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Dec. 5, 2003 An Intergenerational Workshop in Nature Hillel Weintraub, Future University -Hakodate (FUN)

On October 19th, my fourth year research students at FUN, nicknamed the "Dancers", and I held a workshop at CAMP (Children's Art and Media Park) in the Okawa Center in Keihanna Research Park which is located between Kyoto and Nara. (See CAMP's homepage ) Every workshop -or "playshop" as we often refer to them at CRN-offers a unique opportunity for both participants and facilitators to learn something about life itself and about learning. Our workshop was called "Excavating Toys -an intergenerational workshop in creating toys from natural materials." It was our goal to bring people together of different ages -from school kids to the elderly - in a natural environment using natural materials to create a "toy" and communicate with both nature and each other in the process. It was the first workshop that my students had planned. They felt quite concerned as the date of the workshop came closer and closer and our vision of things was still pretty vague. But we were able to meet with Nobuyuki Ueda who was preparing with his friends for a short presentation at the 6th Asian Design International Conference. He told us that he had recently created a little formula for thinking about workshop design. T here were three phases to think about: "On Stage", which would be managed by the Dancers; "Behind Stage", which would be managed by the CAMP staff and a teacher (Sowa-san) and his students from Kobe Art University; and "Above Stage" (Nobuyuki called it "Meta Stage", but in this formula, I prefer to use "above"), which would be handled by me and Masataka Nakaue, an old friend, who would be acting as observers, looking at things from a bird's eye perspective. Having this simple formula, really helped the Dancers relax. They were able to visual their role and the role of others more clearly. We traveled to CAMP two days before the workshop and began our final plans and preparations by familiarizing ourselves with the SPACE and TOYS&TOOLS available, two key elements of workshop design. On the morning of the workshop, we all waited excitedly for the 25 participants to arrive. The flow of the workshop went well, though not exactly according to our plan. First we had ice-breaking activities so that people could get to know each other. We designed teams so that there was a good mixture of ages and so that children were not with their own parent, as we wanted everyone to experience working with a new person. We introduced them to ourselves, each other and the purpose and flow of our workshop with a little walk through film that Mori-san (CAMP staff) had finished just a bit before the workshop began! Next we took everyone outside for a chance to experience nature and human relationships in a new way: the children blindfolded the adults and led them around the grounds of Okawa Center! This event was a very exciting start for everyone: guiding adults in this way was something stimulating for the children; coming into contact with nature without the sense of vision was stimulating for the adults. After our blindfold walk, we gave everyone a paper bag, and we all went out to a nearby park to gather natural materials for our toy making in the afternoon. While picking up beautifully colored leaves, sticks, acorns, stones and seeds, everyone chatted and enjoyed being outside on a lovely day! (I forgot to mention this important factor: if it had rained that day, we would have had to change our plans drastically and suddenly! Maybe we should call this element the "Natural Stage"!!!) During this "excavation", we sometimes stopped our chatting to listen quietly to the sounds around us -birds, cars, the wind in trees, a dog barking. This is something people seldom do, as we're busy moving through life. One of the purposes of our workshop was to give people a chance to experience nature in new ways, so this "stopping to listen" was an important time. We went back to CAMP for lunch, eating together with our friends and family outside in the sun and then we began our toy making. During the toy making there was so much interaction. "On Stage", the Dancers were busy explaining the process and helping people understand our vision -which was for them to create THEIR vision of a playful object (toy) using the materials they gathered. We had the support of Mori-san of CAMP staff to help everyone use the many toys&tools around -stuff that we had picked up the day before, stuff that we had brought with us, and lots of stuff that CAMP kept around for workshops! "Behind Stage", Sowa-san and his students were busy running around taking pictures and organizing them for the next event -book making. Nakaue-san was walking around taking notes. He had been abandoned by me, as I was too busy in on-stage activities, playing music and helping the participants. It was clear to me that the "Above Stage" sector need to have just a single job -to watch the event from a distance, so they can report about it from a different perspective later. We were particularly lucky in having a great meta-observer as Nakaue-san had just returned from his Master's Degree Program at Stanford in Education/Technology Design and was able to give us many great insights in his notes. The participants worked and played both joyfully and seriously to create their toys. We took a break to introduce a special and funny local folk dance and snack from Hakodate, so this gave everyone a chance to move their minds and bodies. When we returned we began the next event, which was reflecting on the day's activities. The Dancers had prepared felt book covers and the participants were now going to prepare their reflective/memory book of the day. First they would use natural materials to create an interesting cover for their books; then they would put some pictures and their comments inside the books. Sowa-san's crew had taken and printed more than 300 pictures of every activity from the moment of arrival to the present time. Each participant was to choose 1-2 pictures and put this in his/her "memory book". Moving to the next stage was a bit of a problem. We had planned for everyone to get together and share their toys and their memory books, but naturally everyone finished at different times. Keeping people engaged after a long day could have been a problem, but almost everyone seemed to be busy -either on their own work or helping others. Finally, we had a toy exchange game-like musical chairs without a loser -where two circles one inside the other, moved around in opposite directions while the music played. When it stopped, everyone sat down and explained their toys to the person opposite them. This was going to be the end of our day, but we found that the memory books were so beautiful -we had copied everyone's inner pages of pictures and comments so that every participant now had his/her own book with a personally designed cover, his or her own created page with colored photo and comments, and the 25 pages of other participants. We thought it was important to show these beautiful objects to each other so we created a little fashion show with music so that everyone was able to come up and show their own book and say a few words. This gave the children a wonderful chance to speak in front of others about their own work! Finally the day was finished. Everyone was exhausted and happy. The participants left with their toys, their memory books and their smiles. The CAMP staff was very satisfied -this was their first event since opening 3 years ago in which children and adults worked together. The Dancers had finished their first workshop, filled with ideas for the next one, but not quite ready to think about that yet! We had a party to thank each other for all the support from CAMP, from experienced workshoppers Ueda-san and Sowa-san, and from Sowa-san's students. Later we read Nakaue-san's "Above Stage" notebook and were able to see things in a new light; for example, sometimes the Dancers moved among the participants naturally, but many other times they stayed in the same area talking together and supporting each other! This gave us an awareness of our actions that we weren't able to have on our own. Some pictures of this workshop can be seen on CAMP's Japanese homepage. Next month I'd like to reflect on some of the special aspects of creating a workshop. But in the meantime, if you have any comments, Let's Talk!

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