Week 17

It's been a week for discovering people.

I forgot to take a picture at the museum -
so this one's from the Natural History Museum website. 

On Wednesday I was persuaded to put my antisocial tendencies ('but I'd rather watch netflix with my cat') and go out to see Denis Jones  do a gig at the Old Granada Studios. Denis was of course great, but so was the company.

My friend Sian and I got chatting to Jenny who was rehearsing with the fabulous She choir , Jenny it turned out worked at the museum and is keen on blogging and minerals. I'm hoping to be able to connect up this blog with the Museum Blog that Jenny runs and to talk to Jenny a lot about rocks and minerals.

So today I had a good meeting with Debbie (Cat it turns out is stranded in Lumb Bank. Good for her!) and we ran through the improvements we need to make to the trading activity in the money gallery.

Then I went outside to enjoy the rain in the Rutherford Garden and got chatting to a really nice woman who was with a party of school children from Finland spending the week in Manchester. They were from Tampere, the 'Manchester of Finland'. She said the cold felt like home even if the rain didn't and I told her people were getting sunburned last week. She said that their children started school two years later - and I asked her was it true that they then learned their reading more quickly and more happily and she said yes.

Then I went to find Jenny, who introduced me to a dinosaur egg. It's not that big compared to a dinosaur. They grow a lot! Turns out that reptiles don't really stop growing in the way that mammals do - which is why you get some big old crocodiles.

So, is growing a kind of migration? I'm having to think about that - but I'm writing a poem about dinosaur eggs anyway.

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 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 8

This has been a busy week, picking my way through the turmoil that's been created as the project starts to branch in different directions.

The answers to last weeks questions.

1. Hermes tells riddles. He also tells lies and plays with words. He's like a cross between the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland and Jack Nicholson's Joker. In my head he is anyway - making him appear in person might be slightly trickier!

2. I met with Debbie and Cat to discuss using the money gallery in the card game. When will I learn - those problems which bug you for hours can usually be solved in a few minutes of lively discussion. Or maybe that's only after they've bugged you for hours, I'm not sure. Anyway, the solution to how to bring the money into the game, might be to bring money into the game. Looks like we're going to buy lots of lovely gold and silver coins and allow children to buy words from each other as part of the game. (Political aside - is this what I want to teach them about capitalism? Actually yes, it's not money that's the problem it's neo-liberalism and this game has rules!).

3. I'm not thinking about Frogs yet, or the Benin empire. One thing at a time. I might still buy a toy one though, once I've finished this costume.

Ah, yes, the costume. I've been working on Hermes' costume. Here's his hat, sandals and staff.

There are a couple of yellow rubber snakes on their way from Hong Kong to add to the staff, along with 3 narrow belts, which seems to approximate how Ancient Greek women wore their toga's (he's a very gender-flexible god). I just need to get a white bed sheet for said toga and I already have a nice gold brooch in the shape of a snake.

Oh, and today, this from a charity shop. It's not very Greek but it's gold and it'll probably hold most of the props I need for the show. Hurray!

Week 7

Today I'm writing from home - they're having the windows done in the museum and Debbie and Cat have decided to keep a wide berth and I decided that I needed to catch up on thinking and writing.

Three things are taxing my brain.

1. Riddles. I think Hermes might be a riddler. I think it could work as a way of involving the children and as a basis for follow on workshops. I've been re-reading the Exeter Riddles to see if I can incorporate them. But there's not much overlap between their Anglo Saxon working world and the world of a Greek God. And they're really rude!!

But they've given me some food for thought. Double meanings, puns, visual clues, anagrams.


2. How to use the Money gallery in the card game I've created which uses objects from the Living Cultures and Manchester galleries. I've got a list of words like "reward" "contract" "exchange" "value". They're all quite abstract though. Maybe there's a way that this gallery provides Chance or Community Chest cards like monopoly. Or do we somehow work with a list of concrete nouns and a list of abstract nouns.

3. Frogs. Specifically Strawberry poison dart frogs. He's my next candidate for a poem and a riddle from Hermes.

Look at him here, He's delightful. I can also buy a toy of him on Amazon. Oh dear.

Consquently I've eaten a lot and written very little. Never mind. Thinking is still work.