This past week I had an amazing time in the UK sharing my book, “The Tinkering Workshop” through playful experimental workshops for kids, families and educators in London, Exeter, Hastings and Cambridge. These events were also supported by the British Science Week organization and hosted by libraries, makerspaces and museums.

Not only were these events great chances to make connections with readers and makers but also an opportunity to continue to test and share some of my favorite projects from the book. At each workshop, I tested out new materials, tools and environments. And as always, I was blown away at the surprising and unexpected ideas that participants came up with in the course of playing around with the materials and phenomenon.

The week kicked off with two events at the ShiftED makerspace in Camden, London. This is a relatively new space that already is full of tools, artworks and interesting projects made by classes that visit during the school day. I had some help from Emma Callow and the Institute of Imagination crew as well to set up and facilitate the event.

In the afternoon we had a family workshop where many of the kids came dressed as their favorite characters from the world of literature to celebrate ‘world book day’. We built washer wobblers on my new packable stands made from a circle of cardboard, rigid tube and pencil (with eraser pointing up).

Then in the evening we had a group of educators who dived a bit more into a conversation about making and tinkering across a wide variety of settings. And of course it’s very important to also be trying things out ourselves so we also added LEDs to balancing sculptures to make some glowing creations.

The next day I took the train out to Exeter to set up a workshop with the Exeter Science Center, a really dynamic organization that’s planning spaces and programs for science engagement in the local area. Natalie Whitehead, the director of the institution, helped me set up a workshop at the local library! As well we connected with the beautiful local Bookbag Bookshop who stocked “The Tinkering Workshop” on their well curated shelves.

At the Exeter Library we set up an inflatable workshop right near the entrance so that we could be visible to all the people stopping by the space in the afternoon. We tried these air-filled sculptures with small and packable USB fans with the addition of little cardboard legs instead of the hair dryers that I recommend using in the book. These fans were a bit less powerful but that added a constraint to the explorations and gave a challenge to the participants.

It was really great to see how many different ideas for shapes and characters the kids and adults came up with. Some people thought about shapes like stars or diamonds and others moved straight to characters like aliens or unicorns.

In the process of building the designs we learned a lot about the limitations of the materials and the importance of testing the inflatable each time we added new elements to the creatures. There were a lot of great conversations about making and tinkering around the table and the entire event served as inspiration for how science centers, libraries, bookstores and other local partners can connect to develop programs and projects.

On Saturday I felt really fortunate to host my first in-person workshop at the Mechanical Making Space, a new workshop created by the amazing Cabaret Mechanical Theater. I visited this space right before they moved in back in 2023 and it was so great to see how it has come alive in the past year and a half! I love this model of a makerspace with inspiring artworks, a real sense of history, an authentic purpose to repair and prep automata and a clear theme of motions, mechanisms and stories. It’s wonderful to see CMT continuing to evolve the legacy of the Covent Garden space (but with more emphasis on making and tinkering).

At the mechanical makerspace we explored linkages, a category of mechanisms that are widely used in the automata of the Cabaret Mechanical Theater. Using strips of cardboard and brass paper fasteners as the main ingredients, the room slowly filled with frogs, dragons, spiders, jellyfish and all other sorts of characters.

This project is a great example of having a simple starting point of the four bar linkage and then branching out towards many unexpected directions. We got a lot of ideas that we’ll bring to the next collaboration at the upcoming Automata Fest at the beginning of May.

For the final event on this whirlwind tour, I made my way to the Cambridge Science Centre where I led two experimental workshops combining balancing sculptures and motor explorations. We started off the activities building washer wobblers with stainless steel wire, weights and a collection of colorful materials. It was interesting to concentrate first on both the potential movements as well as the ways that these designs could become characters.

After about thirty minutes of tinkering, I introduced pager motors with propellors and batteries to the materials set. These electrical elements could allow the sculpture to freely rotate around the balancing point. It worked really well to all have developed a bit of a hands-on understanding of the phenomenon before adding this slightly heavy element to the creations.

All four events were an amazing chance to connect with local makers, tinkerers and educators. I really enjoyed experimenting with kids and families on three very different themes, all with the same playful approach to STEAM explorations. There are a few more stops on the European book tour in Ludwigsburg, Zurich, Prague and Aveiro in the coming weeks and hope to see you all on the road!

UK Book Tour for The Tinkering Workshop