celebration

People flocked to the Mint Street Adventure Playground last saturday to celebrate the consultation process for the potential transformation of this vibrant and loved interior space. The Building Exploratory commissioned me to work with the children who vitalise, ignite and give meaning to this space to express their ideas and inform potential changes. See here and here for my previous posts on my Mint Street adventure.

We worked with families, challenging the children to create a diorama of an interior they would like to spend time in. With a range of card, paper, textures, stickers and glue they got to work inventing places to socialise and relax in. Some spaces included complex structures to climb on, most included movable walls to create temporary sections within the space. These inventive interiors can adapt to the needs of the moment. A living space, a responsive space. 

All day long my workshop was full of making, testing, sharing. I got to spend time with some familiar faces and meet new families. A perfect day. 

We are ready!

 Sisters working together

 A toddlers contribution

A suggested interior

craft and social change

Norwegian Crafts hosted their second London conference which examined crafts contribution to shaping society. Craft and Social Change was a thought provoking day and a half with a succession of fascinating speakers. In the days since I've been observing what thoughts have been triggered and what ideas keep returning. The speaker who seems to have lodged in my brain is Irene Nygardsvik, she trained as an economist but couldn't act in a way that traditional economic theory dictated, i.e, to get the most output with the least input. Irene feels this kind of thinking takes away love and she proposes A Humanistic Economy Based on Generosity and Dignity. She believes we are entering an era where it is time to get lost, explore and create playful and creative relations.

What resonated for me was the poetic notion of 'the soil of the soul'. A place within each of us where while engaged in a particular activity we are in flow, lit up, inspired and most US. She believes you can sense when another has been into the soil of their soul, when you read their words, see their work, hear their music and can tell they found gold. What I particularly enjoyed was the idea suggested by Irene that human beings are 'a wandering measuring tool of quality' and goosebumps are the sign from our intuition and emotions that we have found quality. Always take notice of your goosebumps!

A decade ago during my MA show at Goldsmiths College, London, I received a compliment I've never forgotten. Someone told me the hairs had stood up on their arms when they walked into my installation, the piece (a slide projection in a dark space of the image below) had bypassed their intellect and registered with their primitive brain. Yes yes yes.

Theres No Place Like Home, 2003

When speaking of the soil of the soul, Irene shared this poem by Jon Fosse.

Let the rain pour
Let the sun see
Let the wind blow
Let my heart beat

edges and boundaries

See fabrication post for details and images from my first session at Mint Street Adventure Playground on friday 5th April. The overriding memory from this session was that the girls (mostly) created the spaces and the boys settled into the spaces and played computer games. The girls then went on to create a girl only space in which they sat quietly and thoughtfully considered words to physically and emotionally describe the interior they had created.

The second session on wednesday 10th April had a different feel. This week issues around boundary, respect and rules came to the foreground. Passwords and knocking before entering were required, rules about who was allowed entry and who was barred. This led to some conflict and a few disagreements and tears. 

With my encouragement the space was in constant flux, remaining open to change, unmade and remade. For some children this was challenging as they became attached to their space and wanted it to remain static. Engaging children new to the activity into making alterations and expressing their ideas was hard on some of the previous creators who's spaces were dismantled in the process. It was a tightrope that needed to be walked. 

Boys unpacking and getting ready for play

A sunny day at last

Intriguing installation  

 Great image captured by Millie

Unmake, remake

Reflecting

Word Cloud created from the children's writing about their spaces

fabrication

The Building Exploratory have been appointed by Southwark Council to work with the local community to consider how the building at Mint Street Adventure Playground could be redeveloped. They asked me to work with the children and young people who use the space to seek their voice and ideas for this redevelopment.

The children/young people play outside in a marvelous adventure playground and I wanted to bring this sense of play indoors. By introducing lengths of colourful fabric into the interior space the participants were given free rein to temporarily alter space, change proportions, build dens, hide away, layer spaces, move and act differently. We interviewed the creators about their spaces, what they liked about them and what they could be used for. Written and drawn responses to the intervention were created and displayed as we worked. I'll be at Mint Street tomorrow between 1pm-4pm for another afternoon of invention and play.

 Games were invented, movement initiated 

Pegs and joins

  Carefully pegging the fabric

 A den

 Looking out from inside the den

 Working as a team

 Boys den

 A space created by a mum and her 5 year old daughter. Mum 
felt comfortable and breast fed her baby daughter here.

trick of the light

Last week I delivered a workshop for the Children's Art School in Wimbledon. The Victorians were a clever lot, before the invention of film they created magical ways to trick the eye into seeing moving images. During the morning we explored these tricks and deceived our own eyes by creating moving drawings. During the afternoon these marvelous techniques were developed further, exploring optical illusion using shadow puppets and light.

What I most enjoyed about the day was the gasps of delight as the children looked in wonder at what they had created. With card, tape, paper and their skill and imaginations they peeked into the past and experienced their power in transforming basic materials.

 Mixing weather - thaumatrope in action

 Adding to a pile of thaumatrope's

 Zoetrope with frames being drawn

Spinning zoetrope, tricking the brain into seeing a moving image with the persistence of vision 

warp

Last month I traveled to Matlock in Derbyshire for a days walking. Having booked the train tickets a month in advance for affordability I kept everything crossed for a dry day. The day arrived with heavy rain and biting wind across the UK. Still, I went. 

My planned route was a circular walk starting and ending in Matlock, passing Matlock Bath, through the forest to Cromford, up to Black Rocks, then returning past Starkholmes. Rather than heading off into the hills I walked the roads and ended up passing Masson Mills, a mill I'd often seen when in the wooded hill above the A6.

This loom sits in the entrance to the shopping area and immediately intrigued me, reminding me of my studies at Derby University in the early 90's. The complexity, skill and time required to thread this warp, the mathematics, technical knowledge and understanding needed. This and the beauty of it, threads made solid, shimmering, sculptural, constantly changing as I moved around the loom.  

The rain led me to this and I wasn't disappointed that my planned walk was scuppered. 

colour and line

Had a great weekend at The Hepworth inviting families to explore the painting and sculpture in gallery 6. Children were asked to find artworks that interested them and to make a colour and a line response. Gallery 6, Hepworth and St Ives, focuses on the artists that were drawn to this Cornish fishing village which became an internationally significant centre for post war artists. Painting by Terry Frost, Victor Passmore, Ben Nicholson and sculpture by Barbara Hepworth was singled out by the young creatives below.