Workshop at Children's Museum Jordan

A few weeks ago I got the chance to travel to Amman, Jordan for an extended residency at the Children’s Museum Jordan. The CMJ launched in 2007 as the first children’s museum in the country and has grown to be a leader in the field for the region, hosting the NAMES conference later this month.

Over the last two years they've started experimenting with the Tinker Lab, a drop in workshop for visitors to spend time engaged with making and building. The focus of my residency at the museum was to work with a dedicated group on activity design, environment, and facilitation to best support the space

But before I started more focused collaboration with the tinkering team, I had the opportunity to lead a workshop for the entire education staff. For the large group, I thought that Scribbling Machines would be the best choice for an initial workshop.

I love leading this activity because it seems that no matter where you are in the world, the ages of the participants, or if there's a language gap, these vibrating, dancing, spinning machines are so compelling and fun. It's a perfect low stakes introduction to the idea of tinkering and quickly gets people engaged with art/science connections, testing and iterating, and constructing personally meaningful artifacts.

As more museums plan makerspaces it feels important that the entire staff has chances to get involved with actual hands-on experience trying tinkering activities. I've been inspired by large scale experiments like a chain reaction for all staff at the Museo Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan during a holiday party, but smaller scale workshops like building scribbling machines for an hour or two is a good starting point.

Giving a large group of staff first hand experience allows them to feel a part of a new tinkering initiative and builds understanding about some of the issues of mess, noise, time, cost needed for tinkering workshops. Additionally, the fun, joy and excitement of the activities helps everyone feel connected to this style of learning. At the CMJ it was a great first introduction to the ideas around tinkering for the group and was a perfect way to begin the collaboration.