Week 12 and 13

It's not that not much has been happening, it's that most of the stuff that's been happening has been somewhere in the recesses of my mind - and it's not pretty in there.

Dominic and I trialled the first section of the Hermes show at Stanley Grove Junior school. It was great fun - and I remembered all the words. The children had lots of interesting questions which was great - one of the things poetry should do is make people think. 

One of the things I did many years ago when I had a role as science co-ordinator for Creative Partnerships is take a load of scientist, artist and educators out to dinner to talk (at the Wapping Project, now I think closed - which housed the hydraulics lift the curtains of London's theatreland) I seem to remember we argued a lot about metaphor but one of the things we agreed on was the importance of questions. We came up with a little aphorism - the reward for asking questions, is not answers, it is more questions. Or something like that. As a science educator I believe that if you can keep children's ability to ask questions alive, they will learn beyond your expectations. #

The questions also gave me a direction to go with the writing. It's also given me a lot to think about around the Hermes character and the theatrics of the piece - which is a completely new area for me. 

So I've been doing some writing around the history of the solar system (the problem with these things is as you keep answering questions arising from questions, you find yourself going further and further back. I don't want to start at the Big Bang - I'll leave that to Stephen Hawking!) and today I've been to the museum for a tete a tete with my favourite meteorite, a big shiny, angular piece of iron that fell on Campo de Ciel in Argentina about 5000 years ago. I've developed a bit of an obsession with this meteorite, mostly because it's one of the things you can touch. It's older and from further away than anything I will ever touch and that fills me with wonder. All I have to do now is catch some of that wonder in a poem.....

Week 9

Things are starting to step up a notch. Debbie and I worked on the card game based around the living cultures and money galleries, which we're going to be trying out on a group of guinea kids in a couple of weeks.

And on Monday Dominic and I are going to be working on the draft of my Hermes verse ready to try something out on a local school the week after.

I also looked round the museum to contemplate what the future element of my set of poems might be. Mostly I was looking at the snowy sky through the glass roof and wondering if we needed some kind of Great Glass Elevator.

There's a shocking exhibit in the vivarium with lots of chopped down trees and no animals at all. That's one future. There's also on the other end of the same floor an aquaponics system - a closed system where bacteria digest fish poo into food for mint. It's all very peaceful and harmonious. That's a vision of the future too.

And in the money gallery there's an amazing machine that allows you to feel your way round virtual objects. Partly it's for visually impaired people - but it's also a different way of having other people experience objects, and a way of exploring objects theoretically from the other side of the world. It's a very strange experience, poking your way round a rather vicious looking pig skull and being able to feel how deep the holes are and which go right through and which don't. (There were all sorts of lovely vases but naturally I'd rather poke round a pig skull!) So a world in which we experience things differently and in which we are differently connected. That's a future too.

But the future is unscripted. It is territory to which the map is not yet drawn. It is a story which young people will write for themselves. I'd like to help them understand that. Without scaring the bejeezus out of them, or apologising too abjectly for the fact that we're handing a difficult present to them.

But on a lighter note there's a parcel waiting in the post office for me. I'm hoping it's rubber snakes - all the way from Hong Kong. Can snakes have a carbon footprint if they don't have feet?

Week 2

This week I met Debbie the Primary Co-ordinator in the Education Department at Manchester Museum and had a chat about the project. Debbie's going to be working with me for the next few weeks. One of the things we talked about was how our perceptions of things shifted depending on what we brought to the experience. In this way a museum was like a work of art. Debbie also wondered if we could use music to influence a child's experience of a museum.

The first job was to go round the 12 key objects I chose last week and answer my own questions, which you might remember from last week were;

1. What do we say about the object?
2. What does the object say about itself?
3. What does it really mean?

This was fun! I didn't think too much about it. I just wrote down the first things that occurred to me. I have tweeted four of them which were short enough - this might be a nice way for visitors and school children to engage.

Here they are:

Maharajah: walked 200 miles from Edinburgh to Belle Vue zoo in 1872

Look at my huge feet, how easily they carry my weight.
It was a long way. It has been a long time.

Spice Racks: India 1865, wood

I have treasures. I have secrets.
Spin me fast enough and my pods pop off, fizz like stars.

Bark Cloth: made of beaten Masi stems, stencilled, Fiji, before 1942

Roll me out. I will hold your nights and your days, your lives and your children.
I will whisper to you in my patterns, sing the wind in the Masi.

Chinese Dish, Porcelain and enamel, decorated with bats and long life symbols, for export

Sprinkle me with leaves, lay me with fruit.
I am yellow like the sun. I came across the miles. I was always here.

Helmet: metal, Iran, donated 1946 

I was Persia, the Orient, Asia Minor.
I was war, death, dignity, defence.

Head-dress: Manchu, China, Kingfisher feather, bamboo, silk, more than 60 years old. 

I know your greatness. I will make you great in the eyes of the world.
I am pain - the kingfisher, the oyster, the silkworm, the hands that cut. Did you think it could be otherwise?

Iron Core of Meteorite:  Campo del Cielo (Field of Heaven) Argentina, 16th Century. 

I am alien. I am earth.
We are all spacedust.

Jaw: Hammerhead Shark

It was only ever hunger, life.
When there were nerves, this mouth knew the whole world which spewed into it.

Cabinet of Tiny Fossils: 19th Century Collection

I am the deep history of the earth. Collected, ordered, classified.
The earth resists this project. It flirts with chaos, comes back to us giggling with surprises.

Plaster Cast of Dog buried in Ash: Vesuvious, Italy

I am every dog, scratching his back. I didn't see it coming.
I might have followed you, begged for scraps, licked your face. I have smelly breath.

Green Tree Python: Modified muscles, prehensile tail, climbs trees, sleeps during the day, head tucked in the middle of its coils, bites, Australian rain forest. 

This is my tree. I have not moved all week.
I am more threatened than threatening. Let me sleep.

Fragments of Pottery: Archaeological interpretation and analysis. 

Each one of us was part of something, a jar, a dish, a cup.
Our mismatched fragments become a new whole.

Frog and duck weights: Mesopotamia, 2-3rd Millenia BC

The balance, the baking, the baggies. I am your history too.
How might it be not to apportion - mass, time, value, love?



I realised I had not given much thought to the themes of water and migration during this. So I've picked two ideas to think about this week - trade and poisoned and polluted water.

Week 1

Cat and I met for a chat at the museum - we both got quite excited about the possibilities. One of Cat's suggestions was to look for key objects so I took my tablet round the museum and took 12 photos. I didn't think too much about it. I just took things that made me react in some way or another.

After my journey round the museum I felt quite overwhelmed and went for a walk. I thought about whether children could take ipods round and take pictures and then organise their pictures into groups, like their own personal galleries. 2 groups of 6, 3 groups of 4, 4 groups of 3 (wasn't it lucky I chose the number 12!). What would connect the items in their groups? Could you have 6 pairs of opposites.

Then I started thinking about something Cat had said about the need to keep looking again at objects that had become familiar in order to see something more in them - and about how we wanted to encourage children to do that in a limited amount of time.

I came up with 3 questions:

1. What do we say about the object?
2. What does the object say about itself?
3. What does it really mean?

I wasn't really sure if those questions would get us anywhere but it felt like a good start!

Here are those images. More about them next week.