Invent something awesome: Spring Session

A 9 week session is starting up on Mondays at Artscape Youngplace. There will be a pick up at Givins Shaw school. Students from other schools are welcome to join us at Artscape. 

Here's our new schedule:

Week 1 (April 13th): "Tick-tock"
Time to re-invent the watch.

Week 2 (April 20th): "Cityscaping"
Design a sidewalk feature: furniture, info booth, exercise device or perhaps all of these combined! 

Week 3 (April 27th): "Helping Hand" 
Build a mechanical device to grab an object from far away. 

Week 4 (May 4th): "Dream vacation bedroom!" 
Plan the perfect getaway for kids. 

Week 5 (May 11th): "Chain Reaction" 
Team up to make a giant moving (Rube Goldberg) machine

Week 6 (May 25th): "Pop-up!"
Use paper engineering to make your pages come to life. 

Week 7 (June 1st): "Club starter" Invent a new club. Design the logo for a button, a poster and club activities. 

Week 8 (June 8th): "Help!' Survive a tornado in your backpack emergency shelter. 

Week 9 (June 15th): "Watercraft" Construct a boat or hovercraft that will carry an elephant across the water.

Oh Canada!

Ready to get sporty? In this session, our students designed new uniforms for the Canadian Pan-Am athletes. We got some advice from local fashion designer Meg Kinney who suggested that we think about who you are designing for and what they need/want. She recommended jumpsuits for our athletes.

Image from http://spinsandneedles.com/stuff/2010/06/30

We also looked at national symbols. Is the Maple Leaf really forever? Is Canada represented by any other colours than red and white? 

   Ready, get set, glue!! A gymnastics outfit evolves.

This is a pattern drafting exercise. The idea is to put together a rough working idea for a uniform -not a finished garment. Our students have to fashion something fabulous using textiles, bits of old garments, ribbons, sticky back plastic, foam sheets, mylar, tape, glue and pins. 

Little red soccer shorts. 

Stylish hat!

Love these groovy red boots!

...and the bold graphic design on this athlete's cape.

Some of the students took on our special challenge to move beyond the Maple Leaf by adding some nature elements into their design. 

At the end of the class, it was time for the students to strut their stuff on the fashion runway. They struck a pose with their teammates, tried on a new persona, or invented a special anthem. Every kid was a winner.

Goodbye to our awesome students this session.  

Community Open House at Artscape Youngplace

Join Invention Squad and others for RECESS @ Artscape Youngplace
A Community Open House featuring:
Art * Live Music * Creation * Conversation * Performance * Arts Market * Food & Drinks

Starting at 4:30 pm
– Drop-in, hands-on kids and family-friendly programming by Invention Squad (until 6:30 pm)
– Informal tours of ULTRA-PARALLEL at the Koffler Gallery (until 10 pm)
– Arts market (until 9:30 pm)

Starting at 6:00 pm
– Community dinner (pay-what-you-can, until 7:30 pm)
– Exhibition Reception: TYPOLOGY’S Flights & Landings a two-part exhibition of work by three multidisciplinary artists from three different cities: Brooklyn-based Tamara Gayer, Berlin-based Christine Gedeon, and Toronto-based Janine Miedzik (until 8 pm) 
– SKETCH Working Arts for our Open Studio Showcase and Exhibition with live performances and artwork by youth involved in all of SKETCH’s programs (until 9 pm)
– Artists open studios
– Live melodic techno music with Juno-award nominee Arthur Oskan (until 10 pm)

Starting at 8:00 pm
– The Koffler Centre presents an artist talk with playwright Hannah Moscovitch and artist/architect, Philip Beesley
– Intergalactic Arts Collective presents a Double Bill of Dance:  “Sara does a Solo” by Sara Porter and “Experiment b” by Gerry Trent ham

AND MORE!

~illustration by Alicia Neuter

-text with thanks to AYP website

Game testing

Roll up! Rollup! It's carnival time at Invention Squad. What better way to beat off the winter blues than to design a great fair game and play it with your friends? This was definitely the funnest, wackiest session yet. We challenged the kids to make a transportable/foldable set-up and to test it by playing it with their friends and parents. This is cardboard prototyping and design by play- a natural for kid experimenters.

My favourite (given it's that season) was the Whack-a-louse game. You have 30 tries to bop those pesky critters amongst the curls of hair (don't try this at home) and lucky winners get (drum roll) a Louse Exterminator (LE) certificate and some free shampoo! Love the topical humour in this design.

There were other games on a throwing or shooting theme. 

Including this nicely built fixed cross-bow platform.

This is a skittle target game. 

Testing a tossing game.

In this well thought out design you have to flick the corks up the ramps and through the holes (avoiding the turning fans at the back). This design could be automated in later prototypes with a turning mechanism to operate the fans. 

This was a roller obstacle course.

In this super kinetic recycling scavenger race you sort food from trash with your whacking stick. Careful to balance on your frisbee board along the course. Then wash your fruit for the prize. 

Loads of action, lots of laughs.