A Citywide Tinkering Tour in Ludwigsburg

Last Saturday, I joined forces with amazing collaborators at Tinkertank and the Stadtbibliothek (city library) in Ludwigsburg to create a tüfteltour (tinkering tour) across the entire city. To celebrate the launch of my book “The Tinkering Workshop”, the team prepared three art machines workshops around the city as well as a map and sticker book that families could use to make their own pathway through the stations.

In the morning I arrived at the brand new Tinkertank creative lab which just opened a few weeks ago. The group has upgraded their space with a much larger footprint but the same attention to detail, variety of tools and materials and lots of playful touches. It’s an inviting space that supports everyone to get started tinkering. We split up the materials, books and schwag (stickers, flyers and maps) and headed to our respective workshop locations.

Nora, Jasmin and I walked over to Thalia bookstore (a large German chain). Once we arrived at a small open area near the cafe we stated setting up a spin art robot workshop based on the designs created by VoltPaperScissors, an artist featured in “The Tinkering Workshop”.

I built cardboard bases with a hobby gearmotor, battery pack and switches and added sturdy cardboard platforms to make traditional spin art machines that participants could draw on with colorful crayola markers. The extra addition were taller motor towers with a second spinning motor and a sleeve for the marker which gave the possibility of more spirograph-like designs.

These prototype materials were definitely still in the half baked stage and as we built and tinkerered together there were many improvements that we imagined. I happen to think that because these stations looked homemade and didn’t function perfectly, it drew more people deeper into the activity because they had to adjust the rough parts and “make it work” for themselves.

Kids and families stayed for longer than I had expected at this workshop and started to investigate lots of interesting ideas around art and engineering. Some of the participants really iterated on the initial spinning drawings, making dozens of versions with different line qualities and color patterns.

A really generative exploration that emerged partly by accident was covering some of the paper with tape to make blank spaces in the spin art patterns. This resulted in ideas like writing a words or making shapes with tape or creating plaid like patterns with different layers of colors.

As we worked there were lots of great conversations about tinkering as an approach to learning. As well when parts broke I took kids over to the hot glue station so we could fix things together (a moment that got captured by the local newspaper). And we added a bunch of the spin art patterns to a collaborative board to created a larger installation in the bookstore. Once the participants finished with their explorations we gave them a sticker in their “stempelpass” and sent them to one of the next stations.

Over at the Stadtbibliothek Ludwigsburg (the city library) the “maker zone” was also full of kids and families creating more traditional scribbling art robots with vibrating motors, recycled bodies and markers that drew patterns as they moved around the space.

Tim and the team at the library have an active tinkering space that presents a full slate of activities and projects for learners of all ages. I was so glad that the tinkering tour gave them the chance to connect with a large audience of locals who could return to the space again and again to try out new STEAM explorations.

And back at the Tinkertank creative lab, the makerspace was buzzing with activity in a third flavor of art machine workshop. The Tinkertank model often starts with a big pile of old electronics or mechanical elements that they get from secondhand stores and “zu verschenken” stands (free offers). For the tinkering tour, Jo and Susanne invited learners to take apart the scrap toys and appliances then add motors and markers to make whimsical drawing machines.

The collection of remixed art bots created by the workshop participants over the day was truly inspiring. The combination of the wide variety of starting points and full collection of glue guns, soldering irons and endless materials made for really imaginative creations that all came together to make collaborative works of art.

Over the course of the entire day we had about 400-500 participants spread across all three stations. There were several kids who made the entire circuit, playing and experimenting with each of the different variations on the art robot theme.

This experimental workshop format was really fun and something that I would like to try again. It felt like an spread out maker faire or open: make event with a great possibility to include partners across the city in their own learning environments. Thanks to the whole team (and a special shoutout to photographer Malte Derks) for putting on a truly memorable book tour event and I hope to continue thinking about ways to develop “tüfteltour” experiments and other ways to engage communities in tinkering experiences.