New Initiatives: Global Story Swap Project
If you’re heading to ACM Interactivity, the national children’s museum conference this week, be sure to stop by our booth and check out the latest: our prototype allowing visitors to create and share puppet shows between museums in different countries. The idea behind this: simple, fun moments of creative family expression go a long way toward building connections.
I’ve been working on this with Vicky Cave, an exhibit developer in London focusing on early childhood projects, and Katie Spencer in Durham, with whom I’ve been developing an emerging body of work on community storytelling. Some of the areas we’ve been developing:
- Encouraging parent/child collaboration, and building on that dynamic
- Appealing to universal “story shapes” as a bridge between cultures
- Use of puppets to convey emotion
- Warmup activities that scaffold the storytelling and encourage creative engagement
We’ve prototyped so far at an afterschool program in London, and in the Tech Kitchen area in Boston Children’s Museum, and have plans to further test the model at the Institute of Imagination in London. If you’re interested in learning more and potentially participating, please stop by at the conference — we’ll also be featuring custom puppets by fabric artist Nao Kobayashi in the booth, so plenty to see and do!
Portable Storykiosk, with frame by 42 DesignFab
Create your own puppets from wooden spoons
Custom puppets designed by fabric artist Nao Kobayashi