Week 11

Another great day at the museum!

Debbie and I trialled the trading activity. In a nutshell the children win cards with words or objects as a reward for answering questions and then try to form sentences from the words - trading cards with each other or using money to buy more useful words. We talk a lot about value - in terms of the worth of things changing depending on how much someone wants things, and how many people want things, and how the value of a sentence depends on whether you think the best is the funniest or the weirdest or the truest. Or just the one you mates make up.

Because the task was so open-ended the children went about it in different ways. We had haggling and bidding wars, we had gentle persuasion. We had one child who bought my stock of cards to sell on at a profit. We had children reneging on deals and hoarding to stop other children getting the good words. I think it helped them think a lot about how money works and hopefully what's fair and isn't fair. (Can you stop children thinking about what's fair and isn't fair?!)

At some point I'm going to write a Hermes poem that signposts some of the interesting issues around trading and also to bring it back to thinking about the values that are attached to words.

But for now, I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Also, this article about Benin came up in the Guardian, so I'm popping it here for later.

Week 10

Image Paul Cliff for Manchester Museum (flickr)

It's been a very exciting week. Dominic and I had a session on Monday working on my drafts (and eating vegan food). It was a very productive afternoon and we've got a draft ready to be unveiled at Stanley Grove school in a couple of weeks. Dominic's in for the day and I'm going along to perform at the assembly. Time to start to learn my script!

In the meantime the snakes have arrived. So I've a weekend spraying their tummies gold and attaching them to the staff. The belts have also arrived so I'll be fully costumed at Stanley Grove - obviously more important than knowing my words.... 

Today at the museum I've made notes for the poem about the meteorites and I've been gnawing away at the problem of what to make the final poem - the one about the future. I did wonder about a cockroach, but I don't want a post-apocalyptic future. I want these children to believe they can make a better future. 

As I've been wandering the museum thinking about the future I keep being drawn up to the top floor - which sort of makes sense - you'll remember last week I was looking at the sky through the windows. 

On that top floor is the aquaponics system - a closed, balanced aquatic system which uses fish poo to feed mint. Then there's a floor dedicated to the ideas of Wonder, Discover, Make and Share. I'm always drawn to the made things. I think our future is a made future. The living world is a triumph of organising forces over the forces of chaos. I think we have to be part of those organising forces. I think the time for just letting things happen will be after the earth has been cured of humans. In the meantime whether we see ourselves as part of nature or as the custodians of nature we have to work in harmony with it. 

So I wrote down 'harmony' and 'creation' and headed down the stairs through the Living Worlds gallery, asking myself again and again what's the symbol of the future. I passed the case labelled 'Peace' - the one full of origami birds, made I think by school children but I'll have to check that. It was one of the stops Dmitri and I made when we created a poetry film about migration. And there it was. Almost a full circle. An image of migration. The act of making, of co-operating, of imagining. Was the image of the future a paper bird? No, of course not. The future is a flock of paper birds. 

As I sat at the bus stop a while later I drafted the core of that final poem: 

The future's a blank piece of paper, 

the future is a word, 

the future's each fold,

each thought, each hand we hold, 

each plan we make, each prayer. 

The future's every dream we share, 

it's a flock of paper birds.

I think there's also a possibility of creating an activity round this where children write their dreams on paper and fold it into birds. I just have to learn how to fold a bird!

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?