The Tinkering Workshop EU & UK Tour Kicks Off!

Over the next several months I’ll be traveling around Europe sharing playful prompts and behind-the-scenes stories from the making of my book, The Tinkering Workshop! I’m so excited to reconnect with old friends and meet parents, kids and educators interested in making and tinkering as a way of learning.

Here’s a little recap of the first event and a sneak preview of the upcoming tour stops.

Last Saturday we started off the fun at the Carl-Schurz-Haus, a German/American cultural space and lending library for English books in my adopted hometown of Freiburg, Germany. Since moving here, I’ve been wanting to collaborate with this local institution and the book launch provided the perfect opportunity.

For this initial workshop we build art machines with a enthusiastic group of parents, kids, high-school students and local educators interested in making and tinkering. Even more than usual, this diverse group explored the wide walls of the activity, designing prototypes and iterating on ideas that I had never seen before.

This event previewed some of the tinkering qualities highlighted in the book that will be mirrored in the book tour events. Participants worked on their own project but contributed to something larger and collaborative (like the big drawing on the table). The prompts provide opportunities for people to playfully prototype and explore their own ideas. There’s not a single right way to go through the process and there are a wide variety of examples. And with the collection of easy to find materials, hopefully people will continue working on these projects after the session.

The next event will take place on Saturday, February 8th at the wonderful Experimenta makerspace in Heilbronn. I’ll be leading a smartphone kaleidoscope workshop for the entire time at the annual Maker Faire and sharing a behind the scenes look at the making of the book at 12:30pm on the main stage.

Then at the beginning of March I’m headed out to the UK for several really fun events with great collaborators. On Thursday March 6th I’ll be at the ShiftED makerspace in Camden, London for a family event followed by a PD session for educators, informal program leaders and learning designers. The next day on Friday March 7th I’ll be collaborating with Exeter Science Centre for a event at the Exeter Main Library. Then on Saturday March 8th I’m finally headed back to Hastings for my first in-person workshop at the Mechanical Making Space, an amazing workshop created by the team at Cabaret Mechanical Theatre. We’ll be hosting a “linkage party” and hopefully will make really giant contraptions. And I’ll wrap things up in the UK with an experimental balance workshop at the Cambridge Science Centre on March 9th.

I’m really excited for an massive city-wide tinkering tour in Ludwigsburg, Germany on March 15th. There will be book-related workshops at the Stadtbibliotek, the Tinkertank makerspace and Thalia bookstore. Participants will be able to move around the city and build a different robotic art machine in each location while collecting stickers and learning about different aspects of the book. At the end of the day we’ll all meet up at the cultural center in the middle of the city to share our projects and celebrate all of the prototypes.

On March 29th I’ll be in Zurich, Switzerland sharing an adaptation of one of my favorite projects in the book at the Weltraum Festival at the Raumschiff Makerspace for Astronomy. Kids and families will be able to experiment with windmills with a Martian theme to fit the nature of the astronomical faire.

At the beginning of April I’ll be headed to Prague, Czech Republic for a couple of book related events. On April 4th I’ll have a day long mini residency at the International School of Prague where I’ll be sharing projects with parents, speaking at the school-wide assembly and making light up wearables for Pride Week in the on-campus makerspace. Stay tuned for more information about a public event on Saturday the 5th.

And finally the European book tour will come to a close in Portugal where I’ll join collaborators at the Ciência Viva Fábrica Science Center in Aveiro for a special tinkering workshop. I’m trying to arrange a couple of other events around the north of Portugal so keep an eye out for further announcements and more details.

Hope that you can join for one of these playful and engaging events to celebrate making and tinkering possibilities for kids, families, educators and artists.