Made With Many: Boxing clever to share the joy of creating
The first time I met my partner’s daughter we built a castle out of cardboard. Her vision was clear, it had to be big enough for her to sit in comfortably and the more moving parts the better.
It became, over many sessions, an unruly thing of duct tape and turrets. There were creative differences and shared moments of joy.
Until recently I made very little and I had forgotten the joy of having a project.
I started last January with woodworking (I wrote another article about that) which led me to whittling, lino cutting, and then weaving.
And now, well, I just love an opportunity to shut out the world and focus on something new.
I’m still a beginner in all these things but in the eyes of my partner’s daughter, I’m an expert.
Sometimes she calls me Technical Tom, which is a compliment reserved for when she has grown tired of one of her many projects and wants to delegate.
I don’t mind it, in fact I really like that she sees me as a problem solver in the same way I still think of other, proper, grown-ups.
Box Clever, an event we’re running on June 30 in Corby as part of our Family Arts Festival, is an idea we had about the simple joy of making together.
We’ve hired a hall, we’ll fill it with cardboard and invite children and their grown-ups to come together and make stuff with us.
There will be some volunteers from KHL Community Workshop on hand to help with the cutting, and to give sage advice from years of improvisation – the great thing about working with cardboard is that nobody is an expert…yet. (You can book now by the way!)
The castle we made has been binned (on mum’s orders) and when it was finally time to say goodbye to our first collaboration it wasn’t much of an issue, it’s only cardboard – we could make another one, a better one.
We’ll get round to it at some point, as we’ve got quite a lot of projects in meantime, unless you want to help us on June 30?
Visit www.madewithmany.org or call 01536267895 if you’d like to get involved.