makingbitsandpieces

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More STEAM Powered making

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Miscellaneous activities

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Pickford’s House trail

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There are other attributes of games that facilitate learning. One of these is the state of being known as play. Much of the activity of play consists in failing to reach the goal established by a game’s rules. And yet players rarely experience this failure as an obstacle to trying again and again, as they work toward mastery. There is something in play that gives players permission to take risks considered outlandish or impossible in “real life.” There is something in play that activates the tenacity and persistence required for effective learning.

Institute of Play, Why Games & Learning

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Making, confidence and self-esteem

Making is a tool of social change and engagement, being strategic to promote self-esteem and confidence in people.

By interacting with people – both children and adults – as a facilitator, it was possible to see many don’t believe they are able to do what is being proposed. There were people who would say they couldn’t fold paper planes, when all it took was for them to try.

It is interesting to observe that, as I believe I am like that myself. Maybe it is a matter of people not being used to making, and thus believing they can’t by default, as if it was something only a few chosen people had the capacity or even right to do. Plus a fear of failing even before trying.

And it’s curious and sad, how we can limit ourselves from trying new things out. Maybe, who knows, we could be proficient in something new, possibly with an approach nobody had up to now. But we aren’t, because we’re afraid things won’t turn out the way they “should” (and why “should” anything be the way it “should”? Who decides that?), or simply because we don’t see ourselves as that person.

Being afraid of making and learning something new is so connected to how confident we are. If we don’t trust ourselves, if we put limits to what we can and can’t do from the start, then we end up believing that we can and we are only until a certain point. We can’t and don’t deserve more. We shouldn’t want more or better, because that’s just not who we are. And what a boring life and a boring world it sounds, so predictable and limited to what is already set and offered to us.

It may sound silly, but it feels so liberating, when you learn how to make something new. It feels so good to see that patch of knitting that won’t even be used for anything, really, but it proves you are able, and it is just a matter of putting some patience and work in it, and you, yourself, could make a scarf - or even a shirt!? - the colour and way you choose (What? Making stuff instead of buying it??).

If we’re worried about people’s wellbeing, and even about a country’s development and its people’s engagement in it, I would believe (from the top of my excitement about my knitting) that encouraging them to tinker and make and discover, since kids - at school, too -, would be a great start. If it didn’t also help so much with the learning process and the cognitive development, it is definitely a self-worth booster. Which is already an excellent reason itself.

It all being said, I am so glad to see that museums like the Silk Mill would like to do more with the communities they are part of to instil curiosity, increase people’s self-esteem and improve wellbeing.

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Digressions on how to communicate

During this month of placement, I’ve had a significant insight about communication: if I don’t say what I’m thinking, people won’t know I have anything to say to start with.

I know it does sound pretty obvious, but I guess it’s not so easy to take the “spotlight” in the middle of a meeting, ideation or discussion. I don’t feel like my opinions or contribution would be important enough to bring the discussion to me, but at the same time, why would I be there at all if I won’t contribute with my own ideas?

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Starters

Well, so I started a placement at Derby Silk Mill in June.

As many things – everything – in my life, I wasn’t sure about what I expected to learn or even do there. Just that everything sounded really exciting, and the perspective of working in a place “under construction”, trying out things that might work or not, seemed just right.

[The Silk Mill used to be the Museum of Industry, but is now going through change, to become the Museum of Making. So new ideas are being tried out, and it’s ok to try anything new – and it is also ok if it doesn’t work, so they can try something else.]

The first thing I did was already a kind of a shock: show something I had made to LOADS of people I had never seen before in my life (and who, of course, knew and made much more and better than me, and had more right to be there than I did). So I showed them the mobile my colleague at uni Syahira and I made as a course work.

It was a STEAM Powered Makers meeting. They are meant to figure out the “A” in STEM (I didn’t know what STEM was till then), through making.

(Finding the “A” in STEM has so much to do with the whole idea of my exchange program. It’s called “Science Without Borders”; the name says all: it is meant to enhance “STEM” subjects in Brazil. I came to the UK to study Illustration, I don’t know how. All courses that didn’t have a connection with sciencey development were left out. Though it is hard to separate technical development and innovation from creative experimentation and critical thinking. Both are developed through making, trying out new things, activities recognised as artistic, and studying, observing and discussing the world around us. So what’s the point or advantage of this trend of highlighting ~STEM~ subjects to the detriment of humanities?)

Our first of the weekly activities to be delivered at the open days in the museum was a totem pole, each totem to be an expression of subjectivity of the person who made it. They looked pretty in the end.