This is an excerpt from the latest Tinkering Together newsletter:
Last month, Ricarose and I (Celeste) visited our project partners at the Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) Group at MIT. While there, we facilitated a virtual tinkering session with educational partners from global community-based organizations located in Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, India, and throughout the US to explore the possibilities of a new coding app that the LLK group is developing. We offered this prompt as a starting point for our tinkering session:
“Celebrating and Remembering – Around the world, many cultures have traditions that celebrate loved ones. We’ll create projects to celebrate and remember people, places, or objects that have special meaning to us.”
The theme “celebrating and remembering” is inspired by cultural traditions in our families and traditions we see in the communities we work with, such as Día de los Muertos. We are constantly striving towards mindfully connecting with the communities we work with around relevant and meaningful topics. Additionally, the feeling of wanting to celebrate loved ones and special places has the potential to be relevant beyond our local partner communities.
Ricarose’s example projects celebrates her brother’s favorite taco spot that she loves to go to whenever she visits family in Los Angeles
Celeste’s example project remembers afternoons spent with her Abuela
We were touched by the emotion and personal and cultural connections participants brought into their projects. We saw family photos brought to life, remembrances of loved ones, animated altars, celebrations of favorite taco shops, and more.
We’re curious about what it would look like to explore the theme “celebrating and remembering” further. What would it look like if you brought this prompt to your context? What activities or materials might you pair with this prompt? Ronni from the Creative Communities group is working with partners at the ideaLAB makerspace in Denver Public Library to host a workshop related to this theme. Inspired by the artist Mar Lee, participants will print pictures of loved ones onto a quilt square and embellish them with embroidery and soft circuit elements like LED lights. Stay tuned for our blog post about the workshop!