A Bearded Emperor Tamarin explores a feeder toy designed as part of the Toys for Monkeys class offered by Handshouse Studio at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
The Toys for Monkeys project began when our usual Toys for Elephants class had to shift to a remote learning model with the unexpected circumstances of Covid-19. Our students didn’t skip a beat taking what they learned in the first half of the semester, to approach designing enrichment objects for the Buttonwood Park zoo monkeys from home for the second half. The success of this remotely offered hands-on collaboration has sparked investigation into ways we can continue the work.
The Trojan Horse class weathered a similar pivot, when plans to build a scale model in wood, were transformed into studies of the Mycenean horse through layered cardboard, built like a topographical model with legs. Participants in both these projects were both able to continue the research through hands-on exploration, both utilizing inexpensive, readily available materials that could be accessible to lots of participants.
Throughout the summer, we have been talking with teachers, educators, advisors about what we learned from our Toys for Monkeys and Trojan Horse remote projects. We are exploring the prospect of bringing this project to other institutions, as well as to other age groups of students in partnership with school teachers.
The final moment of the Trojan Horse spring semester class.
We may not know when we will be able to gather safely again. But we do know that physically-distanced learning doesn’t have to mean we can’t continue to collaborate hands-on! Indeed, the possibilities of working across distances that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive or time consuming have been throw open. We just need to come up with innovative uses all our digital tools--both the high tech computers operating on zeros and ones, and the ten-fingered wonders we call hands!
Educators everywhere are scrambling to prepared for the most uncertain educational year of our lifetimes. So Handshouse will to continue to work to initiate innovative hands-on projects that illuminate history, explore science, and perpetuate the arts...and will we do what we can to find ways to share some of these project hands-on(line).