2

THANK YOU
Thank you to everyone who has been involved in this project:
the many teachers, participants, friends and family that that
made it all possible.
A special thanks goes to:
Keith Doyle, Helene Day Fraser, Garnet Hertz, Ron Burnett,
Haig Armen, Debrorah Shackleton, Craig Badke, Gillian
Russell, Craig Martin, Louise St. Pierre and David MacMurraySmith.

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract/Keywords

---------------------------

5

Preface

---------------------------

6-7

Glossary

---------------------------

8-9

Introduction

---------------------------

10

Context and Framing

---------------------------

11-13

Research Questions

---------------------------

14

Rationale

---------------------------

15-19

Scope & Limits

---------------------------

20

Mindsets

----------------------------

21-23

---------------------------

24-29

---------------------------

30-44

Conclusions

---------------------------

45

Appendix A

---------------------------

52-63

---------------------------

64-94

---------------------------

95-98

---------------------------

99-100

(Supporting BC Teachers)

(Theoretical Framework)

Methodologies
(Integrating Tools &
Mindsets)

Field Notes
(Manifestations & Outcomes)

(Co-Creation Transcriptions)

Appendix B
(Interview Transcriptions)

Appendix C
(‘Zine: Industrialization
of the Home)

Appendix D
(‘Zine: Industrialization
of the Home)

4

ABSTRACT
This thesis investigates how design activities taken on by makers and designers can
illuminate real-world, contemporary issues relevant to the new BC Curriculum. The
recent redesign of British Columbia’s K-12 Applied Design Skills and Technologies
(ADST) curriculum aims to support the development of active citizens in a way that
is in touch with today’s rapid pace of technology development and information
exchange (Ministry of Education, 2015). As a designer and maker, who is also
informed by observations and work with Vancouver’s maker community, Emily
Smith has explored possible directions and philosophies for developing a maker
education-pedagogy, informed by the maker movement, her own practices, and the
Emily Carr students and faculty.
This work is an exploration of ​Tools:​ Including drop spindles, knitting needles, and
backstrap looms; ​Methods: ​Including her own artistic textile and music-making
practice and primary persona known as a “One-Woman Band”. This persona is an
application of clowning practices, as taught by David Macmurray Smith. Methods
borrowed from the maker community include designed materials and facilitation in
the form of “Lightning Talks”, and “Zine-Making” (Appendix C&D). Finally, this
thesis explores ​Mindsets:​ which includes constructivism and constructionism,
Design-Make-Play, Head, Heart and Hand, the Maker Mindset, the work of Maryann
and Gregory Bateson and cybernetics.
Guided by exploration of tools, methods and mindsets, Smith conducts a series of
co-creation sessions and interviews with 15 participants (see Appendix A & B),
which include Emily Carr students, local makers, faculty and educators in
Vancouver. Findings provide a series of case studies which reveal that social making
activities engage learners in a multiplicity of subjects, and can meaningfully address
ADST’s Core Competencies through making, and discussion led by a facilitator.
Other insights include possibilities to inspire students through the use of “memes”,
through public forums, programs, and published materials. Designed materials
constitute prototypes and proof of concepts for possible extensions and modules to
further extend and develop the Maker Club format.

Keywords
Maker Club, Maker Education, ADST, Core Competencies, Material Practice,
Research Through Design

5

PREFACE
“Everyone has the right to re-invent the wheel. And they should be applauded for it if they
do!”​ - David MacMurray Smith

Saxony Spinning Wheel used for spinning raw fibres into yarn.

There is nothing particularly new or innovative about spinning, weaving, or making, and in
many ways, it is an essential part of being human. Before we could buy our clothes, we had
to make them in villages, communities and in our own homes. Records show that before
the invention of the steam engine and factories, making cloth was considered a daily chore
for women (and occasionally men), with most hours of the day spent on textile-related
activities (Barber, p. 31).
Today, our cloth is produced in a globalized, multi-layered, industrialized supply chain, with
consumers that have a very limited grasp of how things are made. Consumers have little to
no information on who made our clothes, where the fibres were harvested, and what effect
these practices have on our environment, our world, and our lives. This exploration has
been an opportunity to engage with, question, and understand the process and
technologies of how our things are made today.
My research methods are centred around my own material and artistic practice. Since
2009, building on childhood experiences making friendship bracelets, I have been learning
to produce cloth from fibres - spinning, weaving, knitting, felting, sewing - whatever I can
get my hands on. In learning new skills, applying different mindsets, and exploring new
tools, I have become more deeply connected to the social and cultural aspects of learning,
outside of the confines of institutional evaluation or ranking. This curiosity led me towards

6

a desire to build and connect with communities online and in person, and develop
programming dedicated to lifelong learning.
Through my work and play with the maker and clowning communities, I have found more
permission ​ to explore subjects outside of my comfort zone, even if I don’t have a particular
aptitude for that subject. Through conversation, spectacle, interest and encouragement
from others, I’ve extended my knowledge base and confidence to explore subjects like
electronics, microbiology, chemistry, astrophysics, cooking, performance, banjo playing,
and more. Subjects that I explore purely out of interest, that are way out of the realm of
what was taught to me or encouraged in the classroom.
I’ve realized that many times, it has been social barriers, shyness, or my own attitudes, or
beliefs about my abilities, that have caused me to give up or lack the confidence to work
through a problem that may very well be something that I can do, but led to a block in
learning. Oftentimes I was approaching a problem from a different angle than the teacher
was describing it from, or seeing a problem from another side.
I thought I was bad at math until I had a teacher explain the concepts to me, and I thought
I wasn’t “good” at biology because I always misread questions on the computerized
scantron exams. I now realize that tests were no measure for the value of exploring a new
idea, or learning about the world. I often wonder. If our class took a moment to pause and
reflect more on say, the cell nucleus or the mitochondria to really explore our place in the
universe, I may have developed an appreciation and respect for the cell, rather than the
belief that these things were just another concept that I need to memorize in a pile of
flashcards that I would quickly forget once the exam was finished.
The point of this project has been to share my own learning, while listening to and
empathizing with others on their own paths. I’ve been inviting individuals from the Emily
Carr community into the process of engaging with making cloth from scratch to connect in
a human-centred way. Through a series of interventions and “random acts”, this project is
about creating invitations to participate in the discovery of identity, to question our
manufactured world, and to begin to speculate on how we might extend explorations into
meaningful and relevant tools to support and empower the next generation.

7

GLOSSARY
(DEFINITIONS OF KEY TERMS)
Basket Weaving 101:​ “Used as the type of college course that is thought to be
without any practical or professional value” (oxford dictionary).
Black Box: “​A usually complicated electronic device whose internal mechanism is
hidden from or mysterious to the user; ​broadly​ : anything that has mysterious or
unknown internal functions or mechanisms” (Merriam-Webster)
Clown: ​David MacMurray Smith of ​Fantastic Space​ defines clown as, “an articulator
of movement [...] and acts as a catalyst for change and a vehicle for adaptability at
both the personal and communal level” (fantasticspace).
Craptivity: ​According to “Phoenix Support for Educators”, a Professional and
Curriculum Development support program for educators, the term “Crap”-tivity was
coined by Jeanne de Clisson from “EYLF (‘Early Years Learning Framework’) Pirates”.
Craptivities refer to:
“Crappy craft activities” -- [The term ‘Craptivities’] points the finger at art and craft
activities in Early Childhood Education and Care that are product oriented; hand /
foot paintings made into ‘art’, paper plate craft, stencil activities. Any craft that looks
like it’s been created on a factory line of a dozen children creating the same product
is under critically reflective fire.”
(Phoenix Support for Educators)

Co-Creation: ​A collaborative creative action, event, or artifact (Sanders & Stappers
299)
Cybernetics: ​Quoting American mathematician and philosopher Norbert Weiner,
cybernetics is,
The science of communications and automatic control in machines and organic
systems, and the study of messages in controlling machinery in society (Sikarski
p.66).

Design Thinking: ​According to the ​UBC Okanagan Maker Day Toolkit​ produced with
the ​Industry Training Authority

8

“Design thinking is a [human-centred] process for addressing problems and
typically consists of seven steps: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose,
implement, and learn. “
The toolkit states that, “A good way to incorporate design thinking in the classroom
is to use it to help students intentionally find linkages between authentic learning
experiences as akin to curricular enactment.”
Maker Club: ​Maker Club is an organizational model that represents a shared
connection to making between students, teachers and administrators. A Maker Club
can be as small as 5 students, as large as a classroom of 30, involve the entire
school or even go district-wide. Resources from a Maker Club can be used by
existing programs, after-school clubs, and Tech Ed classes (Smith & Kesler 5). The
first Maker Club manual was produced by Emily Smith on behalf of the ​Industry
Training Authority.
Maker: ​Makers are enthusiasts that value the process of making things as a means
to learn, innovate, connect, collaborate , and often play with technology to learn
about it (Dougherty)
Maker Carts: ​Modelled after the format of an A/V (audio visual) cart, a Maker Cart
is a portable, mobile cart to house hands-on projects for school classrooms. Many
schools are creating their own carts, or there are commercial carts available as well.
They generally include electronic equipment, 3d printer stands, drawers for tools,
accessories, kits, and materials.
Meme: ​The word “Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book, ​The
Selfish Gene.​ According to Olivia Solon of ​Wired Magazine,​ a ‘meme’ is:
“[...] ascribed to an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person
within a culture -- [and] has been reappropriated by the internet [...] via a process
which, in a broad sense, can be called imitation.”
(Solon, Olivia. 2013)

Third Space​ (aka “​in between”) ​: ​ Kris D. ​Gutiérrez, American professor of learning
sciences and literacy, defines the third space of education as what’s created when
“teacher and student learning scripts -- the formal and informal, the official and
unofficial spaces of the learning environment -- intersect, creating the potential for
authentic interaction and a shift in the social organization of learning and what
counts for knowledge” (Skerret p.67).

9

INTRODUCTION
If you can’t open it, you don’t really own it.”​ - Angie Smibert
Beyond ​Michaels, IKEA, ​and pre-packaged do-it-yourself (DIY), there is a point at
which modification begins to challenge the relationship that citizens and
corporations have with tools, objects, and technologies. In the 1950s, fixing a car
was a technical process, but for the most part, accessible to citizens. Although not
every citizen was physically capable of or interested in such activities, the access to
education and technologies was readily available and part of the social fabric of
North American communities.
The objects and technologies that we consume today are becoming seductive “black
boxes”. According to Bruno Latour (1999), blackboxing involves making technical
and scientific work invisible due to its own success. “When a machine runs
efficiently, when a matter of fact is settled, one needs focus only on its inputs and
outputs and not on its internal complexity. Thus, paradoxically, the more science
and technology succeeds, the more opaque and obscure they become” (p. 304)
Laptops and smartphones, with their sleek design and efficiencies, are attractive
commodities in their day-to-day functionality, and built on closed systems. As
electronic technologies shrink, so too does our understanding, relationship and
ownership of these components.
Without adequate tools and education required to manipulate technology,
consumers are becoming increasingly disconnected from and require more
resources required to engage with, fix, and modify their things. To speculate, the
public education and University system can serve a role in educating citizens on the
systems of everyday consumer goods by creating integrated curriculum that
empowers citizens to “open up the box” and navigate the systems of technology
that we consume.
Perhaps educators, historians, and librarians can own literature that adequately
documents and translates how to modify and engage with existing systems and
encourage citizens to become active participants in shaping their own worlds.
This project is a call to action to participate in and engage with the “black box” of
objects, technologies, and manufacturing processes that are involved with the
everyday products that surround us.

10

CONTEXT & FRAMING
Maker Culture and Maker Faire
Makers are enthusiasts that value the process of making things as a means to learn,
innovate, connect, collaborate, and often play with technology to learn about it
(Dougherty). The Maker Movement is a worldwide initiative, with events and
activities occuring in communities large and small and in public, private, and
academic spaces. Makers congregate at Maker- or Hackerspaces, Maker Faires, and
meet-up groups, which offer access to low-cost digital fabrication equipment (van
Abel et al. 2011).
Maker Faires are events created by Maker Media to “celebrate arts, crafts,
engineering, science and projects in the DIY mindset” (makerfaire.com). The launch
of Maker Faire Bay Area in 2006 demonstrated the popularity of making with over
60,000 attendees in its first year, now climbing to over 100,000. In 2017, there were
over 190 “Mini Maker Faires” throughout the world (including Vancouver and Prince
George in BC), and Featured Maker Faires including Tokyo, Rome, Shenzhen, Taipei,
Seoul, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Detroit, San Diego, Milwaukee, and Kansas City
(makerfaire.com).

Vancouver’s Maker Community

Photos of past Vancouver Mini Maker Faire’s. Photo Credit: Emily Smith

In 2011, In partnership with local non-profits ​Vancouver Hack Space (VHS), eatART
and ​Vancouver Community Lab, ​Emily Smith co-founded the ​Vancouver Mini Maker
Faire. ​The event grew out of community craft nights and open making events that
she co-hosted at VHS. The focus of her leadership of this event was on community

11

development, grant writing, and making makers. The first year was hosted at the
Great Northern Way industrial Campus in Vancouver, and featured the work and
activities of over 120 makers and maker groups. This community-engaged event
consolidated the great wealth of Vancouver’s DIY community, encouraging
engagement with technology and life-long learning, in a fun and family-friendly
environment. Vancouver Mini Maker Faire’s attendance is generally between
2500-4000 attendees per year and just completed its 7th year in 2017.

Photos of past Vancouver Mini Maker Faire’s. Photo Credit: Emily Smith

ITA Maker Club
In partnership with the ​Industry Training Authority (ITA)​, Emily Smith and Zee
Kesler have designed, developed and hosted a series of Professional Development
days for public school teachers. The ​ITA​ is a BC-wide organization that funds
training programs for the trades. We have co-created booklets, hands-on
workshops, and motivational speeches to encourage educators to introduce the
maker mindset in their classroom.

Photos of ITA Maker Club Playbook published by Zee Kesler and Emily Smith on behalf of the ​Industry Training Authority

12

Professional Development Workshops & Hands-on Activities
Starting in September of 2017, a total of 6 Professional Development days were
conducted by Kesler and Smith, to introduce educators, administrators, boy scout
and Girl Guide leaders to the ITA Maker Club program. Workshops were located in
Fort Nelson, Creston, Fort St. John, Richmond, Vernon, and Vancouver.
Administrators and Career Educators applied for funds from the ITA for a total of
$3000 to cover the cost of tools, materials, and programming fees. Each event was
organized by the district, and included 10-20 educators from schools in each region.
Activities included basic woodworking (sanding and cutting), electronics and soft
circuits, tin can rose-making, and more. Activities were aimed at grades 4-6 with an
emphasis on low-cost and often recycled materials.

Photos from ITA Maker Club Professional Development sessions

While the ITA Maker Club was a great first step towards encouraging more making
in the classroom, it’s clear that there are more possibilities available to develop
tools, methods and resources for public schools in disciplines.

13

RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
1)What tools, methods and resources are effective
for cultivating applied learning opportunities in
post-secondary and the public school system in
BC? (Grades 4-6).
2)How can designers and post-secondary research
support curriculum and pedagogy in the public
school system?

14

RATIONALE
(SUPPORTING BC TEACHERS)
In order to create useful tools, methods and resources that support teachers with
extra-curricular activities, it is useful to understand recent changes and challenges
with the new BC curriculum.

BC’s New Curriculum:
The Applied Design Skills and Technology framework (ADST), is British Columbia’s
new K-12 curriculum, focussed on applied, cross-curricular and self-directed
learning. It was implemented in September, 2016 as a replacement for “Applied
Skills” (Ministry of Education, 2015). The vision for the program includes “An
experiential, hands-on program of learning through design and creation that
includes skills and concepts from traditional and Aboriginal practice, from the
existing disciplines of Business Education, Home Economics, Information
Technology, Technology Education, and emerging fields” (Ministry of Education,
2015). The curriculum was created in response to the rapid pace of technology and
information available today. The redesign aims to support the development of
active citizens in a way that’s in touch with the changing technological landscape.
On the following pages (12-15), is information extracted from the Ministry of
Education website as the curriculum relates to grades 4-6. It outlines the guiding
principles of the new curriculum, which involves a focus on “Doing (1)” in order to
drive engagement with “Understanding (2)” encapsulated by “Knowing (3)”.
“Knowing” is guided by “Content Learning Standards” and driven by “Core
Competencies” (See pages 14-15). Standard grading is removed from the
curriculum, and students are instead evaluated on their ability to develop their
learning related to the “Core Competencies”.

15

Do (1) / Understand (2) / Know (3)

Adapted Know / Do / Understand Model
With a focus on grades 4-6 (Applied Design Skills and Technologies, 2017)

ADST Overview
With a focus on grades 4-7 (“Applied Design Skills and Technologies”, 2017)

16

Understand (2) ​ : BIG IDEAS

ADST Overview
With a focus on grades 4-7 (“Applied Design Skills and Technologies”, 2017)

Know (3) ​ : CORE COMPETENCIES
The Core Competencies along with numeracy and literacy are the key drivers of
curriculum content and guidance. According to the [BC] Ministry of Education
website,
Core competencies are evident in every area of learning; however, they
manifest themselves uniquely in each discipline. In the current drafts of the
redesigned curricula, competencies are embedded and evident within the
learning standards (“Applied Design Skills and Technologies”, 2017).
Competencies come into play when students are engaged in “doing” in any
area of learning. This includes activities where students use thinking,
collaboration, and communication to solve problems, address issues, or
make decisions. The ultimate goal is for learners to employ the core
competencies every day in school and in life, and for the core competencies
to be an integral part of learning in all curriculum areas (“Applied Design
Skills and Technologies”, 2017).

17

Know (3) ​ : OUTLINING THE CORE COMPETENCIES

18

CRITICISMS OF THE ADST CURRICULUM
Criticisms of the new curriculum include a lack of resources [readily] available to
implement self-directed methods, issues with the breadth and depth of learning
opportunities, and more.
The BC Teachers Federation (BCTF) discovered 7 basic “challenge areas” including,
(1) a lack of resources, (2) issues of curricular content, (3) implementation and
timeframe, (4) provincial assessment and graduation requirements, (5) reporting,
(6) consultation processes and (7) an understanding of the purpose of this
educational reform (“British Columbia Teachers Federation” 4).
For the purpose of delimiting the research area, I focused on pitfalls in
curricular content,​ specifically, as identified by BCTF members, (a) “the challenge
of combining previously separate curricular areas”, “tensions between breadth and
depth in curricular content”, (b) “meaningful engagement with Aboriginal ways of
knowing”, and (c) the “role of technology in BC’s new curriculum” (BCTF 4-6).
(a) The new curriculum combines subject areas that have previously been separated
and the breadth and depth of subject areas is criticized as being too vague.
According to the BC Teachers Federation feedback, one member commented that,
“physical education and health, two traditionally separate curricular areas are now
meshed together with very little direction in terms of how to make the
implementation work.” Another member commented that, “without careful
consideration, these subjects may end up competing for time, therefore potentially
watering down both areas and ultimately leading to a less meaningful and impactful
delivery of these areas” (“BCTF” 5).
Without adequate support for cross-curricular and skills-based learning (including
STEM), teachers may omit important transition points between subjects, due to a
lack of support, knowledge of a subject area, and a curriculum that is criticised as
being overly “vague”, with too little guidance.
(b) Overall the Aboriginal ways of knowing in the new curriculum are strongly received;
however, there are concerns around Aboriginal content taught as “tokenistic”. Some
members are concerned about cultural appropriation, as “First Nations do not want
teachers teaching their culture” (BCTF 6).
(c) Finally, a lack of adequate funding available for reliable internet and technological
devices is a major concern for teachers, as many schools do not have adequate
access. The concern is that a lack of access to technology will “exacerbate the
‘growing disparities between ‘have’ and ‘have not’/ inner city schools with regards to
access to technology” (“BCTF” 6). In addition, the integration of online technology
and learning may not be accessible to all schools.

19

SCOPE & LIMITS
The focus of this thesis is to examine and evaluate the existing and evolving
discourse around making, design and technology at Emily Carr University, and how
this may inform perceived pitfalls alongside the integration of the new ADST
curriculum.
While this work may speculate on possible making approaches in the classroom, it
does not outline any prescribed or completed lesson plans, toolkits or tools.

20

MINDSETS
(THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK)
Constructivism and Constructionism
Constructivism is an educational theory founded by Jean Piaget, which focuses on the
learner’s personal exploration over rote memorization. This approach is based on the idea
that the learner constructs knowledge based on their own experience, and through their
own internal process of sense making (Martinez & Stager p. 13). Constructivists have done
much to correct the “excess of test-and-drill teaching” with many positive benefits for
learning, including a better understanding of material, greater enjoyment of literature,
more positive attitudes towards school, better problem solving and greater motivation
(Harris & Graham, 1996).
Building on the work of Piaget, Seymour Papert created “Constructionism”, a means of
extending meaning-making into full on making. Papert describes the integration of
constructivism and ideas surrounding constructionism as follows:
“From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a
reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea
of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an
activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product.”
(Papert, 1986).
Papert would agree with Piaget that learning occurs inside the student’s head, and adds to
the theory that this happens most reliably when the learner is “engaged in a personally
meaningful activity outside of their head that makes the learning real and shareable”
(Martinez & Stager, p. 32). “Questions like, ‘How can my car go faster?’ or ‘I like the way this
looks, can I make it prettier?’ are treated as valid, and in fact, potentially more valid than
criteria imposed by teachers” (Martinez & Stager, p. 32).
Constructionism has been lauded as a learning approach that reflects the type of learning
that makers describe. As the Maker movement grows, educational institutions are adopting
this ethos more and more in their programming. “While school traditionally separates art
and science, theory and practice, making and tinkering is a powerful form of learning by
doing” (Martinez & Stager, p. 2-3). Advocates proclaim that “children should engage in
tinkering and making because they are powerful ways to learn” (Martinez & Stager, p.3)

21

Design - Make - Play
Margaret Honey and David E. Kanter coined ​design-make-play​ as a framework to
encapsulate methodologies of engagement that foster learning as a creative,
hands-on and passionate endeavor (Honey & Kanter 1). This approach values
problem-solving over “teaching to the test”, and integrates the practice of ​doing
science and engineering, as opposed to learning ​about​ those subjects. The
components of ​design-make-play​ are defined as follows:
“Design- the iterative selection and arrangement of elements to form a whole
by which people create artifacts, systems, and tools intended to solve a range
of problems, large and small.
Make- to build or adapt objects by hand, for the simple personal pleasure of
figuring out how things work.
Play - A fun, voluntary activity that often involves make-believe, invention,
and innovation.”
(Honey & Kanter, p. 4).
They view ​design​ as a powerful vehicle for teaching STEM subjects in an integrated
way, ​making​ as “deep engagement with content, experimentation, exploration,
problem-solving, collaboration, and learning to learn”, and ​play​ as the development
of “natural inclinations to invent and explore, which are at the core of creativity”
(Honey & Kanter 4).

Head, Heart and Hand: A Transformational Learning Model
The theory of transformation includes an ontological process of change in the level
of being, and how individuals relate to communities, groups, and the world (Lange,
2004). Transformative learning theories have been effective with both children and
adults. ‘Head, Heart and Hand’ is a learning approach which involves the “holistic
nature of transformative experience and relates the cognitive domain (head) to
critical reflection, the affective domain (heart) to relational knowing and the
psychomotor domain (hands) to engagement (Singleton 2015, p. 1). Many learning
environments focus on one domain or another, and rote learning and
memorization is often prioritized over a more integrated approach. When students
make and shape their own environment, “they affect changes within themselves;

22

this can lead to greater self-efficacy and more responsible behaviour in other areas
as well” (Singleton p. 3).

The Maker Mindset
In Dale Dougherty’s essay, ​The Maker Mindset​, he discusses common
characteristics of makers, as well as barriers to applying this sort of approach in
schools. He believes that fostering the maker mindset in schools means cultivating
the emotional, mental and physical development of another person.
In order to foster this sort of thinking in schools, he discusses the work of Carol S.
Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor who describes the ​growth​ mindset (refer to
image below). Dweck points out that “many [students that] excel academically have
a fixed mindset, which limits them to exploring only the areas they were told they
were good at” (Dougherty).
Applying these ideas to a maker mindset means to develop one’s full potential,
which often involves risk-taking, iterating over a project to improve it, and is largely
a social experience where others participate in communities of makers of all ages
(Dougherty).

23

METHODOLOGIES
(INTEGRATING TOOLS & MINDSETS)
“I was no more constitutionally inclined to focus monomaniacally on the cell
nucleus than I was to be a satellite wife in a nuclear family; my attentions, like those
of many women, were divided. My friend Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of
anthropologist Margaret Mead and philosopher Gregory Bateson, describes
modern women as ​“peripheral visionaries”. A woman must be almost octopoid
in her attentions if she is to survive.​ Holding the infant in one arm, Bateson
points out, she stirs the pot with the other, while she watches the toddler. ​These
multiple pressures were not then, nor are they now, wished away by political
will and feminist rhetoric.”
-Lynn Margulis
(Margulis, p. 18)

“Peripheral Visions” and “The In Between”
In her book ​Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way, ​Mary Catherine Bateson,
American writer and cultural anthropologist asserts that most learning occurs
outside of the spaces and institutions labelled as “educational”. She states that,
“Living and learning happens everywhere, and is often founded on an
improvisational base” (Bateson 9). Many stories have more than one interpretation,
and learning means experiencing the depth of lived experiences in a meaningful
and personal way. In examining this ‘peripheral vision’ space, she discusses the idea
of finding multiple ways of responding as individuals to “multiple patterns of
meaning [...] and asks, ‘what would it be like to have not only colour vision but
culture vision​, the ability to see multiple worlds of others?” (Bateson 53)
Throughout my work with ​Random Acts of Making​, I have been developing a
listening and awareness for material culture and conversation at Emily Carr. I have
been observing social interactions, engaging in conversations with others, and
observing patterns in “in between” spaces - on break, in the cafeteria, in community
spaces like the university studios and resource labs , on social media, posters, in the
library, in email threads, and graffiti. I have recorded conversations, taken detailed
notes, and have acted as both participant and observer in various settings in both
the Granville Island Campus in 2016-2017, and the Great Northern Way campus in
2017-2018.

24

Clown as Research Method
In response to Bateson’s assertion that learning often happens on an
improvisational basis, I decided to make use of my year and a half of formal clown
training. I studied clown with David MacMurray-Smith of ​Fantastic Space
Enterprises​, and participated in a series of MacMurray-Smith’s courses which are
rooted in the methods of Canadian clown Richard Pochinko. MacMurray-Smith’s
work involves mask-making, physical and embodied exercise, “impulse work”, and
deep reflection that is rooted in play. In this embodied and physical practice, a
clown is “one who takes delight in the experience of being Human and enjoys
conversing about the experience” (MacMurray-Smith). A clown in this context is
referred to as, “an articulator of movement [...] and acts as a catalyst for change and
a vehicle for adaptability at both the personal and communal level”
(MacMurray-Smith).
According to Sue Morrison, author of ​Clown Through Mask​, and former collaborator
with Pochinko, a Pochinko practice involves a synthesis of European and Indigenous
clowning practices and is contrasted with the American way, where the gag, and the
punctuation of that gag is the most important feature (Morrison, p. 20). The
European clowning approach asserts that the character, and the personality of the
clown is more important than the situation, and the Indigenous philosophy sees
clown as a way of living, and that clowns are an integral member of society, often
seen as a “safety valve” for a community (Morrison, p. 28).
For me, practicing this method means developing this “culture vision” discussed by
Bateson. By developing 6 clay masks which were then papier-mâché’d
and painted (used as tools to reflect on and create worlds with, not to perform
with), the pedagogy gave me the ability to understand myself and my identity from
many sides, which the approach demands. I have been actively cultivating,
practicing, and extending this approach throughout the 2.5 years at Emily Carr, in
order to reflect on play, learning, and educational environments.

25

Masks created through impulse work while at Emily Carr. Represents “Love for the universe “ (even the natural disasters) L:
Clay moulded mask // R: Painted mask ..

Development of Play: Tools, Objects, and Happenings

L: Impromptu demonstration for undergraduate students (Photo by Jordache Mackenzie) // R: Cubicle space in Emily Carr
Industrial Design Studio

Setting the Stage:
Reflecting, performing and interacting in this “in between space”, I have been
making things on an improvisational basiS. I have sewn, mended, knit, and
appliqued most of my clothing, and often have parts of a project on the go. I’ve also

26

made tools (6 backstrap looms and 8 drop spindles), and purchased/borrowed
others: Arduinos, electronic kits, a knitting machine, warping tools, and more.
Finally, I’ve collected a number of sound-making devices which include a tin can
banjo, a ukulele, some tap shoes, as well as books and magazines that have been
informing my work. Throughout the work, I have shared these experiments via
social media.

L: Weaving Demonstration at the ​Future of Education Event ​at Emily Carr, spring of 2017 // R: Mended sweater Instagram post
on social media

Weaving as Research Method

L: First tests on the lathe // M: Completed backstrap loom with warp-facing weave // R: Backstrap loom with even weave

I’ve been interacting with, and placing these objects around The University’s
undergraduate and graduate studio spaces, halls an “in between spaces” in order to
facilitate and open up conversation and connect with others. My studio cubicle has
been arranged as an interactive environment that I invite people into a safe space

27

to make, create, reflect, express, and connect. I painted the walls of the cubicle with
clouds, and set up astroturf and brought blankets and carpets in in order to “soften”
the space. These interventions served as the basis for connecting with others, and
were a means to select participants to take part in the study.

L: Arduinos and electronic components on the table in the Industrial Design Studio // R: Homemade Loom in the cubicle of my
studio space in the Industrial Design Studio Space.

My main consideration in setting up these activities, is to create making activities
that are simple enough to be engaged with at a desk (they don’t require shop space
or overly messy tools), but activities that may encourage students to consider
visiting shops at Emily Carr.

Music as Research Method
I played the piano from the age of 5-18, and in my early 30s, I have re-visited
playing, but with a completely different mindset. I originally studied piano through
the ​Royal Conservatory of Music​ - and while I loved to play, I always felt there was
something missing. Playing in stuffy concert halls with adjudicators that had more
to say about my choice of footwear was discouraging, and allowed me realize that
the over-emphasis on form, ranking, and competition was the wrong direction for
me. It wasn’t until my adult life that I learned about the value and importance of
connecting with others through play. Clown and participating with the maker
movement gave me the permission to resolve the uptight, overly structured forms,
and connect with others not only through my textile practice, but also through
banjo, ukulele, and piano.

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Persona: “One Woman Band”
In response to educational experiences, as well as this “octopoid[al] woman”
described by Margulis, the primary persona that I’ve been cultivating throughout
the 2 years, is a “One Woman Band” of making and doing. I have been intentionally
stringing together diverse ideas, tools, and practices, ready and prepared to
respond to my environment to pull out any one tool, book, project or curiosity. This
improvisational persona is based on my own artistic practice, which involves the
constant pursuit of knowledge, skills, and play, but extends to sharing and the
everyday. I’m using my own enthusiasm and “clown” to engage with others, open
up and facilitate conversations about what it means to make today.

FIELD NOTES
29

(MANIFESTATIONS & OUTCOMES)
MANIFESTATIONS PART I:
Current Trends in BC Schools: Beyond Design Thinking and Over-Tech’ing
In order to address the “T” (“Technology) component of ADST, many schools are
acquiring expensive tools to stay “up to date” with current trends, and are looking to
the maker movement to define what the future of tech might be. Some
administrators are purchasing tools for their district, setting up makerspaces with
Tinkerine ​3d printers, and building “Maker Carts” so that teachers can introduce
students to making in earlier grades.

L: Makerspace in Creston, BC ; R: Presentation on Making in Schools at ITA Youth Day Conference

Also popular among teachers is integrating the “Design Thinking” approach to help
organize and direct making activities, promoted by UBC Oakanagan’s ​Innovative
Learning Centre.
KEY INSIGHT:
Design thinking can be a useful structure for teachers to follow; however, neither
design or making activities necessarily utilize such a prescriptive approach in
practice. For example, Ray Sison, design director for ​Work & Co​, a design studio that
produces goods and services for Facebook, Google and Apple, believes that even
designers need to “move beyond design thinking, to design doing.” (Buds, 2017). He
believes that design thinking separates design and thinking, where the real thinking
and discoveries unfold ​while​ making (Buds, 2017).

30

Without design thinking, how else can teachers structure their making activities?

THESIS
STATEMENTS
Social making activities can meaningfully engage learners in
a multiplicity of subjects through the acts of making,
sharing, and reflecting with others.
Designers, Makers and Post-secondary research can support
deep engagement with making in Maker Clubs (grades 4-6)
by sharing resources and findings through public forums,
programs, and published materials.
But … How do social making activities engage learners?

MANIFESTATIONS PART II:
Making (and Sharing) to Integrate Core Competencies
According to Yvonne Dawdyiak, ​Technology Integration Mentor ​and ​Educator ​that
prepares teacher candidates at UBC, making activities are more likely to be readily
integrated into the classroom through the core competencies (see pages 14-15).
She states that, “If you share how specific activities can develop a competency,
teachers can start to see how they can find the time to bring the activity into the
classroom.” She continued by stating that, “This [sort of approach] could help
integrate​ the competencies, and not just introduce the core competencies to
students.
I asked Yvonne how the competencies are currently being introduced, and she
mentioned that teachers are struggling with how to build these core competencies
into what they’re teaching.

31

Teachers know how to follow curriculum, but this core competency piece is
different from what we’ve had to do in the past. And yet, the thinking
[competency], for example, was always embedded into math and social
studies and science in the prescribed learning outcomes, and the
communication piece was all over language arts.
It was always embedded there as discrete curricular objectives, but now it’s
kind of been removed from that [...] I don’t know if teachers are thinking as
they plan, ‘What core competencies are helping students develop and how
am I going to get my students to understand and assess them?’
KEY INSIGHT:
As the curriculum is being adopted throughout BC, Yvonne suggested that
educators are seeking support on how to integrate these competencies in a
meaningful way.
In order to address this need, I familiarized myself with the competencies, observed
where they naturally emerged in maker activities, and made note of actions that I
took in order to facilitate the conversation.
… But first, I needed to get some conversations started. So, I started to test out
some ideas with Emily Carr students.

DESIGN OUTCOME: Starting the Conversation
32

Lightning Talk ‘Zine completed in the spring of 2017. See full ‘zine in Appendix D.

While reflecting on the self-directed nature of the new BC Curriculum, as well as the
sometimes rigid (and sleepy) social space of the classroom at Emily Carr, I decided
to create a ‘zine describing the art (& craft) of lightning talks. “Lightning talks” are a
common method used by makers and hackers in order to “warm up a room” and
get people connected, and more comfortable to share themselves and their ideas.
These quick bursts and shares allowed students to begin the process of connecting,
and thus creating, in the present moment, in order to break out of more rigid, rote
classroom expectations, outside of evaluative patterns of the institution.

After getting comfortable with the students, I began to share tools and methods
that I thought may relate to their curiosities.

MANIFESTATIONS PART III:
Approaching New Methods: Mapping Core Competencies to a
Socially-Engaged Practice
Notes on Methods:
Throughout the process of making with others, I engaged with participants in a
fairly systematic way. The main activity that I conducted, was inviting students to
participate in the space, and granting permission to collaborate and use the tools
available to them. Once students acquired a new skill, I engaged in a series of
entrance and exit questions about the activity. Their responses became key insights
into their curiosities and interests, which gave me a sense of a possible “next”
activity, and a sense of where their individual interests may lie. Co-creation results
are transcribed from audio in Appendix A.

​Core Competency: Personal & Social (Positive Cultural Identity)

33

Nicole Preissl (Emily Carr Undergraduate Student) Learns to Spin.

“The full process was here. It wasn’t a YouTube video. It wasn’t so dislocated from
me. It was right here, human to human, which I think is really important.”​ - Nicole
Preissl, Undergraduate Student at Emily Carr
I first met Nicole over a sharing of skills. I was spinning wool, and she shared with
me some raw Buffalo hyde that she had been experimenting with at the ​Aboriginal
Gathering Place​ at Emily Carr. She mentioned that she was connecting with her
Coast Salish ancestry through making, and expressed an interest in learning how to
weave. While I don’t have any knowledge or experience working with Coast Salish
weaving, I expressed that I could teach her what I already knew about spinning and
weaving, and I invited her to my workspace at Emily Carr, where she chose to learn
how to spin by working with a drop spindle.
Engaging with this activity allowed us to connect and talk about her culture. She
shared with me that her grandmother’s grandmother was a cedar weaver, and she
communicated that it was her exploration with textiles that gave her the means to
bring up this conversation about her heritage. She began researching practices her
ancestors may had practiced online, and expressed a desire to go deeper, and take
on even more spinning and weaving. She had mentioned that she had always been
proud of her Canadian or Austrian/Scottish side, but wasn’t always sure how to
explore her indigenous ancestry. She had a background of beginning to work
through this at Emily Carr, and was hoping to expand her knowledge of this through
making. We spent some time spinning together, and through sharing skills and
stories, we were able to open up conversation regarding the development of her
cultural identity.

34

Nicole wasn’t the only Emily Carr student that expressed a desire to connect with
her indigenous ancestry through making. Arhea, another participant that
approached me, was also already discovering her​ ​Māori ancestry. Arhea was
immediately drawn in by the handcrafting element, a means of making that she
wasn’t previously familiar with. Seeing the tools immediately became an
opportunity to open up a conversation about her cultural heritage. Arhea and I sat
down for a few sessions, and her textile practice took off through the semester. She
began harvesting flax in New Zealand, and managed to get ahold of some buffalo
fibre. I had some sheep fibre, and we sat down as she was carding the sheep and
buffalo wool together, so that the material would spin better. While spinning, she
stated,
“Mixing together sheep and buffalo wool is kind of cool, because the buffalo
wool is brown, and the sheep wool is white and I’m coming from a place of
finding my cultural identity, and mixing them together -- my Maori side
which is dark, and my European side which is lighter -- so this process of
spinning is creating a story for me about mixing my ‘other selves’ together.”

​Arhea Mawhinney, Masters of Design Student, learns to spin.

Core Competency: Personal and Social (Personal Awareness and
Responsibility)

35

Amy Walker: Facilitator, Maker & Creator of ​Momentum Magazine, c​ onducts how & Tell” of her homemade clothing.

Another participant, Amy Walker, saw the textile work and making space through
social media, and decided to bring her own made items to Emily Carr for a “Show
and Tell.” “I think Show & Tell is super fun way to see what other people are
working on.” She described that the clothing and accessories that she had made
represented a negotiation of her own relationship with women’s role in society. “I
think having clothing self-sufficiency is an idea that’s powerful and comforting. It’s
taking care of yourself, and a livelihood, people are always going to need socks and
hats. If I know how to make those things, I can contribute to society.” In this case,
the broader conversation around the making environment and activities taking
place were a means to open up conversation, through which Amy came forward to
express her own relationship to clothing, cloth, and making.

Core Competency: Thinking (Creative & Critical):

36

Jordache Mackenzie, Masters of Design Student at Emily Carr, reflects on “Warping”, the first step of the weaving process.

Jordache, another student present in the Emily Carr studio space, expressed a
curiosity with the tools presented. He made it clear that he had no interest in
weaving at any point in his life, but that this activity was an opportunity to “play
with materials and try a tool that he had never used before.” The activity that he
chose to participate in, was warping thread to attach to a loom. When I asked him
what this activity reminded him of, he answered, “Warping is a science fiction term.
When you’re warping, you’re bending the fabric of space time to move really fast.”
In this case, Jordache was thinking creatively about fabrics, and threads, through
conversation and storytelling.

Core Competency: Communication
While many of these activities emerged through conversation which required quite
a bit of my personal time (a challenge for teachers in the classroom), there were
some consistent patterns that I followed, which were repeated and exchanged
among participants. For example, once a student learned a new skill, there was
generally an interest in sharing that skill with other students, or a participant
expressed an interest in helping build kits and tools for these activities. The nature

37

of building a “maker club” in schools can be an inherently social activity, with the
development of communication skills underlying most interactions.
From these interactions, it’s clear that simple hand tools and kits allowed an
opportunity for students to interact with making, and begin discussing their own
personal curiosities and interests that can extend into other learning activities.

So … How might this look in the classroom?

DESIGN OUTCOME: Lending Library of Things

L: Results of Co-Creation Session: Journal entries and woven cloth. // R: Loom kits

As a result of key conversations surrounding co-creation sessions and interviews, a
“Lending Library of Things” may be an interesting way of extending and deepening
dialogue between students and educators, or as a tool to understand a student’s
individual learning process. Reflections collected throughout this process served as
a sort of “analogue social media platform”, which participants shared with others,
or reflect on their own process. In this library, “How to” guides and contextual
documents can be created. These items can be created by students, or catalogued
with books and other resources.

38

OK, that’s great. People are making and sharing. How do you work with students to
develop ​their competencies and go deeper? And, how do you communicate to
parents and administrators the nature and value of what you’re doing?

MANIFESTATIONS PART IV:
Negotiating Breadth and Depth: Digging Deeper
While an essential component of bringing making into the classroom includes
beginning with making, there is a concern from educators that these activities may
exist as “one off” or “craptivities”. Without adequate resources to nurture students
towards deeper engagement, making activities may fall flat. I spoke with Patrick
Gauley-Gale, a Home Economics Teacher in Victoria, who expressed the following,
When I talk to teachers and educators about [cultural practices and making],
it’s really exciting, but in actual practice with my students, they’d much rather
be baking muffins than learn about first nations and traditional practice, or
food security. I think maybe it takes patience to bring value to that kind of
knowledge to students over time.
KEY INSIGHT:
While bringing making into the classroom can open up conversations related to
the core competencies, resources and tools are needed in order to further
develop a student’s thinking with the competencies as they make.

MANIFESTATIONS PART V:
Addressing the ‘D’ (Design) in ADST
In order to reconcile breadth and depth of thinking with making activities, I
interviewed researchers at Emily Carr. While making activities can motivate some
students to begin to reflect, and with the right social support, gain confidence and
willingness to participate, a bridge still needs to be made to nurture learning into
other areas. Similar to students making muffins, Garnet Hertz, Canada Research
Chair at Emily Carr stated the following about the maker movement:
In a space like a hackerspace, you’re given the freedom to do a whimsical
project and no one’s going to hassle you for it – and hackerspaces are an
important space for that. But there is a lot that can be learned from a field
like design or art. Art has a strong culture of critique and history where
things like gender and politics are clearly discussed. Fields like informatics or
industrial design present opportunities where we can discuss how biases can

39

unknowingly be designed into artefacts and how that impacts how people
behave. [...] Hackerspaces are spaces where one can learn how to solder or
how to make an LED blink with an Arduino, but after you do that, questions
come up, like “What project are you going to make?”. That’s a more difficult
problem than getting an Arduino to run a chunk of code: you end up with
much more of a personal and social quest that enters the terrain that design
and art have been walking for centuries. The history of art and technology
and the discipline of design are really useful tools to bring into a place like a
hackerspace.

KEY INSIGHT:
In the same way, making activities in the classroom (grades 4-6) can benefit from
design resources (beyond design thinking), through tools, frameworks, disciplines,
and knowledge that exist at Emily Carr.

Culture, Making & Memes
The “Culture vision” developed throughout the making practice (see pages 22-23),
provided a means to begin tackling the deeper questions that arose through
making. Sandor Katz, author of ​The Art of Fermentation,​ sees culture as a
participatory process that is developed through making and sharing. He states,
In contrast with the realm of biological reproduction, where information is
coded and copied as genes, in the cultural realm, ​information is encoded
as memes. ​Memes are transmitted through words, concepts, images,
processes, abstractions -- stories, pictures, books, films, photographs,
computer programs, ledgers. Secret family recipes. Life lessons, like learning
to identify edible plants, learning to garden, learning to cook, learning to fish,
learning to procure, use and preserve precious food resources.
Fermentation. (Art of Fermentation 6).
KEY INSIGHT:
It seems that it’s through the conversation ​about​ making that can promote deeper
engagement. For example, “basket weaving 101” is a common term for discussing
easy courses; however, according to this definition of memes, the stories presented
about basket weaving by the instructor can shape how information is transmitted.
Basket weaving can connect learners to cultural stories, discussions about
technology, or even the manufacturing process.

40

DESIGN OUTCOME: Meme-Making at Emily Carr
As a result of these insights and development of an understanding of culture and
education, I have created a series of activities, or “memes”, which operate at the
level of culture. These items can be mutually developed with teachers, educators,
and students, and in many ways, posters and learning tools are part of the everyday
classroom (see “maker carts”). Some further explorations related to food and cloth
include:

1)Clothing:
Throughout the research process, I created and mended clothing in order to
provoke conversations around making and re-use.

A sample of handmade and mended items. L: Fingerless gloves made from alpaca wool // M: Patch made by maker Paul Nosa
and sewn on a skirt // R: Visibly mended cashmere sweater (was my grandma’s)

41

L: hand-dyed, thrifted jacket // Bottom R: Sewing a doily on a shirt

2) Banner:

Handmade banner stating, “The Future of Education is Hands-on” L: Hanging the Banner // R: Cutting and sewing pieces
together. This story was told via social media.

42

3) Curiosity Boxes:

Top L: Cotton box with Pakucho and Pima cotton samples, with artwork from the Middle Ages. // Top M: Various silk samples
(Muga, bombyx, circula, tussa) // Top R: 5 total cigar boxes // Bottom L: Close-up of wild silk samples // Bottom R: Close-up of
commercial silk

Curiosity boxes made from old cigar boxes. These boxes include raw textile fibres in
order to tell the history and technical details of various fibres. The velvet fabric in
the background is from an old dress from a friend, and silk and cotton samples
were sourced locally from a local silk studio and “Vegan Yarns”. Future iterations
will include bast fibres, synthetic fibres, and more.

43

‘Zine:

(See more photos in Appendix D).

L: ‘Zine cover // R: Sample imagery from the booklet

This ‘zine consolidates research and opinions surrounding new possibilities for
Home Economics. Imagery is collaged and borrowed from magazines, and online
sources. The intention of this ‘zine is to provoke questions around women’s roles in
society, and create new possibilities for meaningful work and responsible
consumption in the domestic realm.

CONCLUSIONS
44

Through the act of listening, making, and co-creating with others, I’ve discovered
that social making activities can meaningfully engage learners in the core
competencies, relevant to BC’s new ADST Curriculum. In order to dive deeper into
subjects and encourage critical thinking, there’s an opportunity for new design
methods to shape how we think about what we make through “memes”, and
meaningful discussions about making. These activities can be shared through public
forums, programs, and published materials, and can extend the ​ITA Maker Club
program.
The foundation of this work is built on a diverse range of mindsets, tools and
methods. I believe that it’s the breadth of these explorations that gives rise to
meaningful and rich learning experiences. While not all teachers need possess all of
this knowledge, or behave as a “one woman band”, perhaps these personas can
extend into meaningful learning modules that are extensions of the ​Maker Club
format.
In order to extend existing curriculum into meaningful activities, I would like to
develop ​Maker Club​ as a compliment to Home Economics and Tech Ed Curriculum
with designed materials, which are mapped to the core competencies and lead
students to discover life skills critical thinking, sustainability, STE(A)M, history, etc.
through a maker-based approach. For the next phase of this project, I would like to
dig deeper into cybernetics and Human-Computer Interaction, in order to continue
to develop a human-centred method for engaging with technology through making,
sharing, and story-telling.
In addition to building curriculum and learning materials, design research and
ethnography, events, conferences, and published materials will increase the public
awareness towards this human-centred philosophy of technology.
In order to carry this out, local researchers must come together to share, to
conduct more focussed research on students in grades 4-6 to develop further
modules in accordance to different learning styles and classroom needs. Finally,
this work could be developed in partnership with faculty at Emily Carr linking
Post-Secondary making to the new BC Curriculum in a meaningful way.

REFERENCES:
About Page, Vancouver Mini Maker Faire. Retrieved from: www.makerfaire.ca
Official website for the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire. Includes event information on
presenters, past exhibitors, and contextualizes the maker movement in a worldwide
context (Links to makerfaire.com and Mini Maker Faire’s all over the world).

45

Applied Design Skills and Technologies. BC’s New Curriculum, Government of BC website.
Retrieved from:
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/applied-design-skills-and-technologies/introdu
ction
This government website is dedicated to describing the curriculum overview and
goals and rationale for BC’s new K-12 ADST curriculum, published in 2016.
Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years | Women, Cloth and
Society in Early Times. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Basket Weaving (n.d). In​ Oxford University Press​. Retrieved from:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/basket-weaving
Bateson, Mary C (1995). Peripheral Visions: Learning along the Way. New York, NY:
HarperCollins Publishers.
Bateson reflects on her own experiences as an anthropologist and lifelong learner.
She proposes that learning involves a willingness to improvise and continue to learn
new ways of seeing, as opposed to “old, safe patterns” of interpreting experiences.
She believes that this way of thinking can be applied to everything from
multiculturalism to personal relations. She looks at 3 main experiences from her
own life, including her time spent in Iran, Israel, and the Philippines, to illustrate
these points.
Black Box (n.d.) In ​Mirriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary.​ Retrieved from:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/black%20box
British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2015). Applied Design, Skills and Technologies
Framework. British Columbia. Retrieved from:
http://innovativelearningcentre.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/applied-skills.pdf
This document provides context, vision, rationale and goals for the new ADST
curriculum.
British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. (2016). Discussion Paper: Diverse perspectives of
BCTF members on the redesigned BC Curriculum. British Columbia. Retrieved from:
https://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/Curriculum/CurriculumFeedbackReport.p
df
A discussion paper which summarizes member feedback received by the BCTF,
intended to foster discussions on curriculum change and shape ongoing research on
education conducted from 2016-2020.

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Budds, Diana (2017). Want to be a Great Designer? Ban Post-It Notes. Co.Design. Retrieved
from:
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90147380/want-to-be-a-great-designer-ban-post-it-n
otes
This article critiques “Design Thinking” strategies and proposes that [even
professional designers] need to think beyond Post-it notes.
Chrichton, Susan. & Carter, Deb. Maker Day Tool Kit. Produced by UBC Oakanagan, and the
Innovative Learning Centre. Retrieved from:
http://www.itabc.ca/sites/default/files/docs/discover/Final%20MakerDayToolKit.pdf
Maker Day Tool Kit: A program produced with UBC Oakanagan, and the ​Industry
Training Authority.​ The program involves teaching teachers design thinking and
making strategies in order to facilitate making in the classroom.
Coburn, V. & Morrison, S. (2013). Clown Through Mask. Chicago, Il: The University of
Chicago Press.
A summary of methods and philosophical underpinnings of Richard Pochinko’s
Canadian Clowning Method.

Dougherty, D. (n.d.) The Maker Mindset. Retrieved from https://llk.media.mit.
edu/courses/readings/maker-mindset.pdf
In this article, Dale Dougherty discusses makers, the Maker Mindset, the Maker
Movement, as well as the challenges and opportunities available when making is
applied to education. He proclaims that, “We are all makers”, and discusses the
agency of students, and the impact that technology such as 3d Printing, Arduinos
and tools that facilitate rapid prototyping, have on the Maker Movement. He
advocates for fostering a Maker- and a “growth mindset”, and encourages students
to play and explore in Maker Clubs and spaces in schools.

Honey, M. & Kanter, D. (2013). Design | Make | Play: Growing the Next Generation of Stem
Innovators. Routledge.
A series of case studies and papers on classroom making activities in the US, based
on the ​National Research Council’s​ new Framework for Science Education. Design,
Make, Play are presented as learning methods that inspire students to discover
STEM fields.
Graham, S., & Harris, K.R. (1994). The effects of whole language on children’s
writing: A review of the literature. Educational Psychologist, 29, 187-192.

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This review explores the effects that “whole language”, a constructivist approach,
had on learning to write.The primary discovery found was that “students in
whole-language classes held a meaning-based view of writing; whereas their peers
in conventional classes viewed writing from a skills perspective.”
Harris, K.R., & Graham, S. (1996). Memo to constructivist: Skills count too. Educational
Leadership, 53 (5), pp. 26-29
This article includes criticism of Constructivists’ over reliance on open learning
activities, and advocates for rote learning in addition to self-directed learning. They
explore a “whole language/progressive education school” with no workbooks that
was focused on self-directed learning. They found that skill development was a
problem for some students, and that many students who face challenges in learning
behaviour and development, have an especially difficult time with skill mastery. The
article advocates for “integrated constructivist curriculums [that includes skill
building] in authentic learning environments.”

Katz, S., Pollan, M (2012). The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential
Concepts and Processes from around the world. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing
A comprehensive home fermentation guide which includes concepts and processes
for fermenting your own food.
Lange, E. A. (2004). Transformative and restorative learning: A vital dialectic for
sustainable societies. Adult Education Quarterly, 54(2), 121-139.
This study explores how transformative learning can activate action towards a
sustainable society and active citizenship. Particularly interesting was a shift from an
epistemological process to an ontological process, where participants experienced a
shift in their worldview.

Latour, Bruno (1999). Pandora's hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
MacMurray-Smith, David. Deep Clown Performance Intensive Notebook.
Vancouver, BC. Self-publised by Fantastic Space Enterprises.
This booklet was given to me while attending the second course in a series, on the art
of clowning and performance. The first course was called “Character Development
and Personal Transformation through Clown”, and the second, “Deep Clown”. David is
a Vancouver-based, independent educator who facilitates learning environments that
promote self-directed education and strong foundations for personal and
professional growth.

48

MacMurray-Smith, David (n.d.). Fantastic Space Enterprises Website. Retrieved from:
http://www.fantasticspace.com/
Professional website for clown courses taken by the researcher. (Includes “Creative
Character Development and Personal Transformation through Clown”, “Deep Clown”
and “Extensions”). Also includes insights and core clown philosophies developed by
David.
Maker Faire Website. Retrieved from ​www.makerfaire.com
Company website for World Maker Faire website. Describes what a Maker Faire is,
how to create one, and how to get involved. Published by Make Media.

Margulis, Lynn (1999). Symbiotic Planet. Amherst, Massachusetts: Basic Books, A Member of
Perseus Books Group.
In this book, Margulis lays out her evolutionary theory, Symbiogenesis, which refers
to the process of symbiotic organisms (bacteria) that interact to create novel
evolutionary changes, beyond random mutation. She also discusses sex as a failed
attempt at cannibalisms resulting in repeated mergers of bacteria, and how Gaia
theory is symbiosis as seen from space. She also reflects on her personal experiences
being a mother and scientist, educational experiences, and outlines a less hierarchical
(“5 Kingdom Hand”) categorization of speciation than what Linnaeus proposed.
Martinez, S.L & Stager, G. (2013). Invent to Learn. Torrance, CA: Constructing
Modern Knowledge Press.
In Invent to Learn, Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager feature the pedagogical
underpinnings for why and how making can take place in schools. The book starts
with a (brief) history of making -- from da Vinci to Piaget, to Dewey and Papart. They
look at the Reggio Emilia approach, Montessori and others, and provide tips and tools
for teachers to bring a Maker Mindset into their classrooms.

Sanders, E.B., & Stappers, P J (2012). Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front
End of Design. BIS Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
A resource on generative research through design. Includes human-centred
products, systems, services, and environments.
van Abel, B., L. Evers, R. Klaasen, and P. Troxler. 2011. Open Design Now: Why Design
Cannot Remain Exclusive. Amsterdam: BIS

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This book looks at co-creative design and how technology is changing the landscape
of how we design today. It explores copyright, open source culture, business
models, social critique and sustainability.
Papart, Seymour (1986). Constructionism: A New Opportunity for Elementary Science
Education. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Laboratory, Epistemology
and Learning Group: National Science Foundation. Division of Research on Learning
in Formal and Informal Settings.
Papart describes constructionism as a “reconstruction rather than a transmission of
knowledge”, involving self-directed learning and building a meaningful product. He
suggests a design of new materials for the public school system that “pay attention to
the role of affective, cultural and gender-related facets of learning science.”
Phoenix Support for Educators (n.d). Craptivity or Craftivity? It’s all in the delivery. You
decide. Queensland, Australia. Retrieved From:
http://www.phoenix-support.com.au/blog/creative-craft-activity-or-craptivity/
Phoenix Support for Educators is a Professional Development program based in
Australia, that supports curriculum development through meaningful play, curiosity
and wonder.
Smith, E. & Kesler, Z. Maker Club Toolkit (2017). Produced by ITA BC (Self-Published), 2016.
Retrieved from:
https://www.magictroutimaginarium.com/maker-club-manual
Maker Club Toolkit which contains Teacher’s guide and projects to be applied to
Maker Clubs in British Columbia.
Sikarskie, Amanda G. Textile Selections: Preservation, Access, Curation, and Interpretation
in the Digital Age. Published by Rowman and Middlefield, 2016.
This book explores how collections of traditional textiles can be accessed by curators
and interpreters. Working with museums and sites throughout the US, the author
explores: the nature of digital material culture, the role of audience participation vs
curatorial authority online, audience-friendly collections, metadata and cataloging,
the legality of ownership, access of museum collections online, and gender equity in
museums and archives. I referenced a quotation in chapter 2 of this book, which
looks at “women as cyborgs”, and discusses cybernetics, cyborgs and automata in
relation to the role of women.
Singleton, J (2015). Head, Heart and Hands Model for Transformative Learning:
Place as Context for Changing Sustainability Values. Journal of Sustainability
Education.

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Singleton reviews the Head, Heart and Hands model for transformational learning
and how a connection to place can provide an “Authentic context for meaning and
engagement” and a connectedness to nature. She includes research on
transformation, and reflects on the ways that the Head, Heart and Hand model can
facilitate a “Re-evaluation of our beliefs and values from critical reflections which are
constructed by our place in the world and the relationships we build with others”.

Skerrett, A. (2010). Lolita, Facebook, and the Third Space of Literacy Teacher Education.
American Educational Studies Association, 46: 67-84​. DOI:
10.1080/0013194093480233.
Solon, Olivia. Richard Dawkins on the internet’s hijacking of the word ‘meme’”. Wired
Magazine, 2013. Retrieved from:
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/richard-dawkins-memes
This article announces a musical performance that includes his speech in an
auto-tuned song about internet memes with the goal of becoming an internet meme.
It outlines a bit about his work and includes an interview with videos as well.

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- APPENDIX A CO-CREATION SESSIONS
Session 1: Arhea MaWhinney
These sessions were conducted on the Emily Carr campus, in a consistent physical space
setup by the research (see page 24 for more information on the methodology). Results
from the sessions were recorded in audio clips, and transcribed in the appendix below.
Each session included a standardized set of questions, consistent between participants. In
all cases, participants approached the researcher in search of technical support and/or
intrigue to extend their own material practice. Points of intrigue are included in bold fonts
below:

ENTRANCE QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What’s your interest in textiles?

Arhea:

My interest in textiles is all things textiles. I love bedding (linen) that’s where
my inspiration comes from. People always laugh when I talk about it. But I
love bedding and interior design and the feeling that I get from it. I worked
in a linen store back home and it’s really luxury and nice. That’s a big part of
textiles because I want to understand how it’s made. I also grew up in a
family where there was sewing and knitting and I’ve always been
surrounded by fabrics. Whether I knew it was influencing me at the time, I’m
not sure but it’s where I’m at now. I want it to be a big part of my life.

Emily:

Do you have any previous experience working with textiles?

Arhea:

If you count doing fabrics in high school… I had to make a garment so I
made pyjamas which were a fluorescent tartan pattern … flannel but a
hideous green tartan. So I made pyjamas out of those. It was really cheap
fabric from a fabric store. It was probably the first thing that I remember
making. I would have been 13.

Emily:

What do you know about the tools that we’re working with?

Arhea:

Right now, I’m using the drop spindle and I’m fairly new to this wool. I
was taught by you last year which was the first time I had even seen
one. I had a thought that I wanted to learn how to spin, and you were
like, “Oh! Come to my studio right now and we can do it!” and I was so
amazed that this was even a thing. Because when I first thought of
textiles I was thinking about big production - I was really oblivious to
the handcraft side of it. When you called me over, I was like, “Whoa!”
I’ve used the drop spindle a couple of times and it’s only been when
you’ve been around. When I need help, I ask you.

52

Emily:

Are there any stories that you tell yourself about this activity?

Arhea:

As I’m spinning, I’m reflecting myself, trying to make sense of story. Thinking
about the feeling of the wool I’m using, how that connects. I think it all tells
a story. It brings me back to thinking about how our ancestors would have
created patterns, or worked with these tools.

Emily:

When you saw the hand tools, how did that change your perception of
textiles?

Arhea:

I think it showed me that there’s alot more to it, and having the skills
of handcrafting is much more of a connection than on a machine. A
connection to everything. The tools, the fibres, thinking back to people
in the past. How they used them.

Emily:

Is there anything about this activity that pulled you in?

Arhea:

Well, you sort of pulled us in to do the warping of your loom, but I decided
to sit on the side and observe and as you guys were doing it, I thought, “Oh!
I’m going to go get the carders and spin some wool!” So, yeah.

Time spent spinning (material practice): ~1 hour
EXIT QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What did you learn as a result of this exercise?

Arhea:

The whole structure of doing it, I found quite difficult. How I hold my
hands, my arms get really sore. I also learned that it’s really cool seeing it
all come together besides the doing. I was really excited when the fibres
came together and it became a yarn - so from A to B.

Emily:

Is there anything that you’re curious about?

Arhea:

I’m curious about everything of what’s to come. What I’m going to do with
it, how I’m going to use it. I’m curious to carry on and learn more.
Because I have the basics of it. I want to see how I progress as a spinner.

Emily:

You were saying something about mixing the two colours together (Buffalo with
sheep)

Arhea:

I got a big bag of buffalo fur from a friend and I was really excited when I
was washing and teasing it to spin it - and when I had to spin it, the hair
was too short so I had to mix the fibre with some sheep, and I was a little
bit reluctant because it wasn’t pure and I thought I was taking away the
meaning and quality of the yarn I was doing.
But when I actually started doing it - I mean, it’s not perfect - but that’s

53

the thing about natural fibres, is that they’re unpredictable. But mixing
them together is kind of cool and the buffalo wool is brown and the sheep
wool is white and I’m coming from a place of finding my cultural identity,
and mixing (I guess because I have 2 tones of skin colour) - my maori side
which is dark, and my European side which is lighter - so telling a story
about mixing my other selves together.
The time went by really fast because I was really enjoying it. I’d like to do more.
Emily:

What would you like to do next?

Arhea:

I want to carry on spinning so I can use the yarn in my weaving in my loom. So
I’ve been working with looms a little bit and I want to teach myself ways of
knowing through my culture and traditional knowledge … so I want to
incorporate what I’m spinning now into it somehow.

Emily:

Where do you think weaving or fibre arts exists today?

Arhea:

Everywhere. Just everywhere. Everywhere you look, there’s weaving and
fibres. Outside, plants are fibres. What you can create. Plants are being
stripped all the time to make new fibres, and it’s just really exciting.

Emily:

Do you think engaging with these mediums is valuable/relevant in today’s
society?

Arhea:

Definitely. Like I said before, my project is going towards finding cultural
identity and how I’m doing that is through these hand techniques of weaving
and spinning and working with these fibres, because it’s a big part of my
cultural survival, and so. It’s been lost a little bit with colonization and keeping
these practices alive .. people need it in order to sustain what’s coming.
Thank you for teaching me and showing me ways. I’ve always been really
excited about it because I’m really excited about it.

CO-CREATION SESSIONS
Session 2: Eugenie Cheonne

ENTRANCE QUESTIONS
Emily:

What’s your interest in this activity, and why would you like to learn more
about it? Spinning/plying/coming over here.

Eugenie:

Initially, I wanted to come over because I needed alternative ways for
making soft mediums for research. I know you as a knitter/weaver, so
I came to you, and the first thing that caught my eye was this tool

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[points to drop spindle]. It was more so an intuitive process than
something really intentional. I saw it, I liked it and decided to work
with it.
Emily:

Do you have any previous experience working with textiles?

Eugenie:

When I was young, in pre-school, I made some things. I’ve done traditional
knitting and then crochet. But I never made anything out of it - it was just
patterns. And it never became an object. I didn’t know the beginning and
end.

Emily:

What do you know about the tools we’re working with?

Eugenie:

At this moment, none. Just the brush and the drop spindle.

Emily:

What stories do you tell yourself as a result of these activities?

Eugenie:

This in particular, not much, because it’s very new for me. But in
general when thinking aobut knitting, I used to do it as a kid. I have a
memory with my grandmother when we went for a trip with all of her
friends - and I was the only kid with all of these grandmas. We got on
the train to see the Snowflake Festival on the mountain sides, and I
brought my knitting kit with me, and my grandmother was like,
“You’re the youngest - a ​kid-​ with us, a bunch of old grandma’s and
you’re the only one that brought a knitting kit. What is wrong with
you? That is so boring!” I thought it was a neat thing to do on a long
train ride. I thought my grandmother would be more encouraging and
know more about knitting, but she didn’t. I thought I’d learn
something, or they’d have some input in the process - but totally the
opposite happened. They said, “Go put that thing away, we’re going to
go and eat some food.” Whenever I look at knitted things, I
remember that.

Time spent spinning (material practice): ~1 hour
EXIT QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What did you learn as a result of this exercise?

Eugenie:

I learned that it’s pretty easy. Follow my instinct. Let it find it’s place. If I
want to go deep, then I could talk about the artist/creator’s hand. Alot of
the times when we’re making, sometimes our hand doesn’t have to be too
involved for it to manifest itself. That’s what I meant by saying simple,
intuitive and easy.

Emily:

Is there anything you’re curious about as a result of this exercise?

55

I asked you right after I was spinning, how to ply and extend, connect and
make more. And how to use them later on. To make it a material. To be a
component of something else to be determined. I don’t know it if will be
an object or another piece of material - but one of the elements for that.
A component for something else.
Emily:

Where do you think weaving/fibre arts exists today?

Eugenie:

“Fibre arts?!” when you put in “Arts”, it’s pretty limited. But if you think about it
in everyday life, textile is everywhere. When you say art, I naturally think of it as
a craft. A group of people - intimately together, hand-woven and hand-knit. It’s
dispersed. It’s either end of the spectrum. Either mass-produced, or limited
quality, handmade craft textiles.

Emily:

Do you think engaging with these hand tools is relevant in today’s society? What
do you think the place is for these things?

Eugenie:

Personally? Or generally? I think personally, I want to keep on doing it,
just because I like using my hands to create new things - that’s my
personal inclination and a talent that I came with. For other people with
no background in art/design may not see any relevance and may not
know where to start. Most of my friends would try to find a function for it
and once they started, they would be afraid to fail. I’ve been trying to get
my friends outside of the arts community to start an activity like this as a
hobby, and they’ll be like, “Oh, I’m not talented. It’s so difficult”. And they
don’t even start. When they do, they immediately go to, “What is this
even for? Will it have a function in the end?” and that’s the extent of their
thought.

Emily:

Would you say it’s a lack of curiosity?

Eugenie:

A lack of curiosity, accessibility, more being aware of possibilities outside
of simple making of a scarf. There’s not much value placed on these
activities. But if you really know about it, there’s so much other tangible
value in the act of making. For me, it’s very meditative. Having your
hands active. I don’t think many people are aware of that kind of quality
of making.

Emily:

Do you find that in specific neighbourhoods?

Eugenie:

Just thinking in terms of my social group.

56

CO-CREATION SESSIONS
Session 3: Jordache Mackenzie

ENTRANCE QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What’s your interest in weaving and why would you like to learn more about
it?

Jordache:

I never really had an interest in weaving.

Emily:

What made you want to do this activity?

Jordache:

To get a chance to play with the materials and try a tool that I’ve never used
before.

Emily:

Have you ever worked with textiles before?

Jordache:

Not really. I knitted a scarf. I wouldn’t call that working with textiles.

Emily:

What is that?

Jordache:

It’s really basic.

Emily:

Is it?

Jordache:

Of knitting, it’s very basic, because it’s just a scarf. Straight knit.

Emily:

Who taught you?

Jordache:

My mom

Arhea:

You learned knitting?

Emily:

How old?

Jordache:

Maybe 10 or 11. Pretty young.

Emily:

What do you know about the tools we’re working with?

Jordache:

I don’t know anything. I can picture what it’s going to look like.

Emily:

In what way?

Jordache:

The way the threads are being laid out and my knowledge of weaving, you
can see that it’s going to be a long sheet.

Emily:

Do you have any stories that you tell yourself about the tools we’re working
with and textiles?Warping?

Jordache:

“Warping” is a science fiction term. Do you know much about warping? It’s
like. When you’re warping, you’re bending the fabric of space of time to

57

move really fast.
Emily:

Is that what we’re doing right now?

Jordache:

Maybe. Like the slow version. I guess we are bending the fabric of space and
time in a way.

Emily:

Are there any other stories? We were talking about sheep earlier. When you
see these materials, do you have a thought or feeling?

Jordache:

I have been paying alot of attention to this little section here, and how it
reminds me of piano strings or wire on bridges and all the tensile wires.

Emily:

It’s architectural

Jordache:

And it’s kind of therapeutic just laying the strings out, perfectly spaced.

Time spent warping (material practice): ~1 hour
EXIT QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What did you learn as a result of this exercise?

Jordache:

I learned how to warp. Is it warp a loom? Warp some thread. I developed
some tacit ways of manipulating the thread to make it work better. Yep.

Emily

What were those?

Jordache​:

Certain ways I would flick my hands around to make sure the thread
stayed in line and supported as you pulled it through so it wouldn’t knot.

Emily:

Is there anything you’re curious about as a result of this exercise?

Jordache:

Umm I’d like to see how big the size or scale of a looming thing could be.
Can it get really big? Wall sized?

Emily:

Any other curiosities?

Jordache:

I’m interested in how this loom was made and put together. Who came up
with these tools that you can use to do this? What other tools are there
that do it differently?

Emily:

Time: 1 hour. Are there any parts of this that you want to do next?

Jordache:

I want to do the next stage now. Because I’ve got this loom warped thing
already and I’m like, “What do I do now?”

58

Emily:

Where do you think weaving/fibre arts exist today in the world?

Jordache:

The global south. It’s a term for my research. Non-western countries.
Indigenous cultures, places where they don’t go into the shop and buy
something. Completely made. It refers to all non-western countries.

Emily:

Do you think weaving/fibre arts exist everywhere else?

Jordache:

It exists everywhere. But in western culture it’s seen as more of an older
lady female thing. Of course it’s not because I used to knit when I was a
child.

Emily:

So it’s in the hands of old ladies. Do you think engaging with these
mediums is valuable or relevant in today’s society?

Jordache:

Yeah. I think it’s important to develop hand and craft skills. You don’t want
to lose that connection to being able to work with materials yourself. If you
just have a computer and AI machines doing everything for you, what if the
power goes off one day and you don’t know how to interact with the
world?

Emily:

Is there anything else you want to say?

Jordache:

It was a fun activity. Thanks for inviting me.

CO-CREATION SESSIONS
Session 4: Nicole Preissl

ENTRANCE QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What’s your interest in weaving and why would you like to learn more
about it?

Nicole:

It definitely comes from wanting to re-connect with my culture.
Squamish are known for weaving and coming from a family that’s
disconnected from our culture, it’s really important to learn and grow
and become connected again, because I think it’s a huge part of
reconciliation, personal growth, and learning where I’m from. I spent
my entire childhood being really proud of being Austrian and
Canadian, but never knowing anything about the other side.
I also think it’s a really amazing practice in itself. I really have an
appreciation for more natural ways. Our society is running towards
technology everything and to go back and explore older practices and ways
of making is really interesting to me. I think we’re really going to need that,
because in a few generations, if people aren’t paying attention to the older
practices of making, those things might disappear.

59

For myself, getting back and looking at indigenous ways of weaving,
weaving in general, and natural dyes is really important.
Emily:

Do you have any previous experience with textiles?

Nicole:

Yes. ​Before this, I was in Helene’s class, a textile-based design class. In
that, Jen from the soft shop taught us a little bit of weaving.
Before that, ​when I was younger, I was in a program called “Aboriginal
Circle” and it’s a way to connect kids to their culture and keep the
practices alive, through the education system.
So they come in once a month-ish, and do workshops for half a day.
There’s storytelling, teaching, art projects, etc. In that, we did a little bit of
weaving. Not alot, but I think we made a coaster. I did like it, I think any kid
likes to make with their hands. ​There are definitely people in the world
that are makers, and how they figure out the world around them is
through their hands or body. For me, I was that kind of kid​. Anything
artistic was up my alley, but in particular, that weaving one, I definitely
loved.
Years after, I got away from it and when I took that class with Helene, I
thought, “This is really cool.” I started integrating it into my work. I did a
weavable chair and it was a big tube that you could weave into it and you
could weave the tube into the chair. ​It was kind of like me connecting to
my culture in this very small, minute way. It’s not a direct, “Oh this is
definitely Coast Salish”, but to me, it was using something in my body
that’s coming out. I definitely liked that experience.
It was always on my mind after that,​ and in the past half a year since
Keith’s class, I started to get into some different areas, and that’s when
weaving was really there for me and I wanted to keep going at it.

Emily:

What do you know about any of the tools used for textiles? (drop spindles,
carders, etc).

Nicole:

I would say I don’t know enough. I feel like I only know about hand looms
(when you have the actual spool of yarn, and when you’re actually
weaving). I know about a drop spindle and I looked up a bit more about it.
You had shown us in Keith’s class for a few minutes, and I was really
interested in it. Over the summer, I looked up on YouTube how to do
it, and then it also kind of left mind​. And then, I started getting more
into it this past semester when I decided, “OK. I’m really interested in
getting into natural dyeing, weaving, learning that” and then I went to a
Coast Salish weaving demo and he showed us some of the tools they used,
but I didn’t know the exact uses for them. I think that’s a really important
part. ​Because you could be talking about weaving, and then it gets to
a point to do with tools or something technical and I lose some of the
instruction. I think it would be good to learn more about the tools.​ I
know very little, so I’ll say that.

60

Emily:

What stories do you tell yourself about weaving or textiles?

Nicole:

A connection to culture is huge for me​. I was talking with my grandma a
few months ago and she told me that her Grandma’s were really
amazing cedar weavers and that’s what they were known for in their
community. ​I think that’s really cool because when I was talking with you
in Keith’s class, ​I kept feeling my ancestors around me - not in a literal
sense, but through the practice and through the making​. [After my
grandma told me that], I realized that I think it was actually a really true
feeling - because they were cedar weavers, and we do very similar
techniques.​ Knowing that my ancestors actually w
​ ere ​doing that, and
were weavers,​ is really cool. I would not have known that my
ancestors were weavers had I not done that spinning, and had I not
told my grandmother about it. That was something that never came
up (I’m 23), had I not mentioned that to her.
You can bring up old stories that your parents have, that they then pass on
to you.

Emily:

What is it about weaving that pulled you in? A conversation, thought or
perhaps a memory?

Nicole:

I would definitely say you were definitely helpful.​ You’re very patient - so
that’s helpful. When I talk a mile a minute and have all these
thoughts come out, you were able to sit there, really listen, and when
you have conversations with other makers or artists, it puts a seed in
your mind. ​It was definitely​ planted in Helene’s class, and I think
maybe you were the water or sun to sprout it, and there were all of
these other factors that have helped it grow into what my interest is
now, it’s a lot more condensed. ​Now I’m really interested in this specific
area - in weaving, natural dyeing and all of that. That was definitely a
helpful thing to have teachers and people like you that were helping
nurture that thought, rather than just thinking it was weird to weave.
You all had your own stories: ​You had mentioned you know how to
weave and use a drop spindle and then I would look it up on youtube and
be like, “oh my gosh! That’s so cool”.

Emily:

Is there anything else that you make?

Nicole:

I’ve been getting into carving. I’m not good in any sense, I don’t even think
my family was really known for that, but I think it’s a really awesome thing
to do with your hands. I also make drums. I love to make drums. I think
the process of making from start to finish is really interesting to me. I don’t
like to just grab a bunch of lumber from the woodshop and then cut it and
glue it. To me, that’s ok, I love doing that- but it’s not as exciting as when
you can see something from a raw material and go from there. Even when
I’m getting into things like drum making or weaving, I have all of these
thoughts like, “Oh, I want to tan my own hyde.” “I want to get it from here,
I don’t want it to just be delivered to me. I want to do the full process.
I don’t know the process, but I want to learn. How does wool go from

61

sheep to yarn? What is that process, and what is the full one? Because
I get very into that. It’s a goal that I’m interested in getting towards.
It’s interesting to me with making to get into the ​full​ process.”
I might go to a workshop to tan hydes, so attending a workshop that tells
me how to take it from skin into the next step…​ There’s so much behind
the scenes that we don’t know in our lives. ​Like with backpacks, or food,
or whatever. There are all these steps leading up to it.
Emily:

Is there anything else you want to say?

Nicole:

I would just say that I really appreciate having this integrated into our
education here at Emily Carr.​ It means something when teachers or
people like you go out of their way to recognize different ways of
learning, growing and teaching - because I don’t believe there’s just
one narrow way to learn - like with reading and then you have to be
tested on it. ​Indigenizing education. But not even just that. Opening it up
to different ways of learning. It’s not like just about textiles, it could also be
about sewing with thread with a machine. NO! It could be weaving, this,
that, etc.
That’s really cool about this school. There are teachers care about not
being in a box as far as how to learn.

Time spent spinning & carding (material practice): ~30 mins
EXIT QUESTIONS:
Emily:

What did you learn as a result of this exercise?

Nicole:

I learned how to card wool, and how to drop spindle, which was really
helpful.
This was a really awesome experience because it was a different kind of
learning for me, not just a traditional, sitting in a desk-kind-of-learning.
I learned one-on-one in this interesting atmosphere [Emily’s cubicle] with
this interesting backdrop with the blankets, the wool hanging there, and the
masks… it just felt more natural to me, because it’s more of a traditional
way of learning. When I say that, it’s going back many, many years. I feel like
this is how people used to learn before the classroom was put in place.
The full process was here. It wasn’t like a youtube. It wasn’t so
dislocated from me. It was right here, human to human, which I think
is really important.​ Because that kind of learning needs to be more
integrated. Not just a lecture or a video, or a how-to reading. It was person
to person. You were able to tell me what I was doing wrong, or if I was

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doing something right, etc.
This different atmosphere. Taken out of the context of a classroom.
Even though we’re in a classroom - or a studio - but it doesn’t feel like
a studio. This makes it feel like your house. It’s a different, more warm
and cozy feeling to face inwards. ​You talked to me about this amazing
backstrap loom and all of the intricacies that go into it. Even though it looks
simple, and when you started talking about it, it started to look alot more
complex. Which isn’t a bad thing. ​I just didn’t know about all of these
things.
Emily:

Is there anything you’re curious about as a result of this exercise?

Nicole:

Yeah. One thing that’s coming to mind is,​ h
​ ow did my people spin?
Because … how do they take it from the animal, and then make it into the
yarn that they were using? That was a huge thing. I wonder how they did.
You said that Jen has the round .. drum carder. And all of that. It made
me wonder how other people around the world were doing this.
Because weaving happens in cultures all around the world, right? So, I
wonder what they used to do. ​And I’m wondering about certain
techniques. I want to go and start practicing. I’m curious about how to get
my hands on cat combs [to card the wool]
I’m curious about going out and trying more because now ​you’ve helped
me get to a place where I feel a little bit less uncomfortable with this
[gestures to carders] and so now I’m interested in going out and
making more.

Emily:

Do you have any ideas of what you want to work on next with textiles, fibre,
etc.?

Nicole:

What my goal is, I want to learn how to make a somewhat good piece of
yarn. Do you call it yarn? I want to learn that as my next step. To get better
at it and to learn more.
Eventually I want to weave a blanket.​ I know that’s ​so​ ambitious. But
that’s my middle name. Ambitious. I want to learn this [gestures to drop
spindle].​ Also, there’s a particular thickness to Coast Salish yarn that’s
very thick, and I want to learn more about that, and maybe learn how
to make that.

Emily:

I think they use ​really big drop spindles.​ We could probably look into how
Coast Salish people spin.

Nicole:

Yes, yeah! So,​ I’m going to do that. And then, yeah. Dye the fibre and
the yarn. And then I want to weave. Even if it’s a small blanket, a
corner of that size - or a tea cozy, whatever. I want to start weaving.​ I
want to really get into using the loom. That’s my next goal. To see where I
can bring that.

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- APPENDIX B INTERVIEWS
All interviews were recorded in audio format and transcribed below. Original audio is
available by visiting soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking. ​Some text is edited from the
original audio clips for clarity.

Session 1: Dr. Garnet Hertz - Canada Research Chair in Design and Media
Arts and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media
at Emily Carr University
I
nterview URL: ​soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking/garnet-hertz-critical-making
Emily:

What does maker culture mean to you?

Garnet:

The way that I usually describe [maker culture] is I see making and maker
culture as driven by alot of things, and I tend to think in terms of physical
objects than a specific social structure.​ Making I see is primarily driven by a
community and series of practices that have grown up and been
catalyzed by 3d printing and Arduino. I think if it wasn’t for those 2
things, it would have evolved quite differently. ​The maker scene​. That’s
not to say that everybody that’s making is doing Arduino or 3d printing,
but those are 2 really big catalysts in the scene that differentiate it from
craft and art.

Emily:

What is it about 3d printers and Arduino that caused that shift?

Garnet:

It’s also driven by people getting tired of talking about projects and interested
in making projects. The “Do-ocracy” is a bit like that. I think that those 2 things
brought communities together that ended up evolving into hackerspaces
where people started pooling resources, knowledge, information, practices,
gear, to figure out how to work with this stuff. That evolved into what’s known
as maker culture.​ I think making is also a more “family friendly” version
of “hacking”. That’s how Dale Dougherty had described it. He had
proposed initially that it would be called “Hacks” magazine and his
daughter said, “That’s dumb, Why don’t you call it make ‘making’
because everybody loves making?” and it’s true. It takes a lot of the
practices from hacker culture. It softens them in good ways and I think
in bad ways. It de-politicizes it a bit and de-controversializes it which I
see is partially negative, but then it is more ​inclusive​, and the term

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hacker is really male-dominated, and macho-nerdness that can also be
more destructive. I see it definitely related to hacking. So I see those
two as really linked.
Emily:

Have you introduced making in your classroom?

Garnet:

Sure, it also depends on how you define “making”.​ I assume that every art
class has what you would call “making”. Whether it’s making foam core
prototypes or sketches… i​n the O’Reilly press maker brand of making, I’ve
used Arduino and stuff like that. I was using basic stamp [a pre-Arduino
Arduino by Parallax] before the Arduino came out, and alot of people were
doing that stuff with electronic circuits and stuff like that, but it was a bit more
complicated. I had been doing work like that in classrooms for a while now. I
use Arduino and I use things like Instructables in my classes. I have my
students document their projects on Github, open source their ideas, and try
to get feedback from the community and use additive manufacturing and stuff
like that as well.

Emily:

What challenges do you face in the classroom when you’re getting students
going between talking about the made world vs. really engaging with making?

Garnet:

I think it takes a while for students to understand how to use
electronics. For example, How can I use an Arduino to make an
interesting project? It takes a while for students to understand the
physical computing aspects: It’s the thing that lives inside your
microwave, or the thing that lives inside your phone. It’s kind of a
scaled-down version of that and there’s lots of interesting things that
you can do with that. The other struggle that I have that takes a
considerable amount of time is to get students to think
programmatically. To be able to think in terms of a logic tree or
flowchart that you would need to use to make a piece of electronics, or
prototype or piece of code to run. Because it’s not obvious and it’s not
the way that humans generally think. ​We tend to be more organic and it
makes people need to slow down and understand, “Ok if this happens do I
want this or that to happen “ … and then we have to wait … ​it takes time for
people to slow down and be a bit more reflective of that and also more
rigid in structuring what they want to build as a physical prototype or
interactive object and how that translates to code and that’s a big jump
for a lot of people.

Emily:

So the structure of coding.

Garnet:
Yeah, thinking as a computer.

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Yeah, ​the leap from using a computer to understanding how it actually
works and talking to the computer.
Emily:

How has it been received? From students? Are there students that are more
comfortable with it? More willing to experiment? Are there trends? What
challenges do you face in terms of engagement, and how have students
engaged? Do students walk away feeling empowered?

Garnet:

I think so. I think the key things are… ​teaching people to solder for
example, people get a rush out of just watching 2 metal things join
together like with welding or something, where they click in and there’s
this Oooh! Ok! and there’s a slight sense of danger because you’re
dealing with molten metal. Also, if they can make a light blink in some
sort of pattern, there’s this, “Oh ok!” or make a sound play after you
press a button - some sort of interactivity. As soon as they see that, they
get more engaged after they’ve had some hands-on experience.

Emily:

So, getting a students to do a thing or make something happen is what gets
students more engaged?

Garnet:

Oh yeah. Definitely. ​You can’t just sit up there and talk about it. I mean
you can to get them excited, but it’s something that you really need to
get them to practice. It takes physical practice.

Emily:

And trying things out.

Garnet:

Yeah.

Emily:

Where did you get started with Critical making, what can you speak about in
terms of that work? How do you describe what you’ve done in the academic
context of making and how do you see your role in that world?

Garnet:

I’m interested in the maker community and there’s alot of good energy
coming out of that scene, but I’ve also been doing similar type works and
familiar with alot of projects with people doing it before the Arduino has come
out. Doing “Maker” type work - hobby DIY electronics rapid prototyping work
driven by their own interests and not their jobs - and most of the people that
I’ve been in contact with put it into an art context. That’s just as a result of me
going to university in an art program and getting to know people that were
doing it in that world. ​I see that the maker community has alot of energy
and has alot of fantastic studio structures with hackerspaces and it’s
really, really innovative and inspiring, but at the same time, some of the
projects are just really dumb projects, right? I mean, I think that’s part
of it - is that in a space like a hackerspace, you’re given the freedom that
you can do a really dumb project and no one’s going to hassle you and

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there’s an important space for that. But there’s also an important
history and things to learn from a field like design or art, or whatever.
Art has a good peer review, critique, history and stuff like this, of things
like gender, or fields like computer science have alot of things that can
be learned about how biases can be unknowingly designed into artefacts
and how that impacts how people behave.​ Anyways, my take on the maker
scene and why I had done the critical making project was to say,​ “Ok, this
maker scene is great. It can be even better if it brings in these other
projects that have been churning along sort of in parallel or before, after
and during this whole maker stuff came up and can really help inform
and make more interesting projects. People can learn how to solder and
people can learn how to make an LED blink, but after you do that, these
questions come up about about ok, what project are you going to make?
And that’s a more difficult problem than getting an Arduino to compile a
chunk of code. You end up with much more of a personal and social
quest.
Emily:

It’s almost like it starts to become a medium at that point. Like a paintbrush,
or canvas, or a tool, like. Just like anything, it’s like, ok. “What are you going to
say?”

Garnet:

There’s nothing wrong with people that want to paint paintings of their
dog or their cat all their life. And it’s ok if you have something in your
home that you want customized to be for yourself. That’s a really super
important part of the maker scene. Customization and the bespoke,
ridiculous thing that only you want. But after you built those things, you
end up with this problem of, ​“What are you doing? Why are you doing it?”
It’s nice to not having to answer to people but eventually, you run into
that problem.

Emily:

So, in terms of the work that you’ve done, what would you say you’ve
discovered as a maker or someone in that world using the critical making
conversation … have you gotten closer to knowing what you’re doing or being
more conscious

Garnet:

The short version of that is that ​the history of art and technology and the
discipline of design really are useful tools in bringing into a place like a
hackerspace. We don’t want to make that place a school. ​Or a business.
But, hackerspaces and individuals go through a process where they are
probably, if they’re continuing to do it, they’re going to start up a kickstarter,
or they’re going to release a product on their own, or do an exhibition …
People reach crossroads where they come into a problem of how to do
something full-time. If they’re going to do it full-time, how they can do that.
What’s the value of this thing? What I wanted to add is that ​there is this field
of experimental design and media art or whatever you want to call it
that is an avenue that people can pursue that has a history and a

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community around it. That should be something that people that are
making in hackerspaces can access.
Emily:

So, would you say your work is about bringing those two things together?
Have you made objects in that space as well? Does any of your work speak to
that cross-section?

Garnet:

I’ve been primarily pursuing that through publishing. Through releasing texts
and trying to bring those things together in the ​Disobedient Electronics​ thing
for example. Taking an issue like protest and saying, “OK there are several
different avenues that you can take to try and bring about political change”.
Some of it comes from the maker scene, hackerspace scene, art scene, some
of it comes from design - more formal industrial design. Some of it comes
from products and advertising. There’s a whole range of approaches that you
can take, but when you bring those things together, they’re actually almost
identical projects so part of it is bringing that together and saying ok these are
actually quite different disciplines but the projects are actually quite similar.
To kind of bring them into discussion with each other by grouping them.

Emily:

Who’s your work inspired or influenced by?

Garnet:

Inspirations to me were a few groups like when I was a kid in my parent’s
basement, I learned about groups like ​Survival Research Labs​ that build
large-scale robotics things, a group like ​Experiments in art and Technology
which formed in the ‘60s as a group that partnered engineers and scientists
with artists that built a match-making service to have people work on projects
together. Those 2 organizations were pivotal for me in going, . for me, those
were key. There’s other designers like Natalie Jeremijenko and interesting
projects in the 1990s. I would say those 3.

Emily:

What’s next?

Garnet:

I’m trying to combine people that are teaching in this area and make a
compiled collection of teaching materials and activity guides that instructors
can use and share with each other to make a practical approach to people
that are teaching this stuff and try to ---

Emily:

By this stuff you mean critical making?

Garnet:

Yeah. It could be called Critical technical practice, Experimental HCI, or
Experimental Industrial Design, Science and Technology sties, Electronic art,
hackerspace art work … It could be alot of those different lables. But to get
activities and workshop templates and handouts and collect them from alot of
different people and distribute it across that same group of contributors and
see if it evolves into some kind of book project or teaching resources that
people can share. ​I’m working on a book that traces out a history of
electronic art and uses it to pull out a number of different themes within

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that type of work as showing different motivations to why people go
ahead with DIY projects and what are trends and motivations and
advantages of doing stuff that way? What are some disadvantages of
working as an amateur in that area?

Session 2: Yvonne Dawdiak - Technology Integration Mentor / Teacher
Educator, UBC
Audio Recording:
soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking/yvonne-dawdiak-technology-integration-mentor-teacher
-educator-ubc
Emily:

What do you teach?

Yvonne:

I ​ did ​teach elementary school, k-7 and now I teach in the faculty of Education at
UBC, preparing teacher candidates, and currently I’m the technology integration
mentor in the faculty. I’m no longer ​teaching​ in the faculty, but I’m helping
instructors and students integrate technologies into their practice. I facilitate
workshops and teach them with faculty members and instructors, but I’m not
responsible for a classroom of students anymore, but I don’t teach a ​course.

Emily:

Do you make anything?

Yvonne:

I have made pottery. I don’t currently. I do photography. When it comes to making, I
make examples and models of different things that I would engage our students in. I
do alot of hands-on work with students, so I’ll often play with that thing myself to get
a sense of the possibilities, and then I’ll engage my students in that ​play​ themselves,
as opposed to sharing my example always, I’ll usually get them involved with the
play.I make websites.
In the classroom, I do everything from simple robotics - very simple. Coding,
currently dipping my toe into augmented and virtual realities. I do pop-up
makerspace opportunities where in September for example, every teacher
candidate in the program’s instructor brought them to a popup makerspace in
the library, so I worked with teacher librarians on introducing what a library
can be​ as a resource space - and that included a hands-on place to make. So I
helped the librarians develop a VR scavenger hunt tour and then I facilitated 6
activities - things like making buttons, weaving, robots that they could learn to
code, Kiva brick planks which are like Rube Goldberg machines… they had
magnets, squishy circuits, unplugged coding, computational thinking activities.
If they came from a certain grade level, I tried to gear some of the stations.
I try to mix it up a bit. For example, a second year biology candidate may have an
assumption that they’re going to be teaching biology; but I help them understand
that they’re going to be a teacher, because they may be asked to teach other subjects
and they may choose to teach other subjects. So that’s where the integrated
approach - where they suspend their subject area beliefs. And within each of the

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pop-up maker spaces, I try to look at them from subject areas. 700 odd teachers got
exposed to the idea of making and the invitation for them to pop-in, to take some
kits to take into their own teaching and sign out the kits, etc. THey can ask me
questions at any time and we can work together.
I also make websites with students. Anything to do with digital technologies. At UBC,
the BEd is 11 months. After their undergrad, they do a bachelor of education.
<Discussion RE: Technology and her role integrating that in the classroom>
Emily:

Are there any barriers to administrators seeing for example, weaving as a
technology?
Not really. Because the new curriculum is more inquiry-based and clearly honouring
all of that, particularly with the indigenous pedagogies that we’re all supposed to be
integrating - learning through our shared experiences and connections with others. ​I
don’t see alot of push-back and in 25 years of classroom teaching, I never saw
any push-back, even though the curriculum was very different - around
teaching a hnads-on approach to learning. We’ve always known that this was
an effective approach - it’s more about finding the ​time​ to allow students to
learn in their own way. Like the slow food movement - it takes more time. Not
just filling their head with time. ​That’s up to the teacher - which is one of the
benefits - we have autonomy of the ways in which we teach the prescribed
curriculum. The prescribed curriculum is very open now, and so my autonomy
allows me to go more broadly and hopefully many teachers take up​ the
opportunity to do that in a way that’s more engaged with hands-on learning.
Not everyone will.

Emily:

What are some of the challenge points you see for people rolling out the new
curriculum?

Yvonne:

That’s tricky. Teachers have started to integrate the revised curriculum (we don’t call
it the “new curriculum”) - the ​revised​, or ​redesigned​ curriculum. ADST is a brand new
curriculum. ​There’s a whole new curriculum, and the ADST is one curricular area
within all of the different curricular areas​. In elementary school, one teacher
teaches all of the subject areas. Grade 6, 7, 8 they may have discrete area specialists,
and even within elementary school, teachers may co-teach, but it’s far more
common to integrate the curriculum. If I’m exploring something in social studies for
example - let’s say “exploration” - I may look at the science curriculum and see if
there are any intersections. I may look at the math curriculum and see if there’s
something about compasses or directions at my grade level and so I would draw that
in - ​it’s this integrated way. Which is the thing with ADST. It’s intended to be an
integrated curriculum, not a stand-alone curriculum. It’s bringing the applied
design in to support other curricular learning. It’s not a discrete curriculum. It
can be brought in at any points for all of the curriculum. At grades 8-9 it’s
probably going to look different because of the subject specialist areas. My
sense - and I’m not an expert in this because I haven’t been out in elementary
schools in the last 2 years - they’ve been developing courses within that
curriculum. I was talking to a former teacher candidate of ours, who has been
asked to teach an adst course on coding and computational thinking at the
grade 8 level. So they are developing some discrete courses. ​What I think is

70

exciting, is if what happens from that, and what I try to get my students to start
thinking about is, ​“Imagine if you’re at a school that is developing an ADST
course and you have a gift or an interest in weaving for example, could you not
have an ADST course that involves weaving? When you think about all of the
math, science and anthropological areas, it could be a truly integrated course.
You could create a beautiful cross-curricular course. I haven’t seen that happen yet but it takes a completely different way of thinking than teachers do”
Emily:

I’m interested in creating support for teachers so that they can draw on that. As soon
as I got into textiles, I started thinking about math and coding, and I started to see it
all come together.

Yvonne:

And wouldn’t that be exciting for a student to experience a whole course that way?

Emily:

I’m thinking about taking skills from the playground and integrating those things into
the classroom. Like for example, with friendship bracelets.

Yvonne:

When you mention friendship bracelets, I start to think about personal and
social development. One of the areas of intersection beyond the ADST
curriculum - when you make those curricular connections, what about the core
competencies? I think that’s a really natural entry point to have an applied
design maker activity, and figure out how that activity can be implemented in
a classroom in such a way that it develops one or more of the core
competencies. If you can share with teachers how ​this​ helps develop ​this, ​I
think they could see the ways that they could find the time to start bringing it
in. Because teachers need to integrate those core competencies - the ​teaching
of them - not assessment. Because it’s about self-assessment. They need to
help students understand what the core competencies are. You have to have
them understand what the core competencies are, and then help them
develop those core competencies to assess their progress, right?

Emily:

How are those being introduced?
Various ways. They can be integrated into say, group work. You might raise
awareness to them, that … ​actually as we do this work, we are learning to do a,
b c, d

Yvonne:

When I see the <core competencies listed in our ITA booklet>, I think, okay,
“personal social” … my question is, “How?” “What?” So that’s the only thing to
me that’s not pulled out. Because I think we could look at any activity and say
that you’re building your communication/social skills. But within thinking,
there’s critical thinking, problem solving and all of that. Is there something
that lends itself most to? And that’s what teachers are struggling with. How to
build these core competencies in, explicitly to what they’re teaching. So, some
teachers start with a learning target, where they’ll have their curricular
learning target, but they’ll also state that they want students to reflect on how
they’re developing their core competency and they’ll do a reflection at the end
of the day/week. Teachers know how to follow curriculum. But this core
competency piece is different from what we had in the past. And yet, the
thinking for example, was always embedded into math and social studies and
science in the prescribed learning outcomes, and the communication piece

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was all over language arts. It was always embedded there as discrete
curricular objectives, but now it’s been kind of removed from that, in order to
make the curriculum one page. Because each curriculum used to be 6-7 pages
of learning outcomes which is impossible and overwhelming. They’ve got it
down to this one page of big ideas and curricular content.
I don’t know if teachers are thinking as they plan, “What core competencies are we
helping students develop, and how am I going to get my students to understand and
assess them?”
Emily:

That’s my next question - about assessment. [discusses background with Pro-D days]
One of the things I’ve heard from some of the teacher’s I’ve talked to from teachers one teacher said it was really challenging to discuss the importance of play and joy
of making as a valuable activity.

Yvonne:

Really? And what grade level? I find that surprising. My context is limited - every
principle is different. It does surprise me to hear that though, at an elementary
school. There are people that have a bias or belief that when children just learn on
their own given the right materials … and what emerged from that is “centre time”
with kids playing at stations, and there were principles that would walk in and see
time wasting, in particular when they saw teachers doing prep at their desk, rather
than engaging with the students. T​o me, the movement towards the maker
activity/culture in the classroom is adding purpose to the play, but it’s the
students’ own ideas/purpose that end up getting introduced/supported in the
classroom.​ I’d expect that there’d be less bias about that, but it also depends on
how the teacher is rolling it out.

Emily:

So the other piece was around assessment. So how students are going about
assessing themselves.

Yvonne:

There is no marking of the core competencies. It’s a self-assessment. THe reporting
varies right now and the new reporting document came out last spring and I’m less
involved with that right now - but as I understand it,
(Joe Tong - Helping teacher of reporting in Surrey School District - also a Home
Ec teacher in High School, fully knowledgeable about this, and has some
understanding of digital tech integration. He’s a pretty engaged person. He’d
be able to give you some specific examples about how teachers are enacting
this. Teachers are helping students to self-assess. I’m not sure how reporting is
happening - I believe it’s through a portfolio. The ​student​ would share, as
opposed to the teacher.​ It’s supposed to be understood that this is a continuum of
grade levels.
It’s more about developing - ​where am I and how can I improve or continue to
recognize/develop my ability to …​ Teacher’s providing activities that help students to
see this idea of for example, identity, can explore cultural activity and make those
connections, and then have students say to themselves, “now think about ​your
cultural identity​, the gifts you bring, and then we’d start to look at how they could
raise their awareness.” Everybody’s struggling with that right now.

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Now they’re trying to add resources to help teachers make sense of the curriculum.
The only draft curriculum that I know of is 10-12. K-9 is now “The Curriculum”. Not
the new curriculum. All of them are in or past their implementation year. ADST might
be in an optional implementation year. Joe would know. Do you know Zale? He did
alot of work in Professional development with elementary schools so he has
developed ideas on how to integrate.
Emily:

You were talking about the squishy circuits earlier - mapping afterwards...

Yvonne:

Right, that was working with students on the importance of play and learning. I
started with a play doh activity where I had them use some play doh, and think
about creating a physical representation of how they were feeling - a metaphor,
something tangible, etc. It could be deep or not deep. And then I introduced the
non-conductive dough and squishy circuit elements and had them play and learn
how to develop a simple circuit and share their background knowledge as they
played.
I worked with them to see not just play, but design thinking and iterative
process, trial and error, and something less kinesthetic, like say a writing
workshop, where you have students developing story, or developing a play, or
a game from scratch. I wanted them to see the connection between those
activities, and what I modelled was something that you wouldn’t do all at once
with your grade 4 class. You might do this simple play and then bring in
additional materials to add to the critical thinking and problem solving - and
from there, you could take what we’ve learned about the process of our
learning, and now apply it to something else. Which is how we’ve always done
it. From the concrete to the symbolic to abstract.
When we think about early learning, we tend to go right to the concrete. I
would advocate that that early learner means any learner learning something
new. We should begin with the concrete. I’m sure there’s research to back that
up …. I’m teaching universities in the BEd year - this idea of becoming a
professional teacher is ​new to them​. For them, I start with the concrete to
engage them, and then move to the symbollic and abstract, if I can. That’s the
movement in the intermediate and secondary - we’ve removed some of that.
That’s where this new curriculum and ADST approaches can bring that back in.
It’s already been brought back with math. And Tech Ed in high schools. In the
visual arts. It’s existed strongly with sciences with experimentation. It hasn’t
existed everywhere.

Emly:

The reason I built those looms was because, I’ve been trying to weave and I had this
giant floor loom and I couldn’t warp it, it was really intense, and so I got rid of that
loom, and I chose this kind of loom because you can learn to warp with it but it’s
small and compact.

Yvonne:

I wish we had time that I could learn to warp that loom while we were talking.

Emily:

So much of it’s about getting hands-on and making things super accessible the way
the Arduino does - making it portable. Which is like what you’re talking about when
making things concrete. And so with these activities, I don’t see them competing with
the soft shop in any way, because this is where the community space exists. ​They

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can get interested. And then they can get into the machines. And that requires
a tech. Where I’ve noticed with alot of the hackerspaces, the social side of it
was the magic. Maker Faire and all of these things started happening because
we felt like we were actually ​doing something.​ Which is so hard to replicate in
the classroom.
Yvonne:

It is. It can often feel artificial once we bring it into the classroom. That’s one of the
worries about maker ed - is that education will zap some of the community-minded
fun out of it and it can become too systematic and it can become very step-by-step
crafty and that’s a little bit of a worry for me. I see the value of learning to follow
steps, but more … our steps should be involved with learning to use materials and
tools and implement processes, and the not-steps should be what you create. You
might need to do something step by step in order to get somewhere, although I’m
not sure about that. I think you can teach someone to use a soldering iron to make a
flashing button - but it shouldn’t be a matter of 2 or 3 other projects where they
make a punched thing, where 30 other people are creating the same thing. That’s the
worry, I think

Emily:

That’s some of the thoughts I have with what I’m doing - it’s a start, it’s about the
mindset, the culture and the social side, and giving people access to playing iwth it.
We’ve been facilitating it like a “Stitch and Bitch”

Yvonne:

And that’s great! They can have conversation while they’re playing. ​That’s what I try
to do with our teacher candidates. ​When I’m doing a workshop with the students,
that’s what it looks like. I might introduce something, and then we get hands-on.
That’s when the ideas emerge, and i can do some prompting and probing and I can
throw out an idea of my own that they can riff on. I do these Gearing up sessions as
they’re leading up to practicum, they want help developing lessons and unit plans. So
my piece there, is I pull the librarians in and myself, and we consult on resourcing or
lesson plans. We act as someone to bounce ideas off of and help propel the thinking
forward - and play with the ideas.

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Session 3: Amy Walker - Maker, Facilitator & Cycling Advocate
Audio Recording:
soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking/amy-walker-clothing-maker-esp-felt-hats-cycling-advoc
ate-creative-director

Show & Tell Video:
instagram.com/BaaK_6uFglZ/?taken-by=randomactsofmaking
Emily:

You were just mentioning about having an interactive model of different
people’s process and what they’re contributing to the project and having a
collaborative ‘show and tell’ as a way of participating in this. Can you speak
more about this?

Amy:

Alot of my inclinations are very kindergarten-oriented. It’s like
kindergarten for grown-ups, basically. I operate on that level.
I don’t feel like I teach anybody anything. I go and set up supplies and
keep it orderly and clean it up so people can play. I think Show & Tell is
super fun to see what other people are working on. Adults don’t get to
do that stuff. When you have little people and create a nice space …..
Everyone deserves that [safe space].
I like to have outfits with pockets and smock dresses. I think about it
as the kindergarten teacher outfit, because it’s “no muss no fuss”

Emily:

Yes! Granny/Toddler/Art Teacher hybrid.

Amy:

I think that’s a really nice space to be. ​I think being a woman in this world
can be weird and over-sexualized, so granny-toddler existence is a
little more soft and warm and comfortable - especially all of those
recent discussions.

Maybe don’t wear high heels because they’re really uncomfortable….
The state of being a woman in fashionable women’s clothing doesn’t
necessarily serve you. I know there’s alot of truth to people being able to
wear whatever they want without being molested, absolutely! But I also
think that we have to make a choice to create the world that we want, and
not try to please - specifically men - because I don’t think women are
wearing super high heels and hoochy mama outfits for pleasing other
women. That’s a tangent.
But it just occured to me last night - I was watching a show last night about
how high heels damage women’s feet - or people’s feet, because sometimes
men wear high heels too.

It’s not comfortable.

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Emily:

I think there’s something about dressing up nicely and having both and
having agency. Can you say a bit more about what you were saying with
choice. How do you think making feeds into that?

Amy:

To bring it back to making, it’s hard to think to one other than just the
relationship that you have with your clothing. Everyone wears clothing. The
fashion industry is a huge polluter and a huge danger to the planet and
that’s the thing I think about all the time. Where are your clothes coming
from? Do people realize where?
Also just that clothes are so great when they work! When something works
well and you love it and that’s a big part of your life when you have a pair of
shoes that keep your feet dry if you have a good pair of boots can be the
best thing in the world. But we live in a world where there’s all kind of shit
produced and people have to put up with all of this garbage.

Emily:

Taking on making in this full way opened up opportunities for dialogue and
connecting with people. I don’t think you and I would have connected had
you not made felt hats and we shared a desire to make together.

Amy:

I think having clothing self-sufficiency is an idea that’s powerful and
comforting.​ If you know that you can have warm socks and a hat to keep
the rain off and you know how to make that, I feel powerful that I’m not
relying on some random shit.
It’s taking care of yourself, and a livelihood, people are always going to
need socks and hats. If I know how to make those things, I can
contribute to society. Even if it’s just people I know. Making sure they
have warm feet and heads. ​If I know how to make scarves. It’s
self-sufficiency. And if you think of a world where you don’t have a store to
go to, maybe that makes a difference. Even though we have all of those
options of going and buying things, we can choose to make it ourselves. It’s
very similar to biking when you live in a world of cars. ​You choose to take
this method - which is unconventional, maybe, but it speaks to you,
and it gives you agency and freedom to make a scarf whatever colour
you want it to be or however thick you want it to be. And that’s
empowering.

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Session 4: Haig Armen - Educator, Jazz Musician, and Interaction Designer
Audio Recording: ​soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking/haig_1
Emily:

What does ‘random acts of making’ mean to you?

Haig:

An example of something that started as ‘random making’ was some of my
students working with Arduinos to get them to talk wirelessly to a Mac. We
weren’t sure why we were doing it initially, but realized, “Oh if we hook that
Arduino up to a hand sanitizer, as soon as someone uses it, it indicates its use to
this mac and the mac can do a visualization … “ that turned into a really
awesome project ...
It’s a project I did with the health design lab maybe 5 years ago now, and I just
recently spoke about it this summer because a company in Calgary is building an
actual production version of this hand sanitizer with electronics embedded into it
so it’s something that I worked with 3 students on as an intervention. We started
with a “Problem space” and that material exploration of, “What can you do with
smart electronics”, had already been done in the class, so we knew how to pull
that over.
What I’m saying is that you want to do both of those things. Right now you’re
doing a whole bunch of materialization with a whole variety of media - and that’s
awesome, but then … like … having a library of raw materials - not even just raw
materials, they go beyond that, but, as I described, we took an arduino and
connected to a mac. You can implement that process in a variety of different
ways. Knowing the recipe of how to do that is like having a cookbook on your
shelf. Describing these recipes for electronics - and there are cookbooks for
Arudino - and one of the problems with those is that they’re big, thick textbooks
and can be a bit challenging when you want to make something right now. They
kind of work - but that would be a whole other research project, which is, how do
you make those books more meaningful? Instructables is a better example of
this. Those are all recipes, people made things, sometimes they don’t have a
specific use, it can be, “Ooh I made blinky lights!” But those blinky lights can then
turn into being in the VGH main lobby like this thing that we made - and it goes
beyond getting people’s attention because it’s blinky lights. It includes a
visualization that explains how the usage of the hand sanitizers ebbs and flows
throughout the day. You see peaks and valleys of the usage. That was interesting
to look at as a communal art project. It went from 2/11 people using hand
sanitizers to about ½.
The more interesting thing that I noticed, is that I saved some of the data from
the hand sanitizers and I started sharing that with some of the executives. I
noticed patterns, like on Fridays, no one washed their hands. We started calling it
“Dirty Fridays” - and considered having a campaign around it.
These larger usage patterns are fascinating - and knowing about it makes you

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think about how to start solving that problem.
That all started with a random material exploration as well as that
knowledge of how to connect things until we’re ready to use it somewhere.
I think that’s what you’re doing. Building a pattern library.
There’s a professor here named Charles Dobson who taught in Communication
design and he used to have his students make a book at the end of their 4th year
called, “General Solutions”, which is his phrase for “Pattern library”. You gather
those things that you’re really good at - it may just be a photoshop technique or
something you figured out.
I can then pass that on to someone else, they can put their own content onto it
and it becomes its own thing.
To me, the more successful patterns are the ones that you can “Mash up”
together with other patterns to make something totally new.
If you were to take all of these random acts and put them into a cook book of
some sort.
OK. So I’m building this area around musical instruments right now. Hot rodding
your ukulele, etc. I have a book that I just got, “Junkyard Jam Band”. A recipe
book of everything from turning your desk into a drum set using contact mics, to
building your own ukulele - a whole bunch of things…. Etc.
What’s cool is it’ll go, “Here’s a way that you can sit down with your 14 year old
and build an instrument by the end of the weekend. Here’s the next step - it
doesn’t stop there.
Emily:

That’s the space I’m in right now. How can I start connecting projects and
subjects together in a way that’s meaningful, and is also a “choose your own
adventure” style to it.

Haig:

That might be a better way of putting it than, “Solving a Problem” - which might
trigger people… Solving problems are a big part of what design is. I stay clear of
that argument, because it’s a bit semantic.

Emily:

You mentioned earlier that improv has a set of rules. I’m curious about how to
create subjects that have rules, but then add agency to choose (aka self-directed
learning).
I’m looking at making in the university space, and this as a site for interaction and asking myself how we can take learning from Emily Carr and applying it to
the new ADST curriculum in schools (Grades 4-6). Teachers are implementing this
new self-directed curriculum, but they’re not trained in how to do that. So, I want
to make some recipe books for them.

Haig:

So. You’re a musician. You know that underneath music is some underlying
structure, which to people that don’t play music, is magic. ​IE: How does she
know that Bach Fugue and it seems like there are 4 voices all

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simultaneously but she only has 2 hands?​ So, there’s an amazing amount of
math and structure underneath that. And so, I’ve studied classical music
and my main thing is jazz, which is all about improvisation.
Some people look at jazz and they say, ok. There’s for 4 people up on the stage,
playing different songs. But if you listen very carefully, there are interactions
going on between the players - and every single one of them has these weird
relationships. I’ve had teachers tell me, ​just listen to the bass player​ - ​and how
he’s relating to the drummer right now. They have an interesting way of grooving
together, and then intentionally causing tension by changing their feel. ​All of
those things are this dynamic that if you’re not listening for them, it may just
sound like 4 different people playing 4 different songs. I’ve had to explain to
people to listen to these little nuances. So, the first thing I explain, is in any song
in jazz, you can hum the melody of the song they’re playing because they’re
following the structure of that song. There’s this chord progression that they’re
following, and that’s the underlying structure. You can’t always pinpoint exactly
where they are - but most listeners that have a really good ear can tell that. But
that’s the unwritten rule. You’ve heard, “rules of play”, right? Improvising, jazz
musicians have these different styles, keys, and then that’s enough information
for me to connect with musicians I’ve never met before and for us to create
something. There’s this unspoken information about how you ​might​ play it, and
then it will be different each time you play the song. But we still agree that the
one thing that’s not up for grabs is that underlying structure.
Emily:

How did you go about learning that structure?

Haig:

Yep. That takes many many years. It’s like learning a language. And, if you
just read music of people playing, “My favourite things”, you’d never get to
the improvising part.

Emily:

That’s where I’m at with my music!

Haig:

So, that’s really common with anyone that is classically trained.​ The whole thing
is to nail down the score. Every nuance and dynamic marking is important.
With jazz, it’s about throwing the paper away once you’ve learned the song
and memorized it.
So if we’re playing autumn leaves. It has a melody that most people can hum.
Play that melody all the way through - the whole form - and then play it a whole
different key, and then another key … most people play that melody in every key
- all 12 keys. So you know it not just in that one key - so if a singer wanted to feel
comfortable singing it in a different key, you’ll be able to switch it to another key.
It’s about knowing the song in multiple keys, which means … is a whole
different thing.

Emily:

It’s interesting because in Royal Conservatory, I remember learning all that
theory, but I never made the connection that I could apply the theory to playing
these songs. That’s one of the big things that I’m looking at that was missing from
so much of my education from so many different places - and I wonder whether
you can teach that kind of loose improv style at an earlier point. How do you
create structures for that kind of learning? I never had that language, and I never

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had access to that language, and I wonder if I can integrate that into structures
for people to learn.
Haig:

To me, it’s about learning how to jam.
Jamming has a couple of really simple rules.
The main one is, “Yes, and”.
Me and Eugenie use it all the time now. Because sometimes if we’re in a stressed
mood we’ll start saying, “no, BUT”. and switch back to “yes and” … which is a
really powerful metaphor for anything in the world.
So, my daughter, who’s learning to play ukulele and the piano … her teacher is
teaching her how to play piano like you know how - “here’s the music and you
play”> The way that I’m teaching her, is to play a bass line, and then she makes
up something over top of it. It’s really hard to go wrong because you have to
listen to the other person and make stuff up on the fly.
All jamming is, is setting some simple rules and then starting to listen to the
other person.

When I do this, you do that … and it becomes a conversation.
My daughter’s been doing that since she was about 6. Kids have it in them at a
really early age to have that kind of conversation. In fact, the more outrageous
you make it, the more fun it is. It’s that exploration, once you’ve got the safety
net of someone holding down the rhythm - the structure … and the other
unwritten rule is that another gets to improvise and you go back and forth.
It’s a bit like a conversation.
At one point, you’re going to say something that might take us out on a
limb, and then I’ll go, back and forth in a push and pull thing.
Emily:

What kind of space / environment is conducive to improv/jamming?

Haig:

There’s a guy that teaches Marimba at Britannia Centre. My daughter’s learning
to map what she’s learned from marimba class to piano. The class ranges from
40 to 15 year olds, in a circle. It’s ​so ​magical. Normally I drop my kids off to a
lesson and go for a coffee, but with this class, I’m just watching … because you
can see … ​setting up space, they’re facing each other, and it reminds me
that that’s the format that lal bands play in. Everyone looks together,
you’re in a tight space … I finished reading the David Byrne, ​How Music
Works​ this summer, which talks about our relationship with spaces and
how our relationship with spaces produce a certain kind of music. So if it
wasn’t for the dark, jazz cellars in New York, we wouldn’t have that kind of
sound of jazz. Or. Moller. Was it Moller? So he doubled the size of an
orchestra - twice as many contrabasses in … and his music was so big that
they needed to build a new music hall for his music. So, pre-nazi Germany,
they built these huge colossal halls to contain his music.

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So anyways. Space, and the amount of space needed to appreciate the music was
bigger. There are examples in the book of when Miles Davis went to Paris, he was
used to playing in Jazz clubs in NY and the french people that love jazz put him in
these big concert halls and in the first couple of weeks of those recordings,
there’s some tension because the band members are so far apart and all of the
sudden they’re across the room.
So, they made a circle of marimbas and everyone else supports you. It goes
around, around, and around. My kids love that format, so we just take that and
do it at home - we do it with pianos and guitars and ukuleles instead of
marimbas. It’s a good structure.
It makes me think that music is just a game. You set some rules up, set up a
space, and even within that, you can purposely break the rules.​There’s tension,
release, etc.
Emily:

That’s interesting what you’re saying about tension and release. In clowning we
call it imminence and dynamic relaxation, being able to be in front of an
audience and at the same time relaxed. You might be acting out a stressful
scenario, but your own strength of being willing to go off into another key - that
confidence - is a big part of it.

Haig:

The thing you’re referring to in clowning is definitely something that jazz
musicians tap into. It’s not about what notes you’re going to play. It’s all about
what kind of tension and resolution that you make. So, jazz comes from blues,
which is all about call and response. That’s the conversation part. Improv is also
structured on the same call and response pattern. The “Yes, and” thing. I build off
that action … we go back and forth. If we have enough trust and confidence, we
can take it back to an intense moment, and then we land the plane … and
everyone claps. That happens in clowning, music.
Oh I walked this documentary recently called ​Dying Laughing​ about comedians.
It’s sort of dark as you would imagine. Comedians can be pretty dark. It’s really
about exploring that tension. They talk about moments when they’re totally
bombing on stage and they know it. One guy said in a full auditorium of 1500
people and he heard a guy in the back row go “sdpfa” … ​How do I turn that
around?
There’s a risk and reward thing going on.
Where does that fit into making?​ If there’s a problem space and a resolution to
that problem space, there’s this tension and resolution. ​When it’s just fully
random, it’s like, “Where’s the tension in that?” To me, there is tension in
interventions, which are not necessarily about solving problems, but
pointing out where there are problems in the world.

Emily:

One of the tensions that I see in the maker world is the “Blinky lights”. One
of the things that I felt in the maker community was, ok, what problems
are we solving locally? How are makers making a difference? How can we
make a more livable society? How can we overcome natural disasters or

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work together? There are all kinds of problems that we can be looking at,
and it’s almost like, as a movement, there’s a whole lot of tension, and alot
of people looking for resolution.
Haig:

I just thought of this recently. When I was realizing that design goes
beyond design for screens and I was working for partners at the time,
making alot of websites, and I was trying to convince them to get Arduinos
for our studio and explore (about 15 years ago). The guy that I was
partnered with was like, “Haig, nothing useful’s ever come out of an
Arduino”. And I said, “I’m going to make you eat those words one day.” So
that tension. He said it for a reason. He’s not just being judgemental. I’ve
seen lots of people make ​stuff​ - but in maker culture - alot of it’s kind of
useful. You and I are ok with seeing it as useless, because it’s a building
block. Or a raw material. And so, I was trying to explain to him that design
is not a fixed format. It’s about new formats and finding new canvases.
That emerging new canvas is electronics. Yes we can be totally creative
there. We’re not sure what we’re solving yet. Let’s build up some building
blocks there, and then once the problems come up, we can start to apply
those skills. Design, really, is the act of re-combining.

Emily:

Those are the things that have motivated so much for me. Someone challenged
me that it wasn’t an intellectual activity. I know there’s so much in there! And it’s
a language and a whole world, and I think it’s also something new.

Haig:

So where’s the tension and resolution in knitting? There’s a meditation to it …
sometimes we do stuff without knowing why, yet.

Emily:

I’m in the middle of reading about the self-sufficiency movement with
Gandhi, and spinning and weaving was a huge part of what he cultivated in
India, - self-sufficiency for women making their own cloth and he was really
a critique of the capitalist, mechanization that happens, and I think that
we’re in such an extreme version of that now with more and more
automation. I’m not anti-machinery, but I’m curious about how we can
work ​with it​ in a way that gives access to understanding the tools. So, that’s
becoming the resolution space for me. It was being in the design industry
that it was going through not finding any mentors, and then meeting my
neighbours, learning to spin from my neighbours, and I had this huge
support network. Like sitting in a circle, spinning - like what you did with
instruments - but with yarn. This is a conversation. So, now I see people on
the bus and I’m able to identify handmade toques, and I may know a bit
about the pattern. You can read the material.

Haig:

I’m trying to embed a certain value system in my kids right now. I think
people are using lego in the wrong way. When you were a kid, you didn’t get
instructions. You got a bucket of lego. Here’s a bunch of pieces. Make
whatever you want. I’m tyring to get my kids to see the value in … ok so
you made that car … how do you re-combine it to make a custom car?
It’s like what we do with jazz. Where you know a song inside out, and ​then
you play the chords, but you don’t play the melody. Or you improvise and
you imply the melody. So you’re making something new out of this old

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structure - and so it’s a re-combination of things.
Emily:

It’s so interesting just thinking about that around, I’m realizing in my 30s
that I’m going back to all the things I was doing as a kid - but it’s so
different now because I have a different brain.
Now I understand the time period, the composer, and I have a richer sense
of the context, so I may play or think about the piece in a new way.
And it’s the same thing with sewing. Back then, I really needed those
patterns, and they were really important at one point, and then you can
start to move away from it when you have that frame of understanding. I
think that whole improv thing has actually switched for me - I just haven’t
applied it to music yet.

Haig:

You should! I’ve heard you play. You know how to play. The proficiency is still
there.

Emily:

It’s interesting to hear about lego, making and this whole combination of skills. I
struggle in talking about it sometimes, because alot of people are like, ‘Is it
random?’ … it is … it’s both. It’s taking the randomness and applying it with this
underlying structure.
The improvising is happening over unwritten rules.

Haig:

For my daughter, lego is a starting point … and then I introduce her to little
bits, which connect with the Lego, and so she made that Draw bot - did you
see that? That’s a re-combination. So how do we get the robot to inch itself
forward? You get these two motors that turn on and off - and if you get one
wheel going faster than the other, it starts drawing circles. If I get one
wheel to stop more often it makes a more squiggly line. So she’s thinking
through the problem. I can see that she’s like, ‘oh i need another piece of
lego for this wheel and so there’s the lego part that she knew and then
started learning electronics on the fly’
It’s so smart that Little bits was like, “Let’s just make stuff that connects to
Lego.” It’s so simple. That’s like how the internet works. You make open
source things that connect to each other. It’s inherently modular.
Imagine if all toys, like Nerf guns, or little bits, etc. all had some common
sockets, or something - you could hot rod your nerf gun to tweet while
you’re shooting or whatever. That’s what I imagine one day.
Knowing the existing context now, what can we do to make people’s lives
better. I realize my whole career is about mashing things up.

Emily:

These are all things that I’m combining (home economics, Lynn Margulis, food
security) - how can we bring, science, math or storytelling through Home
Economics. I’m using Home Ec as a communication design platform .. but how
can we bring actual scientific thought into the home? How can we bring in
information about food security, botany, and learn about cells, and chemistry

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and all these things - from the home? That’s an interesting space where citizens
can have an understanding of scientific thought and that mindset of being able to
contribute to a scientific dialogue? And it’s challenging because you sometimes
get these anti-vaxers … how do you become a responsible steward for that
knowledge? That’s why I’m back in a university - because … how do you steer
knowledge? Because it’s confusing times. I think people like librarians have such
a huge opportunity in this space. They’re like the real open source - original …
how do we combine/re-contextualize these things?
Haig:

I hear, teaching science in a way that is not that traditional, non-playful
way of learning about science The way I learned about science in high
school, was that they couldn’t have made something so interesting, more
boring. I don’t know how they did it. I love science now … but I have to
re-teach myself that there are amazing things in this world. It was taught in
such a non-creative, non-playful way.
What we’ve been talking about, is that it’s all about rules of play. So. A good
reference is the book ​Game Storming ​ by Dave Grey, who spent 5 years
going around the world asking creative teams about what creative
activities they do and compiled into a book. Typical card sorting exercises,
general solutions and activities that all of these have been passed down
from one studio to another.
By studying that book I’m able to have an endless supply of what to do. OK we’re
going to try this activity, but add this problem space to it. Or this user study into
it.
So … how do we connect all of those things together? You connect them
through the game. By taking science and bringing it into your home, you’re
keeping it playful. So, to me, whenever you’re looking at any recipe that
you want to pass along to these teachers, keep the play aspect there and
make it front and centre. What I’ve noticed with all of the examples that
we’ve shared, is that play is at the forefront, and the exploration just
happens naturally - but you set those rules of play up.
People don’t make games linear anymore, they setup a world. You can be
wherever you want, you set up some general rules, and that leads to any kind of
exploration.

Emily:

Have you read anything about the new ADST Curriculum? Alot of the elements
that we’re discussing are present in the new curriculum. It’s self-directed,
play-based, and they’re pairing subjects together. It sounds ​amazing​ - all these
things we’re talking about it.

Haig:

You and I could teach that, but I wonder how regular teachers are dealing with
that. It’s almost too abstract.​ That would be like getting a classical piano
player to play a jazz tune without knowing those rules.

Emily:

That’s the other side of that. How can the humanities / designers start to create
opportunities for teachers/educators to be trained on those skills.

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Haig:

So, thinking about this [gestures to home ec text] - it’s very prescriptive.
‘​So, if you want to be a good wife, the peas have to have a little bit of sugar
in them’​ ...and there’s no room for improvisation or creativity. It’s all - this
is the etiquette, this is how you put the forks and knives on the table .. so
the part that makes me chuckle inside, is that we’re going to be teaching
these old school teachers how to let go a little bit, and we’re going to be
really prescriptive about it. That’s the only way they know how to get
beyond they know - is through instruction.

Emily:

Yes - so creating that platform - that’s what I’m hoping to end up with - is a
combination of these things. I’m doing these Pro D days now and I’m still getting
in the head of teachers and understanding what they need, how they learn. The
thing I’m realizing is that they’re exhausted, over-worked, and dealing with 30
students so most of their time is spent keeping the classroom together.

<< Shows Haig weaving >>
Haig:

I have this uncle who’s an engineer and every time i see him [he lives in Greece] - he
tries to get me drunk and asks, “Tell me about how music was a mistake in your life”.
After drinking, I get to like all the things that music has led me to. It’s been how I
relate to other people, even if they’re non-musical, it’s that underlying structure how I see the world is .. I have musician’s eyes or ears - it’s my way of relating to
other people when I’m in a creative situation. I relate it to my very first creative
experiences which are a bunch of people in a basement, trying to come up with
music.
When I heard about ​yes, and​ as a concept for improvisers, I thought, “I kind of know that,
intuitively from playing music for so many years … The part that we didn’t talk about was
that social aspect.
It’s easy to make those ​recipes​ … but you can’t say, “You, work with this person, and
have some chemistry”. How do you make that chemistry? How do you create that
social part in schools, while you’re thinking about flow. ​Fl​ow is how you think about
individual’s experiences, their abilities, and then what I see with that weave is that
you have your level of comfortable ability with weaving and then you bring a friend in
and you’re teaching them on the fly, and you see their journey in the weave, and then
you’re asking people to reflect on that in a way, right? ​I don’t know where you take that,
but it’s about adding new challenges.
For me, having kids has helped me be a teacher, because I’m starting to see the world
through their eyes -- everything’s a challenge around them. Climbing a tree, finding a piece
of wood, turning it into an instrument … It’s kind of like an internal game for them. ​IE: I’m in
an empty room, how do I turn this into a game space?

Emily:

Yeah, and how do we introduce those ideas to teachers.

Haig:

So it’s almost like the students need to teach the teachers how to be playful. Because
they already know it intuitively, and adults have taught themselves not to be playful.

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Session 5: Patrick Gauley-Gale - Home Economics Teacher, British Columbia
Audio Recording:
https://soundcloud.com/randomactsofmaking/patrick-gauley-gale-home-economics-teacher-b
c

Emily:

What do you teach?

Patrick:

I teach grades 9-12 home ec. This semester, I have 3 blocks of food and
nutrition and a block of textiles, and next semester I have food and
environmental studies.

Emily:

Have you had to make any changes as a result of the new curriculum?

Patrick:

We’re working on bringing that in and I’m also doing my masters in Curriculum
Leadership at UVic and I find with implementation, there’s always a lag, so at
my level, they postpone things another year so we don’t have to fully
implement until 2018-2019. There are going to be some pretty broad-stroke
changes - 2 things teachers are trying to get their heads around are: ​authentic
self-assessment, and integration of aboriginal/first nation work across
the board. ​For me, I’m already doing alot of that stuff so I don’t have to change
much.

Emily:

I’ve heard alot of teacher’s are looking for more creative ways of integrating
self-assessment. Do you do any self-assessment in your classes right now?

Patrick:

The 2 main things teachers are doing is - there’s a couple of generative
questions/comments about what we’ve been working on and students
self-assess as far as how things went working together, how their final products
turned out, etc. on a little feedback form. I try to do it more often, but once a
term, I do an interview with each student and we do the same thing, but talk
about how they find the class, how they find the teaching, what could be more
engaging, what they’re struggling with, etc.​ It’s pretty un-structured.

Emily:

Do you teach any hands-on activities in your classroom?

Patrick:

Everything we do is hands-on. We’ve covered embroidery, cedar weaving,
knitting, basic machine sewing, and a bit of applique and tye dye. We
visited a barn yesterday to talk about wool and natural fibres, and small
scale vs. industrial scale agricultural, natural and synthetic fibres,
heritage breeds vs. modern livestock production, and then next week we
have an ethnobotanist coming in and we’re going to do some more
weaving for natural products and some natural dyeing as well. So, lots of
neat stuff.

Emily:

That’s awesome.

Patrick:

It’s interesting, though. When I talk to teachers’ and educators about that
stuff, it’s really exciting, but in actual practice with my students, they’d

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much rather be baking muffins than learn about first nations traditional
practice. For me, it’s the opposite obviously. I think maybe it takes
patience to bring value to that kind of knowledge to students over time
will shift the culture a bit.
Emily:

Are there any tools or things that you use to hook students into conversations
or “light bulb moments”?

Patrick:

No it’s something I continually struggle with. We go over everything from “show
& tell” (something they’ve made or find interesting) - and I do some too. So we
talked about how in this region, first nations people before the introduction of
wool from sheep had a special breed of dog they were raising for making
blankets and that sort of thing - which some of them thought was pretty
interesting. There are some sound byte learning things which gets them
thinking about things they may not have otherwise been exposed to in little
snippets before we delve deeper into the subject. I don’t have any “silver bullet”
to get kids interested in things, I don’t know what that is.

Emily:

Yeah, it’s a big question, I don’t know if there’s an answer

Patrick:

The other challenge too is this idea of more self-direction and autonomy. I love
it and as a student, I went to alternative schools and I had alot of that drive day
to day and thrived. But the students haven’t really experienced that, and
presenting those opportunities first, they don’t know what to do with
themselves. They look to me and ask me what I want from them and then I ask,
“No, what do you want to learn?”

Emily:

I’m looking at how to create structures for students when they get stuck.
Because I know for me in my undergrad, we had these super open-ended
classes and I didn’t know what to grab onto and sometimes getting a simple
project or kit to grab onto, the wheels started turning and things started to flow
from there. I can see that that’s probably a big thing that comes up with
teachers in general and the whole self-directed learning approach.

Patrick:

I think trying to build collaborative skills for students is a big deficit. Teachers
often ask that of their students but don’t really have a structure in place to do
that. So, particularly in textiles where I don’t have the personal background as
much as I do in food, I like to get kids to work together and get more
experienced kids to partner with less experienced, etc. Mentorship.

Emily:

Are there any more major challenges in the classrooms?

Patrick:

All sorts of behavioural stuff. For mainstream teachers, there’s a bit of a
reluctance to teach home ec because managing budgets and materials
and classroom cleanliness and all of those things are additional
challenges that you may not fact in math and science so much.​ When you
go into a department head meeting and ask for money to buy cedar and
groceries, someone else will say, “Well we need 30 new laptops.” ​Learning is
often seen as modern technology.

Emily:

The whole “technology” - “literacy and numeracy” concept and interacting with
technology - textiles are a form of technology. ​We can create more cases for

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the importance of these more traditional skills because they’re more
hands-on and they’re also important ways of thinking and approaching a
subject.
Emily:

Are there any resources that you use?

Patrick:

YouTube. I can’t show a video more than 5 minutes in length. Alot of teachers
use those document cameras, so you can see what people are doing with their
hands. The modern overhead projector. You can put a book under it or you can
do handiwork and see the projection on the wall. The cost on those has come
way down, so they’re a bit more accessible. My wife has her MFA in textiles, so I
ask her. Supply-wise, whenever I have a trip to Vancouver, I go to Maiwa and
Dressew.

Emily:

What are you learning/reading about right now?

Patrick:

On the theory side, I’ve been reading Gregory Bateson, ​Ecology of the Mind​ and
the idea that individual things don’t exist; it’s 100% the relationships between
things.
The stuff that they do in Montessori programs. So much further ahead than
what we see in the public school system. The blocks that they play with in
pre-school explains high school math. It’s not too much of a stretch for them to
apply pythagorean theorem after learning about the blocks. Some schools are
cool about you going in and watching a class. None of the students are working
on the same thing, but they’re all working. What a concept.
Oh and ​Wisdom of the Elders​, David Suzuki - based on where western modern
science and traditional aboriginal knowledge crosses over.

Session 6: Jen Hiebert - Soft Shop Technician / Maker
Emily:

What do you teach?

Jen:

I teach Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign for Continuing Studies and I also
don’t just teach the programs; I teach people how to access the programs and
how to get past their fear of them and break down those giant seeming things
into smaller manageable parts that have context in their real lives.
As a technician, I teach students how to approach whatever they’re making
through a textile focus. So, looking at a problem, object or challenge and how
the different textile techniques can be applied in different ways. So, thinking
about an end result or looking at a material and seeing what kinds of ideas it
can generate.

Emily:

Do you currently teach any hands-on activities in the classroom? If so, what
and how do you go about it?

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Jen:

Yes I do. I teach sewing skills specifically as a technician and those hands-on
skills are both hand sewing, manipulating and moving fabric around, how to lay
fabric flat, how to put pattern pieces down and trace around them, so it’s
working with tools and also with materials and how those can work together.
Using sewing machines, sergers; cutting fabric, drawing and manipulating
fabric too.

Emily:

Do you make anything yourself?

Jen:

Yes!
I have challenges around identifying as an artist, a teacher or those kinds of
things for a variety of reasons - both personal and professional and as a
technician, my job is actually not a teacher. I am teaching, but I can’t call myself
a teacher, because there are teachers that are called teachers.
I sew clothing, garments, bags for myself, I weave tapestry, I have a weaving
practice, I study textiles and make textiles as well.
I did a series of tapestries of classic cars. That was my artwork for several years
and I had a number of shows and was involved with doing that. ​Coming out of
the textile program at Cap, I really floundered because I work well with
structure and so when I was in school, I had these projects that I had to
complete, with parameters around them … there was structure to help
me make decisions around my choices, then when I got out of school, I
was in a studio and I could do whatever I wanted and I found that ​kind of
scary​. So I decided, ok, what I want to do, what do I like, I like tapestry, I
was really drawn to tapestry ​immediately when I started working with it - I
had a very visceral connection to it … I like tapestry, and I also like old cars. So
why don’t I do tapestries of old cars? I’ll try that! And I had a really interesting
response from the public as I started to show some of these smaller pieces everybody had a story about hold cars. Their uncle’s old car. Or they travelled
across the country in this old car… So I wanted to continue this, so I did a
whole series of that. ​I also loved for me personally, the challenge of trying
to represent hard, smooth, reflective surfaces with wool. The challenge of
that, and also the challenge of working with a stereotypical male subject
matter and the stereotypical female process ... in this day and age... In
other times in history, weaving has been very male-driven. But, those
contradictions have always been at play for me.
I actually have a whole series I’ve just started working on again with tapestry…
I haven’t done anything for a while, and I’m going to do a whole series of new
tapestries so I’m excited about that.
Can I say one more thing about tapestry?
So, a couple of things come up often when I’m talking about my work, and ​one
is, the reason I love tapestry - and different than loom weaving - is that
with tapestry, you have a plan - a cartoon or line drawing which you’re
intending your final image to be like - but you can’t actually implement
the details specifically. You use that as a guideline and you’re tracing or

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drawing on top of it, and when you’re tapestry weaving, you’re constantly
decision-making. Do I go up here? To the left? To the right? Do I wrap
around this warp thread? Or do I wrap around the next warp thread?
That’s going to influence how curves and lines and angles go. With
tapestry, you build it like a brick wall from the bottom up, and you can do
a section over to the left and then another section to the right, and it’s
very fluid in that way... whereas I find that with weaving fabric on a loom,
for me the fun part is the planning. Figuring out the math, figuring out
what that thing is going to look like, doing some testing to see if that
structure works.​ If it doesn’t want do we have to do here, playing with those
structures? ​When I get to the actual weaving, I get bored. It’s like, oh, ‘I’m
doing the same thing over and over and over again.’ Yeahhh it’s
meditative. It’s nice. There’s some things I’ve done that I thoroughly
enjoy … I looove weaving … but, I find the constant decision-making and
involvement that I have in the design process with tapestry when my
fingers are moving … I really enjoy that and I respond really well to that.
It engages me in a really great way. So that’s one thing I really like about
tapestry.
Most of my weaving projects have been about the structure of weaving.
Formal, visual elements as well, but I love taking structure and then
subverting it.​ For one of my weaving pieces at Cap, I had a drawing and I
wanted to represent a picture in a weaving. So I used a rug weaving technique
called called​ waia?, ​Scandinavian loop weaving technique. So I did that and by
varying the length and density of the loops, I was able to get a grey scale and I
got a face put into a 6”x12” weaving. It was plain weaved with all of these loops
coming up and I was able to get that.
Emily:

So, problem solving is a huge part of your work

Jen:

And my life! And my job. Those are the things that I love about being a
technician, is that I never know what my next question is going to be. My
favourite question that came up last year was, “OK! I want to make a sculpture
of a toilet out of fabric that’s not stuffed, but in a puddle on the floor.” ​That is
amazing. Ok. Here’s what we do! Let’s think about this and that … here are
some considerations …​ Looking at the form, how can it be attached together
and made in a way that reads as a toilet when it’s stuffed, but also when it’s
flopped on the ground. So that problem solving? Love it.

Emily:

Is there anything else you want to say about that?

Jen:

Oh! ​Most of my life, I’ve been afraid of colour. Things in school and
further on have been about structure, so I’ve done it either in natural
fibres or in black and white. I did a couple of pieces in colour, didn’t really
like where things were going … but all my tapestries are in colour. But I’m
going from photographs. So there's’ an existing colour palette to choose
from, and then it’s problem-solving around, OK, how do I represent that
colour in this way, not coming up with a colour. So, yeah, that’s
something that comes up often.

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Emily:

What gets students interested or inspired in your classroom or after school
when they’re working in the lab?

Jen:

One thing that I see often, is achievement! It’s not necessarily completed
achievement, but a step along the way. So, for someone that haven’t
sewn anything before, they go to a sewing machine, sew 2 pieces of fabric
together through the machine, they do 2-3 lines of stitching, and then
pull it out and it’s a 3 dimensional thing, an object they can relate to, and
it’s different than it was before. It may not be totally finished or exactly
what they were wanting to do, and I don’t know if they’re seeing the
potential in there, or that their ability to manipulate and create
something new wasn’t there before. So I think that’s a big part of it. I see
that alot. That, “Oh! I can ​do​ this!” Kind of moment.

Emily:

What are the biggest barriers to students?

Jen:

Fear.
Whether it’s a fear of the industrial sewing machines, or they have
historical experiences and fear around the idea of sewing, or
expectations around sewing, whether it’s cultural, gender, or they know
people that are really good at it and they don’t feel like they are as good,
or, just the overwhelm of, “Oh, I have this idea of what I want it to look
like, and I’m here holding a pile of fabric. I don’t know the steps to get to
the end.” I’d say those are the biggest barriers. Overwhelm, and fear of …
Maybe it’s not being good enough, or not knowing what the next step is,
or of the unknown…
When we were talking before about the weaving and you were saying how
people were more likely to try it out if they were to see samples, so it’s giving
them some context, and that ability to foresee a possible successful outcome.
People want to make something good, and alot of time, that’s in their way.
You know Kim Werker. Yeah. So her book is amazing. And the whole concept
around what she’s doing is amazing. I’ve recommended it to a number of
students who have been either starting in wanting to get into a creative career I have alot of students in continuing studies who are wanting to get into
graphic design, change their career, or try something new, one of the things as
somebody new to this field, you might be feeling like you’re the only one who’s
scared.
NO WAY.
They need to know that it’s normal, AND there are things that you can do to
work through that. I definitely love the way that she approaches that.

Emily:

Are there any educational resources that you love? Or that you think are
needed or missing?

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Yes, absolutely. I have my favourite sewing books that I recommend to
everybody. The one that I love is the Reader’s Digest Guide to sewing and it’s
been around since the ‘40’s and they re-published it every year and the copy I
have in the Soft Shop is from the ‘70s and they have illustrations of all of the
steps and processes, as opposed to photographs, so people can see more
clearly what they’re supposed to look at; whereas, I find with photos,
sometimes it’s a little confused or muddy. With an illustration, it’s very
specified. It’s also just really clear and concise.
I send alot of students links to different blog posts or websites that have
tutorials, but the thing that I find super interesting working in the soft shop is,
alot of design students are looking for very specific direction, and so alot of
them haven’t necessarily googled things or looked things up beforehand.
Vast generalization. But, ​alot of the visual art students can sometimes be
more self-directed, because the approach in that program is a more
self-directed way of learning; whereas with Industrial Design,
Communication Design and Interaction as well, they’re learning about the
design process, so it’s a lot more about the different steps needed.
Whereas in the Visual Arts, it’s about, “OK! Make a sculpture, think about
this, this, this … but there isn’t a specified way to approach it, so,
therefore they have to figure it out themselves.”
I haven’t really thought about that specifically, but yeah. And it’s a very
different approach, which is fascinating to watch when you have multiple
students from multiple areas in the shop, and I think students gain alot from
that as well. Because, students in one area or the other might not know that
there’s this other way to work, so being able to see that, and see that approach,
can definitely help.
Emily:

Tell me about your high school experience

Jen:

So, I went to Centennial High School in Coquitlam, which was a very big school,
2000 students for 2 grades … ​we didn’t have any bells, we had our class
structure in blocks and we had to deal with it on our own, and keep track
of our own time. Our motto was, “Freedom with Responsibility”, which
was amazing. There was alot of freedom, partially because it was such a
large school​.

Emily:

How did that go? Did people abuse it?

Jen:

People abused it for sure! It was a high school. That happens in college,
too. But, I think, for me it was great. Being in such large numbers, there
were very strong cliques.
So, I was in the group of freaks, we were the grunge kids, 1990 weirdos.
Which was great. Because, there were 25 of us, as opposed to 1 or 2. To
that same degree, it was such a movie in that way.
I was in this one class, and one guy from the hip hop group, and me, this
‘90s grunge girl, sat in the back corner where everyone else was jocks and

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popular kids. The two of us sat in the back corner, and made fun of
people. We did our work and it was fine, and we had a really fun time!
One day he missed class and I saw him in the hall, and I wanted to tell
him that there was a quiz that he missed. When I went up to talk to the
group of friends, they all just stared at me and one of them said, “Why are
you talking to him?” I was walking up to these hip hop boys with a plaid
shirt and band tshirts and that kind of things - and it was very much like a
movie. Very segmented, very distinct cliques, with very little interaction
between them. Which was weird. But again, that’s high school!
For a larger school, that’s common, but having that larger school allowed us to
have a wider variety of subjects. We had graphics classes, ​I did textiles for the
first time there, there was drawing and painting, and it wasn’t just art,
there were all of these more specified courses, and so that was a real
benefit for us to focus a bit more there. I got to do textiles for the first
time there, and make fun projects just because I wanted to, and I worked
after school and in the hallways, and spread out my giant projects and
worked there and people were fine with that. There was definitely alot
less regulations around that. Granted, I was a fairly good student, and I
didn’t get in alot of trouble, so I didn’t get hassled. I’m sure there were
other students that did … I was responsible, and I was nice! So therefore,
I got away with alot, in terms of being left alone. I could work in the
hallway for hours, painting my giant batique, with an electric frying pan
filled with hot wax. That would not necessarily be done these days
because it’s not safe, and it would probably be squashed, whereas it was
totally fine and what I did.
Having those opportunities and be able to play with that was really fun. I
still had tons of challenges -- we were talking earlier about fear and those
hesitations. I did alot of projects, but I didn’t finish alot of them, because
I left them to the last minute, because I was too worried about getting
them right from the beginning, so I didn’t give myself enough time to
explore, learn, and have that sense of exploration before a finished
product.
Emily:

So, when did you start finishing projects and what kinds of structures did you
have to complete those and how did you get graded?

Jen:

It was fairly standard. We would have a project that we had to do. For instance,
our first textile project was an embroidery project, and we had to do
embroidery on burlap. I chose this super elaborate tree branch and I used
all of these different colours to make the texture of the tree branch, but I
took on such a huge project and I couldn’t finish it in time, and so I
handed it in, and I lost marks because it wasn’t finished. I was ambitious,
and I had alot of fear around starting. I had these ideas and I wanted to
do stuff, but I was afraid of not getting it right. Not being good enough.
I still deal with this everyday. And it’s something that I try to help
students with everyday. With sewing, you can try something, and you can
take it apart if it’s not good enough and if it is good enough, that’s great!
This one will be like this, and the next time, you’ll be one step further.

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Allowing for imperfection can be really important, which I have
perfectionist tendencies, and at that age, I didn’t know what that was, or
how to acknowledge that.
Emily:

So, was there any conversation around that? Was there any support?
Not at all. And I see that conversation happening more. ​Students talking
about anxiety, and students talking about depression or being
uncomfortable, and being able to actually discuss and there are alot more
discussions around that, which for me, I think would have been really
helpful.
As technicians, we’re involved with an early warning system, if students are
having challenges, we can send an email which flags the councellor and student
services, and I’ve used that before. Because we see students and work with
them and potential challenges, we’re able to work with those systems. I wish
that had been around when I was in college, because my first couple of bouts
of depression when I was 18/19 years old were brutal. I didn’t know what was
going on! So, being able to see some of those warning signs.

Emily:

So, balancing achievement-oriented and the satisfaction of finishing thing, and
then becoming overly attached to that as well.

Jen:

I think it’s a really important skill to learn. I think making can really help with
that. I wanted to tie that in.
I had this thought the other day. Something on the internet triggered
this. A venn diagram of “Perfect” and “Really fucking awesome.” There
may be a bit of overlap, but those are not on top of each other. “Perfect”
and “Really fucking awesome” don’t have to interact.

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- APPENDIX C ‘ZINE: ‘THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE HOME’

95

‘ZINE: ‘THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE HOME’

96

‘ZINE: ‘THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE HOME’

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‘ZINE: ‘THE INDUSTRIALIZATION OF THE HOME’

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- APPENDIX D​ ‘ZINE: ‘THE ART (AND CRAFT) OF LIGHTNING TALKS

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‘ZINE: ‘THE ART (AND CRAFT) OF LIGHTNING TALKS

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