The session took place in the exhibition space at the back of the library where we will be putting on our event as part of the May Festival. Liz and Neil stressed that this was an opportunity to work out which activities will take place where, make sure we had enough activities to fill space, and decide who was going to do what. The head of exhibitions at the library was also present and gave us lots of ideas as to the amount of craft materials we could use from the stores at the library. Most of this seemed to be fairly standard stuff such as pipe cleaners, wool and yarn, felt pens, and a badge making machine which we hadn’t considered but thought might be quite nice for visitors to be able to take away not only dolls and masks but a more permanent reminder of the time they spent with us. Of course none of us know how to use a badge maker machine so that might be somewhat tricky but I’m sure between us we will figure it out.
The print room is going to be used as storytelling space as it is enclosed and will hopefully be better acoustically than the rest of the space we have been given which does tend to echo quite a lot. If we get lots and lots of people then I imagine the noise level will be pretty significant (which might be annoying for library users as the design of the space immediately above where we are seems to be a bit of a sound tunnel). We had a long roll of brown paper to make plans on and we were encouraged to draw out a “map” of activities. So far we have: maskmaking, object trolley, storytelling, and doll making, with a photo booth against the video wall. We will also need a welcome desk of some sort. We decided that the storytelling should be done at set times with a limited number of participants (about 15 to 20 give or take) as it could get a bit out of hand otherwise. The other activities could take between 5 to 10 people at a time but the turnover should be reasonably fast as it doesn’t take that long to make dolls. I did notice on the plans that there was space to put masks out to dry, which implies paint of some kind – I am not sure that mixing paint and the general public is a great idea but we will see. I also wonder if we have enough activities to occupy visitors and will try and think of anything else we could do with them.
This was much more of a practical session than class-based academical one and so I don’t have much to post text wise but here are pictures from the walkaround and planning stage:
