zero pressure

in the museum is a cabinet with record player and i can;t remember what it’s called !  might it be a radio gram ?

i’ve got to place a record on it and play the record !!!

this was an accompanying activity to my time on the hub yesterday.  the hub is the name of he area where the curatorial staff clean items in the collection.  the item i was able to clean was an early 20th century telephone.

i used the time on the hub to explore the record collection.  to my delight i found a promotional copy of an album by ian anderson.  the opening track filled me with joy, i started to dance around the museum, complete with purple nitride gloves on my hands.  the energy level rose and i did smile lots.

our fellow maker steve is starting to make me smile.  he’s been wrestling with the challenges of the residency and is beginning to start to make sense of them for himself.

his explorations with casting process seems to be easing his cognitive dissonance, something i’ve been working through too.  yesterday his aim to get messy in the museum was another source of renewable energy in the museum.  maker graeme once again stepping in to quantitive ease the situation.

so what of my progress ?

well …

i’m starting to feel like i understand a little bit better the interns of the re-imagining process.  through my experience on the hub i now have a more informed position about what is being planned for the renovation of the building.  it’s going to take a few years and while it’s happening the whole building will be closed.  this makes sense of what we’re being asked to explore within the residency.

my first exploration is what to take to the big bang schools science fair on june 30th.  i’m making an interactive that speaks of the museum’s aspiration to get it’s visitors more hands on with the collections.

three of us have worked on creating a laser cut box.

the small black mark inside the representation of a hand is a hole with a light dependent resistor (ldr) inside it.  using a small arduino set up i’m bluetoothing the voltage change value from the ldr to my laptop.  this data is then used to generate a visual response that is further manipulated by two hands placed over the leap motion controller.  a month into the residency and my interactive will be part of the representation of the museum to school children.  i feel this is quite unusual for a residency but then i guess re-imagining a museum is quite unusual.

in the moment of running around the museum to ian anderson with purple nitride gloves i saw many smiling faces among those in the museum.  the space felt energised and a happy place to be.  i’d like it to feel like this more often.

my residency is starting to challenge my personal perception of museum.

within this process of residency i’m finding i’m often returning to looking at myself and my own practice, considering what my own needs are and are they being met.

i’ve tried to be open to the challenges being set and have engaged with as many as possible.

nearly at the end of week three i peer around me looking for external references to gauge where i am within the overall process.  is it ok to be slightly bewildered still ?  is it ok to be wanting to get into the flow of making?

my friend and partner in the reseidency process is my forest school leader practice.

the museum is investing in and becoming a beacon for the steam educational ethos.  to help me understand this ethos i’m bringing with me elelments of the forest school ethos, as both processes are holistic in nature.

considering steam for a moment, what i currently know and understand of the ethos is that it is project based, holistic and leaning on the creative arts as a way of expressing and exploring science, technology, engineering and maths.

i’ve done alot of on line research into it and it will eventually come down to me putting into practice the theory.

the challenges of this have the potential to set up philosphical differences within the maker group. we might struggle to explore this in an environment of continual positive langauge.

i have wondered at times in the last three weeks about how challenging this residency is for the staff who have overseen the reimagining of the museum since the outset.  potentially they have a group of makers responding to what they see and having different stand points and different needs and wants.  how do the staff cope with this?

something i seem to have set up for myself is the re-imagining of the snee snaw for the figment festival in august.  this takes me out of my comfort zone.

at the beginning of the residency we were urged to be ambitious.  re imagining the snee snaw takes my ambition levels to new heights.  it would appear that the staff really want the snee snaw to be part of the festival.  to do this and all the other makes and activities i’ve said i would do is going to test my resolve and my ability and maybe at the end of the whole process i can look back and see what i can do when i leave comfort zone and place myself in the moment of making.

i missed my moment of making yesterday.  i note when i miss it i feel unhappy. making really does feed my well being.

our residency is also being supported by the museum’s partner status in the maker ed, #makercorps summer programme.  i participated in a google hangout session last week.  i can recommend the hangout app as a means to communicate and advise an initial exploratory session prior to using it for a meaningful means.

in the hangout session i started to get an in site into the differences of experiences and attitude to making around the world.

last thursday i took to observe the maker bar to work on an idea for the big bang school exhibition on the 30th june.  at this a group of us will represent the museum with things to do based on the steam ethos.  i’ve gone into steam powered carnival mode.

there’s a small amount of anxiety connected to delivering that project… the museum mantra being feel the fear and do it any way.

implies a certain amount of being outside what we know and are comfortable with.  are all the staff at the museum working in this manner ?

with my friday forest school session not happening last week i was able to visit and observe the under 5 session at the derby museum and art gallery.  i’m interested in the brief at the silk mill to develop an under 5 programme of activity for the silk mill.  it’s a user group i’ve done the least with yet i feel most at home with them because of their kinesthetic learning style.  the invitation is to unpack that idea later this week.

writing this is starting to make me feel happier.  there are so many threads happening at once that writing helps me to order and process them.  it helps me to create a perspective.

i spent some time yesterday with another member of the museum curatorial staff.   i’m learning about how they look for narratives originating from the objects and how they can weave narratives from groups of objects.  the accession number being the king pin of this system:

site identifier : year : object group number for that year : item number in group.

thoughts of an interactive appear …

i explored further the stores of the silk mill …

and walked to the silk mill in the rain, just as many other of the staff did :

it feels important to me to record what’s happening as the museum’s status is going to be continually updated and the timeline of this in theory informs what happens next.

there have been signals i’ve picked up on of certain major aspects of the re-imagining already being under taken and in place for the future.

i search for my maker moment as this is what i’m being paid to do.  this is also what gives me a sense professional achievement and personal happiness.

“there’s only one rule when handling objects in the stores … don’t pick a rabbit up by its ears.”

this was the opening line from our curatorial guide in the stores on the fourth floor of the silk mill.  soon it was very apparent what this meant and we were off ! exploring the stores with our fetching nitride gloves being the safety net for the objects.

we learnt about how when fully open the silk mill’s collection of 17,000 objects will all be on display across the four floors of the building.  it’s a huge under taking and i’m starting to grasp from a curator’s perspective how this might be.

the collection is diverse.  from a lump of slag to an absolutely beautiful fully operational (we believe) model of a traction engine.

i found an object that completely lit me up.  i want to see it working and was able to ask the main curator if this might be possible.  his answer was very revealing.  i learnt a lot about curatorial practice and the relationship with an object in the museum.  we’ll find out soon if the object’s record has designated it as one to be used.  from a visual inspection, we found the last pat test date of it.

earlier in the day we’d ventured through the first floor.  here we were being shown the lego robot kit that is part of a collaboration between the museum and the institute of engineering and technology (that’s what i managed to write down, i hope this is correct !).   i learnt about the first lego league.  this spans 96 countries and encourages exploration, experimentation and visual coding with lego in a competitive fun format.  one of our maker team has previous experience and i hope be part of some peer to peer learning with this kit.

the first floor also houses the midland railway company archive and an extensive model railway.  soon this will be packed and and stored in preparation for the renovation and revitalising work scheduled to be carried out on the internal structure.  taking pictures of the railway area felt ery documentative of something set to soon evolve.

in getting ready for our object handling training we again ventured onto the first floor.  along the edges of the walk way were rows and rows of bricks.

i had to ask about them.

the museum has a collection of 461 bricks.  i was thrilled to learn this as it totally ties in with a fledgling idea i have in response to one of the maker briefs.

a couple of other images from the store.

i’m feeling happy.  i’m enjoying the journey into derby and the knot i had been getting in my stomach is no longer with me.  the maker ed, maker corps programme is beginning and later i’ll be part of a global connection via google hangout with other makers.

looking at the grass in the garden, i’ve been reminded of this …

as the residency settles into it’s rythym my thinking continues to be a banging buzzing booming confusion.  i just had to write that so i can begin to ease the need to think it.

after catching up with grayson perry’s all man i again see the importance of talking about what is on your mind.

since thursday i’ve been juggling many thoughts i’ve wanted to record them.

in this moment they have all flown the coop.

let’s see how many will return to be recorded.

firstly some words about the post on friday.  i had images from what i experienced on thursday and in the packed day to day schedule wanted to make a post based on the available time i had.  i knew if i didn’t make a post the moment would be lost and the uncatchable catch up scenario would be started.

i again was at the museum on saturday(yesterday).  the day started with extra intrigue as an organisation who helps people with sight loss was staging a duck race as part of their fund raiser.

a mooc is a massive open online course and this week i’ve begun the backstage of the 21st century museum course on future learn dot com.  i see this course as an additional research resource within my residency at the silk  mill.  i’ve been joining in with the dicussions and i’ve really enjoyed the first week.  it’s run by the museums studies department at the university of leicester.

using the museum of liverpool as a working case study, the course is considering the aspects of what might go into make a museum of the 21st century.

democratic, accessible are two of the strong aspects that have come out.  the museum as a social space has also been shown to be important.  the museum of liverpool demonstrates how architecture can influence visitor experience as well as representing what happens in the city.

watching the videos of the museum in action, the thing that struck me was how many varied opportunities the museum has made for visitors to use their hands to interact with objects in the museum.

currently derby silk mill museum opens to the public for two sessions a week.  at these the maker bar is available as a drop in resource for visitors to make something be it the set activity or their own take on it.  i made sure this week to be at both the sessions so i could establish a baseline observation.

i kept the activity simple.  (keeping it simple is important to me because at the beginning of a relationship the simplicity allows for connection to be made.  as our relationship progresses we can together explore how the idea can become more complex and interesting.)

one of the aspects of the residency is juggling connecting to the collection within the curatorial theme of the month.  with this in mind i wanted to make paper planes for the activity this week.  i observed it was popular and for the most part within the ability range of those participating.  i saw a lot of decorating of the planes once they had been test flown.  i also saw lots of children smiling and running around the museum flying paper planes. (i now have an idea of baseline material resources for the maker bar.)

i learnt that i needed to have aspects of my practice with me.  i learnt this on thursday as steve (fellow steam powered maker)  brought along parts of  his experiments and an activity to engage visitors.  i enjoyed his company and we had some great conversations and a few giggles too.  on saturday in the lulls of active participants i was able to play with some of my own experiments.  i had a piece of wood beginning to control a white circle on my laptop by the close of play.

i’m settling into the residency.  slowly negotiating with myself the order in which i do things.  earlier in the week i touched upon how i learn.  i explored this further through taking the online vark questionaire.  this is a resource that gives an indication for your learning style strengths.  answering the questions has helped me to further understand myself and my learning style preferences.  i feel it important to understand myself so i can start to understand and help others.

in reading about learning styles and the vark questionaire i also read an article about preschool children.  i learnt that a question begun with what gives them the space to answer.  a question being why will be quite closed for a child.  i’m going to attempt to ask more questions starting what ….. (this is quite difficult to do.)

i want to reflect a bit now upon the making task i set this week.

what?

a making task inspired by the eagle engine (including worlds first air mail), making paper planes and flying them in the museum.

so what ?

happened was i saw people approaching the maker bar showing on their faces that they didn’t comprehend what the bar was about.  greeting them with a smile and chatting with them they chose to engage in the activity they wanted to do. for the majority it was to make the plane.  there were some who simply wanted to draw and in some instances  encouraged them when needing inspiration.

with the adults present in almost all cases we got into conversation.  on thursday ian from adelaide showed us some wing modifications and i shared this addition with subsequent participants.

now what ?

there is a collection of made paper planes and some communication material i created by hand to help the activity become familiar and friendly.  i don’t know where these will go.  the objects are based on the monthly  theme and i need to investigate wether it is possible to create a dynamic monthly exhibition from the pieces of the activity that remains at the end of saturday each week.  a space that begins the month empty and through the month is populated from the activities.  at the end of the month the exhibit is documented and made available via digital online means.  the monthly activity documentation becoming part of the digital collection.

steve and i chatted a lot about the briefs we can select from.  i need to consider the negotiation of seeing the steam engine running before the end of the residency as this is what will help me to be inspired to access the brief connected to this machine.  i note the model railway will be running at the end of the month.

my banging buzzing confusion has now calmed down through the writing down of stuff.  at a personal level it’s been a demanding week.  i’ve responded by eating more and talking at my partner more as i work to make sense of what has been happening.  in other words i’m actively working on my hierarchy of needs as laid out by maslow

the weekend has been punctuated by heavy downpours.  as the rain eases one of my favourite tunes to look at the window with is by elo…