AIR PLAY WORKSHOPS

Air Play is a workshop and exhibition where children can voice to ‘what matters’ for them and visually express it in the form of air-inflated sculptures. Within the atmospheric and immersive environment of a giant inflated tent, children will work alongside their accompanying adult to explore their creative expression and caring thoughtfulness.

Participating children are invited to reflect over what it is they care about and believe the rest of the world would benefit by taking more notice of. The outcome of this initial considerations is then summed up and turned into an image that will represent the concept as a symbol.
Using recycled plastic bags and sticky tape each child will create an inflatable sculpture of the chosen image/symbols with the help of grown-ups if needed.
All the individually made air sculptures will then be physically connected to the same air source and mounted together to give life to a collective artwork where children’s ideas and artistic expressions are on display for the audience to see.
At the end of the exhibition children can take their own work home.

Air Play brings the relatively simple process of making inﬂatables to children, along with various other areas of creative exploration including writing text onto inﬂatable architecture, understanding basic physics and playfully engaging with simple and safe 12 volts circuitry to operate and test their creations.

Workshop Structure

Duration – 3 hours
Facilitators – 3
Capacity – 12 children (or 15 if an additional personnel member is provided by host)
Age – 9 to 12

Requirements (provided by Memetica)

A large 9 x 6 x 5 mt inflatable tent to host some of the workshop sessions.
Blower fans x 2 (240 Voltage) – to inflate the big tent
Blower fans x 2 (12 volt) – to inflate the small sculptures

Requirements (provided by presenter)

A large venue, preferably internal but a well sheltered external venue also works, that has capacity for the inflatable tent world. Power is essential. The venue should ideally also have a separate making space for the construction of the inflatable sculptures. The team will need access to the venue two hours before the workshop to set up the tents; if it is possible to access the venue and set up the day before this is preferable.
Six workbenches (e.g. 2x1m trestle tables, or similar)
Chairs
Clear sticky tape (about one roll per child)

Other requirements (provided either by presenter or Memetica upon agreement)

Sets of scissors for adults and for children
Permanent markers (assorted colors)
Manila folders
Drawing/sketching paper
Print-out of templates
many discarded carrier plastic bags (ideally children will bring their surplus from home)

Staff/personnel

The workshop is run by 3 artists/facilitators plus one resident staff; Costs can be reduced if three volunteer facilitators can be provided by the host, meaning Memetica provides only one facilitator (lead artist).

If any first-time facilitators are provided by the host (so as to increase the number of possible participants), they will need to allow for 30 minutes briefing before the children arrive.

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Video of Air Plat and Air Camp workshops’ inflatable venue