San Francisco. These informal sessions give like-minded professionals the chance to meet each other, tinker together and make connections. As well, the open-ended but specific theme of “time” was inspired by Open: MAKE events that we created at the Exploratorium to get to know artists and prototype new ideas.

We invited participants from a wide range of schools, museums and other educational institutions in the area. There were about twenty people who joined the workshop from places like the Deutsches Uhrenmuseum (German Clock museum), University of Freiburg NEXUS experiments, and the ICSE at the local teachers’ college. Some of the participants were new to me and others like Tinkertank and Raumshiff have been long time collaborators. There were also several independent educators and artists who joined in on the fun.

To start off the workshop we asked people to give a “six word introduction” to themselves. That’s a little easier in German because some single words can be compound nouns that combine many different thoughts but either way, this activity let people quickly share about what they were interested in. We posted all of the mini-bios on the wall so that people could easily see who had related ideas.

Then we quickly moved to a hands-on exploration of making art machines with hobby gear motors, batteries and recycled materials. We hoped that this short tinkering experience would help people feel more comfortable making physical prototypes, collaborating on constructions and connecting electronic parts. These are all things that we planned to explore deeper over the course of the day.

For the next part of the workshop, we had asked each of the participants to “bring a thing” related to time to give inputs to the group about potential projects. We went around and had each person share for about three minutes. It was so cool to see the variety of “things” that people shared including a photo of a nebula forming, a cat calendar, a well dog-eared copy of the play Waiting for Godot, a vintage clock with a beautiful chime sound and a questionable interpretation of “the future”. These inspirations either directly or indirectly led to a wide variety of project ideas.

For the rest of the “tinkering jam” participants formed groups of 2-3 and started working on a physical prototype related to the theme of ‘’time’. It was a pretty broad topic and I honestly wasn’t sure what directions that people would head in, but after maybe 15-20 minutes of discussion and match-making we had everyone in groups working on constructing different ‘time’ elements.

One group took the vintage clock with the chimes and started adding sound machines to the outside of the bright orange case. It was really cool to see how many different types of rhythms and sounds could be produced by the different arrangements.

Another team made a tribute and an anti homage to a cuckoo clock. The first element was a more traditional looking clock frame with a dissected toy sound box mounted inside. The second element was a giant cardboard bird head with spinning cuckoo bellows that were activated by an ingenious mechanism.

A really cool project was a game based on a colorful dry-erase writing surface in the shape of a ring and a motor mounted eraser that went over what people jotted down. The interaction helped show the difference in how time passes when you are passive vs. actively involved in a game.

Other projects included a big bang simulation, a series of linkage powered art machines and experiments with a benham’s disk spinner. Each one of the projects represented lots of ideas and explorations that could be explored deeper in further workshops and activities.

At the end of the time we spent a few minutes going around the room (also joined remotely by Annabelle who had to stay in Denmark for the week) sharing what we made and the take aways from the tinkering process.

This tinkering event was so much fun and was a playful way to build community partnerships between people in various institutions all somehow doing work related to making, tinkering and STEAM education. Thanks so much to Kenn (and the Erasmus+ EU funding that made the workshop possible) for helping to inspire this convening. I’m looking forward to seeing where the initial ideas shared in this workshop lead over the next months and years.

Tinkering with "Time" Community Meet-Up