ArtLab at New Town Primary School – 29th June

Throw fabric over table! Top secret – let’s meet under the table in 30 seconds!

Today’s dwelling group began by sharing their stories of the temporary dwellings they’ve made in their homes from blankets and chairs and what made these special and safe. Often these places are cozy, small and always made from things close at hand, transformed and impromptu.

ArtLab’s summer workshops mix the lo-fi, everyday packaging and boxes with technology and the imagination of the participants.  At the end of the day we emerge somewhere none us can have foreseen.  Today the ArtLab team were at New Town Primary School, with a very creative class; we were surrounded by incredible drawings including lots of chameleons – an apt creature for an ArtLab workshop.

In the dwellings group we talked about homes we could take with us from blankets in a bag to homes that moved us; islands and planets carrying us long distances.  The stories of these dwellings were visualized in collage, before construction began on models, costumes and artefacts to aid our mental journeys.

Over on the artefacts table holograms of dinosaurs, miniature spectacles of future zoos and creatures were emerging from cereal and fruit boxes.

Above: Click to explore the 3d model

Below: The magical creatures group became a human millipede form, bedecked with headpieces powered by miniature circuits, each member acting out a different movement of its length.

More videos coming soon!