PLAYWORKS: ERIN BYRNE

Introducing PLAYWORKS

This week the ICA asked me to put together some text and an image for their website to advertise the programme of workshops I am holding there. The programme will be called "PLAYWORKS", of which first workshops series will be called "Play, Invent & BUILD".

This is it:


28 - 29 Nov 2009, 9 Jan 2010

Playworks is a series of free family workshops at the ICA where children can invent their own environments for play. Together with architectural designer Erin Byrne, student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, participants will be able to draw and build on their own creations.

The initial series of family workshops is called " Play, Invent & build". The first of which will take place on Saturday 28 & Sunday 29 November 2009. Children will be able to explore and experiment with their ideas about places for play - both real and imagined.

In the final workshop on Saturday 9 January 2010, children will try out their ideas by constructing a full-scale playscape of dens and playthings in the ICA Theatre. Then together we can test it, play on it and hide in it...

Suitable for children aged 5-11 years, accompanied by an adult.

Free

Please call the box office on 020 7930 3647 to reserve your tickets.

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"PLAYWORKS" programme

I decided to come up with a title for the 'brand' or enterprise behind my family workshops programme. I wanted it to give the impression that the workshops would provide a sort of 'lab for making and playing'. I wanted to evoke the idea that Fox Reading Room would temporarily transformed into a facility for exploring ideas that have arisen during his project, but also for generating new ideas.

The workshops will provide a forum for children to externalise their own ideas through 'making' and visual processes (drawing, modelling & building). 'Invention' and 'experimentation' were the key themes I wanted to capture, as the programme is speculative and serendipitous.

Thus, I came up with the name PLAYWORKS for the overall workshop series, so that it sounds almost like a factory or facility. 'Works' was supposed to give the feeling of 'work in progress' or production/ industry- that we all will be working together for a shared goal.

"Play, Invent & Build" workshop series

I also thought on the day we could call the Fox Reading Room the 'PLAYWORKS Shop' as a pun on the word workshop, but also suggesting that 'PLAYWORKS' is a larger entity and that the 'Play, Invent & Build" workshops are a franchise of it.

The name of the I wanted to highlight the word BUILD because that is one of the unique characteristics of the workshop, that we will be testing our ideas at real scale. I used a yellow background so it will jump out against the other family workshops on the website.