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We Are All Food Critics : The Reviews –  A3 | Ledger PDF 6.1Mb Read Online
We Are All Food Critics (eNotebook) – A3 | Ledger PDF 1.6Mb Read Online

About : Proboscis supported the children of Soho Parish Primary School at this year’s Soho Food Feast – a community fundraising event held for the school at which many of London’s celebrated chefs and restaurants provide signature dishes to raise money for the school. We designed a special eNotebook alongside Fay Maschler, Restaurant Critic of the London Evening Standard, encouraging the children themselves to become food critics and experience the food through all the five senses. After the event we scanned all their reviews and made a sample selection to be printed in a compilation eBook, which has forewords from both Rachel Earnshaw (Head Teacher) and Fay. Everyone’s already looking forward to next year’s Food Feast and more budding food critics.

Published by Proboscis for Soho Parish Primary School in 2012

Authors : Children of Soho Parish Primary School, Forewords/Introduction by Rachel Earnshaw & Fay Maschler, Illustrated by Mandy Tang, Photos by Stefan Kueppers, Designed by Giles Lane.

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Project Account – A3 | Ledger PDF Read Online
Method Stack –  A3 | Ledger PDF 7Mb Read Online
Drawing Insight  – A3 | Ledger PDF 9Mb Read Online
Catalysing Agency –  A3 | Ledger PDF 5Mb Read Online

About : Four books exploring the process, methods, observations, insights and recommendations from a collaborative research project by Proboscis, the Centre for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET) and the Crucible network at the University of Cambridge.

Published November 2011

Proboscis is a social and cultural innovation studio. The creative team for these books was : Alice Angus, Giles Lane, Frederik Lesage, Haz Tagiuri and Mandy Tang.

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Place/Space/City A4 | US Letter PDF 1.8Mb  Read Online
Citizen A4 | US Letter PDF 700Kb  Read Online
Storytelling A4 | US Letter PDF 1Mb  Read Online
Mapping A4 | US Letter PDF 2Mb  Read Online

About : These eBooks are extrapolated from the visual essay I composed at Proboscis during my four months internship, loosely based on their work and projects.

First it developed as a concise mind map which outlined the fundamental design underpinning Proboscis’ long journey. It then evolved and bloomed in different and unexpected directions, drawing on my past knowledge, feeding on fortuitous connections and new sources of inspiration. It was elaborated following different paths even if I found myself juxtaposing pictures or quotations, originally designed for separate ‘themes’, pleasantly coming together. The lines I have drawn are just some of the infinite possible threads I could have kept to.

This is my own series of allusions, suggestions, relations and reflections about citizenship, storytelling, the mapping process and space, place, city.

Published October 2011

Elena Festa completed a PhD in Comparative Literature and Culture in Rome and after that worked as an intern at Proboscis. Her main interests are postcolonialism, literature and issues concerning cultural dynamics and urban imaginary.

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Creative Connections, Wisbech Museum for Leverington School Facilitated by Idit Nathan A4 | US Letter PDF  775Kb
What is a reflective practitioner? A CCI workshop for ReFocus Cambridge Early Years Educators led by Sally Brown Pat-a-cake Nursery A4 | US Letter PDF 670Kb
Enabling Creativity, A workshop for educators led by Susanne Jasilek Kettle’s Yard A4 | US Letter PDF 3Mb
Slow Time, A workshop for educators led by Sally Brown Kettle’s Yard A4 | US Letter PDF 670Kb
Imagination and empathy, A workshop for early years educators at Homerton Nursery, Cambridge facilitated by Sally Brown A4 | US Letter PDF 1.3Mb
Out and About, An Ignite workshop for educators at Fields Children’s Centre Cambridge A4 | US Letter PDF 670Kb
Re-Imagine Training, A Day for Members of the Re-Cap Partnership Monday A4 | US Letter PDF 510Kb

About : These booklets offer participants at our professional development workshops a visible trace of their experiences. Bringing together some elements of narrative from the workshop facilitators, images from the session, and personal reflections and observations, these Traces offer us a playful way to continue a dialogue with the groups we work with.

We seek to continue to inspire and challenge the groups by offering back to them evidence of their learning experiences with us. Before discovering bookleteer, we had used an A4 format for our Traces but have been delighted to find this ingenious format as it offers a much more playful response. Like Proboscis, we know from our own work that taking part in the process of making can influence your thinking and attitudes. Inviting workshop participants to make their own Traces which they can keep as a record of their work with us, offers an ideal continuation of many of the ideas we have explored with them in the workshop itself.

Published February 2011

Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination (CCI) is a not for profit organisation working creatively with communities in a whole range of settings – we work in schools, hospitals, museums, galleries, forests, gardens and most recently with a waste treatment centre. We help make ideas grow by looking, making, exploring and discovering together. Our role was recently described by an enthusiastic scientist colleague as a ‘yeast’ enabling new possibilities for creativity to bubble up in a variety of settings.

*** made with bookleteer.com ***

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3Mb Read Online

About : On Friday, November 12th, 2010, DodoLab and SACY (Sudbury Action Centre for Youth) staged the First Annual Tournament of Beasts in Sudbury’s Memorial Park (Ontario, Canada). The project featured a croquet competition between a half-dozen animals (raccoon, bear, wolf, rabbit, deer and moose) and was staged as a catalyst to encourage public discussion about the use and control of public spaces. The project is part of a larger community initiative in Sudbury being developed in collaboration with the Musagetes Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, SACY, Carrefour Sudbury and Metis Council of Sudbury.

Published November 2010

DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.

Made with *** bookleteer.com ***

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English Version A3 | Ledger PDF 7Mb Read Online
Arabic Version A3 | Ledger PDF 7Mb Read Online

About : A book describing the progress of the Berber-Abidiya Archaeological Project in Dangeil, Sudan. The project, “has focused on the late Kushite city of Dangeil (third century BC – fourth century AD). The site is endangered by modern development. Dangeil is located 350km north of Khartoum and has been a mystery to modern archaeologists because of its unique appearance, though in actuality few have ever visited the site. It consists of a series of large discrete mounds, many standing over four metres above the surrounding plain.”

Published August 2010

Julie Anderson is Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Sudanese Antiquities at the British Museum.

Salah Mohamed Ahmed is Director of Field Work for the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Sudan.

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Kitchener Field NoteBook A4 | US Letter PDF 280Kb
AC Youth Workshop Book 1 : Kitchener Market  A4 | US Letter PDF 8Mb
AC Youth Workshop Book 2 : Victoria Park  A4 | US Letter PDF 9.5Mb
AC Youth Workshop Book 3 : Interview with the Mayor A4 | US Letter PDF 4.5Mb

About : A youth workshop developed by DodoLab in collaboration with The African Canadian Association of Waterloo Region and the Healthy Communities Research Network. The workshop took place on June 25, 26 & 28 2010, in Kitchener Ontario with participants from the African Canadian Youth Leadership Project.

Published June 2010

DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3.5Mb

About : This eBbook was produced by participants Sanja Orlić, Kristina Utković and Ferdinand četaj in a Youth Workshop on public spaces run in Rijeka, Croatia, by Andrew Hunter and Lea Perinic, June 18-19, 2010.

Published June 2010

DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 375Kb

About : This is a field research work book for participants in a Youth Workshop on public spaces run in Rijeka, Croatia, by Andrew Hunter and Lea Perinic, June 18-19, 2010. Part 1 involves groups of participants responding to questions. Part 2 asks the participants to engage the public in conversation. Part 3 will involve photographing the spaces to generate publications and online surveys. The three sites in Rijeka being investigated are the Korzo, Pier and Cont Square.

Published June 2010

DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 486Kb

About : This eNotebook for students at the collège Evariste Galois in Epinay sur Seine was designed as an “adventure book” for the first-year students’ library orientation programme. The flexibility of the Bookleteer publishing platform allowed for quick and easily implementation of the modifications suggested by the author’s own observations, as well as advice from the students and teachers involved in the orientation programme itself.

Published February 2010

J. Thomas Maillioux has been the librarian for the collège Evariste Galois middle school in Epinay sur Seine, France since 2005.

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About : City As Material was a course devised and led by Giles Lane of Proboscis for students on Vassar College’s International Study Program in London. As part of the course the students each had to research and create an urban intervention project and document it via a Diffusion eBook. Some of the students also chose to use eBooks as part of their project itself (which are linked below). Descriptions of the projects and the research conducted during the course can be found on the course website: cityasmaterial.wordpress.com

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Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, A Beginners Field Guide A4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 115Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 160Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Documentation eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube Torts A4 | US Letter PDF 710Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube Torts Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 610Kb
Lauren Dyson – Ludic London Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.6Mb
Sara Leon – Moda Mapping Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.1Mb
John McCartin – Trashscapes Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Avey Venable – ITS London A4 | US Letter PDF 930Kb
Avey Venable – ITS London Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and found A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and found Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 450Kb

Published December 2009

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Book of Ideas A4 | US Letter PDF 1.2Mb
Future Scenarios A4 | US Letter PDF 1.2Mb
Research A4 | US Letter PDF 1.3Mb
Tell Me A Story A4 | US Letter PDF 1.7Mb

About : Articulating Futures is a 4 day workshop that was designed and facilitated by Niharika Hariharan, commissioned and creatively supported by Proboscis (London) to mobilize young students to creatively think and articulate issues that are important to them and their future as young Indians. The first series of these workshops were held at Chinmaya Mission Vidyalaya, New Delhi between the 17th-20th November, 2009. These eNotebooks were created to help the students organise and share their ideas across the workshop, combining English & Hindi.

Working in collaboration with tutors, filmmakers and artists, Articulating Futures investigated subjects ranging from the change of identity of young Indians, their views on language, traditional cultures and the importance of a global/local societies. Through discussion, debate and creative exploration, this workshop resulted in a range of exciting and insightful ideas and scenarios developed by 16 year old Indian students that showcase their vision of themselves as unique in a fast developing homogenous culture in modern India.
You can read about the project in detail at http://articulatingfutures.wordpress.com/

Published December 2009

Niharika Hariharan is a narrative designer and a filmmaker, keen on working and exploring the intersection of design with related and non-related fields such as sociology, sciences, education and traditional knowledge systems. She has worked on numerous multi-disciplinary projects in the realm of social and community design, developing innovative research methodologies, scenario building and story telling techniques. Niharika was awarded the ‘TATA scholar’ in 2007 and her work has been exhibited at many national and international festivals and events.
www.niharikahariharan.com

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I recently came across Kevin Hamilton‘s Complex Fields site, and read his description of a workshop on Critique, Collaboration, Prototyping and how he used StoryCubes as part of it. I asked if he’d write a short summary to post here, which he’s kindly done:

SUMMARY: Kevin Hamilton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In a couple of workshops now, we’ve used Storycubes to help start the group design process in a way that also establishes critical criteria for later evaluation and reflection. We’ve found that in group work, it’s all too easy to divide tasks early and not actually do the hard work of deciding together about goals, arguing about contexts and outcomes.

Our response to this was to devise a four-part system of critical criteria – CONTEXT, FUNCTION, PROCESS, and AUDIENCE. In the classroom, we ask groups to establish goals within each of these areas, so that they can later return to their stated goals and decide on how they achieved or departed from them. I recently married this structure to the Storycubes with some success.

The projects where I’ve used this technique involved the creation of interactive site-specific artworks. Each team received four blank cubes – one for CONTEXT, one for FUNCTION, one for PROCESS, and the fourth for AUDIENCE. I asked each team to fill each side of each cube with one possible item or goal. The result was six possible audiences, six possible functions, etcetera. The team could then mix-and-match to decide on one approach scenario to explore through physical prototyping or other methods.

One unexpected function of this process was to provide something of a “common enemy” in what for some seemed an overly artificial process. If a team’s members were new to each other or otherwise experiencing awkward interaction, they could at least unify around begrudgingly following the process of constructing Storycubes. (They eventually liked them, even if it seemed too elementary or formulaic at first.) The resulting cubes also added up to a sort of database archive for future iteration and design.

Download Kevin’s StoryCubes (PDF)

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 500Kb

About : An eBook made for participants in a workshop with the Sutton-in-the-Isle Youth Group, where we are making a short video (part of Proboscis’ Sutton Grapevine project). The group is collaborating to make a video about their recent trip abroad to meet other young people from around the world and exchange stories for their Your Stories project.

The eBook is a record of the first session’s activities, questions and a storyboard sketch. It captures the process of thinking and the questions we asked in the first session, as well providing a notebook for the group to write on, draw over or change as the sessions continue.

Published June 2009

Alice Angus, co-director of Proboscis, is an artist inspired by rethinking concepts and perceptions of landscape and human relationships to the land. Over the last six years she has been creating a body of art work exploring concepts proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, against the lived experience and local knowledge of a place. In 2003, Alice was the only non-Canadian to participate in the first Artist in the Park residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon, organised by Parks Canada.

Orlagh Woods is an artist whose work explores how diverse people and communities engage with each other and their environment – how they connect, communicate and are perceived both through digital and non-digital means. She has been working with Proboscis since 2004 and also curates a professional development programme for British Asian theatre company, Tamasha, in London.

*** a ‘book’ (long edge binding) eBook created using the new Diffusion Generator ***

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 5Mb

About : With the increase in youth crime and violence we need to find new ways of dealing with the issue. ICT has proven to be a good initiative to capture the mind of young people. The real challenge is getting them to participate, this is where the iStreet Lab come in. The iStreet Lab presents an innovative experimental formula to tackle the problem at its roots. Providing expertise and creating a platform for information exchange and collaboration with those directly associated with the issues relating to crime and violence. The iStreet Lab is a revolutionary invention enabling its users to share knowledge using the tools provided.

Published May 2009

Richard Pierre-Davis is one of the co-founders of Mongrel and one of the four core members that made up the media artist collective. Richard has been a media artist and workshop practitioner since 1995, and his emphasis rests strongly on the facilitation of new media events within communities, providing them with the tools to create their own expressions of culture or creating a framework within which this expression can form itself. Richard’s work as a core member of Mongrel has led to an expertise from the shared experiences of working with many special groups from Aboriginal Australians to Navajo Indians, University faculties and students to some of the most deprived innercity communities.

mervin Thomas-Jarman is founder and director of mongrelStreet has been a street activist for more than twenty years. In 1995, he co-founded the avant-garde digital arts group ‘Mongrel Collective’, and in 1999 started the mongrelStreet Initiative to produce projects for street youth around the world. His first production was ‘When The Screen Goes Black’ a workshop produced for youth in the Stone Bridge Park area of Harlesden NW10, working with the Social Inclusion Unit of Brent Council. In 2003, under the mongrelStreet umbrella, he established the Container Project in Palmers Cross Jamaica, working with the community and local youth with challenging behaviour that had earned them the label ‘hard to reach’. In 2008 he created the iStreet Lab a community multimedia-training unit in a 240 litre garbage disposal wheelie bin.

*** a landscape eBook created using the new Diffusion Generator ***

Combined word cloud from Days 1 to 3 of the DodoLab at WEEC5

Day 3 Word Cloud from DodoLab at WEEC5

Wordle word cloud from Day 2’s StoryCube contributions at WEEC5.

Word cloud from 1st day’s contributions

Download A4 only PDF 700Kb

About : This double-sided StoryCube has been designed for the Dodolab intervention at the 5th World Environmental Education Congress in Montréal, May 10-14 2009. Dodolab is a collaborative and creative intervention exploring different approaches to the concept of sustainability, resilience and adaptability. It is organised by Andrew Hunter of Render @ University of Waterloo and Shawn van Sluys of Musagetes Foundation. Giles Lane of Proboscis will be participating to engage delegates in creating a landscape of ideas using the cubes, as well as social mapping activities using a Buckminster Fuller Dymaxion Map.

Published May 2009

Giles Lane is an artist, researcher and teacher. He founded and is co-director of Proboscis, a non-profit creative studio based in London where, since 1994, he has led projects such as Urban Tapestries; Snout; Mapping Perception; Experiencing Democracy; Everyday Archaeology; and Private Reveries, Public Spaces. Giles is a Visiting Tutor on the MA Design Critical Practice at Goldsmiths College (University of London) and is a Research Associate of the Media and Communications Department at London School of Economics. Giles was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008 for his contribution to community development through creative practice.

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Kedu – eBook 1 A4 only PDF 644Kb
Kedu – eBook 2 A4 only PDF 608Kb
Kedu – eBook 3 A4only PDF 649Kb
Kedu – eBook 4 A4 only PDF 650Kb
Kedu – eBook 5 A4 only PDF 632Kb

About : eBooks help to promote ongoing communication between students in Umulogho Village, Nigeria and students in Watford schools.

Bev Carter’s eBook A Little Something About Me (generated by with support from Proboscis) was used to assist a series of workshops in six schools in Watford during 2008 to communicate through words, paintings and photographs the life, experiences and interests of students attending a secondary school in Umulogho, a rural village in Imo State, Nigeria, West Africa.

During school workshops copies of this eBook were handed out to the students and a discussion was encouraged and facilitated by Bev. The pupils really liked the eBook and it served to generate more curiosity and questions about life in Umulogho. As part of the process another eBook created to capture all the thoughts and enquries the students had.

The next eBook was called ‘Kedu?‘ This means ‘How are you? in Igbo, the main language spoken in Umulogho Village. This was a collection of further questions from students in Watford using pictures created by Umulogho students to give them added visual interest. In July 2008 copies of the ‘Kedu’ eBook were hand delivered to Umulogho Village by Tony Amaechi, a Trustee of Friends Out There, and some Umulogho Village students then filled in their response to the questions in the eBook. Five eBooks were collected by Tony on his return to the UK and some students told Tony that they had enjoyed filling in the eBooks, were thrilled to see their paintings scanned in to them and were happy to know that students in the UK were interested in them, their dreams and concerns.

In October 2008 the completed Kedu eBooks were taken back to some of the schools in Watford that had asked the original questions. The students were amazed and pleased to see they really had been given some answers to their questions, such as ‘are there any crocodiles in the village stream? – some Umologho students had seen some and others hadn’t. The eBooks got the Watford students talking about what time they wake up in the morning and what they do before school as most students in Umulogho were awake by 5.30 am and had gone to the village stream and back to collect water before going to school. The Kedu eBooks also gave the Umulogo students a space to ask some questions that they had for the Watford students such as ‘what seasons do you have in England?’ and ‘what religions do you have?’

The next stage will be to create another eBook to continue the communication between the schools in Umulogho and Watford. The eBook is an excellent resource for schools: students like the pocket sized feel, it’s a great way to capture conversations and enquiries and, even though the school in Umulogho Village doesn’t yet have a computer or internet access, we were still able to send and receive paper copies – using more traditional means of connection and communication.

Bev Carter
February 2009

For more information please contact Bev Carter (Friends Out There)

Published February 2009

Staff and students of the digital photography course at London Southbank University have developed virtual StoryCubes in Second Life: 

In Second Life we can use StoryCubes as poetic and playful devices for displaying snaps in three dimensions, allowing us to reveal different perspectives and make new connections and associations. We can use them as a group to build a collective photo-narrative out of our individual snapshots around second life, and can come to a shared narrative that allow us to see new perspectives.

 

Diffusion Residency with Proboscis, July 2008
Lisa Hunter
Collections Manager, Dundas Museum and Archives
Dundas, Ontario, Canada.

In my curatorial work with the Dundas Museum and Archives, I work with a local history collection, within the environment of a supportive local community, to produce exhibitions and related programming.  At the heart of my curatorial approach is the concept of storytelling, and most of my projects have been based on some form of information exchange with members of the community.  The primary goal of my residency with Proboscis was to explore ways in which I could build on the most successful aspects of these projects, and to develop additional and alternative approaches to the exchange and presentation of historical material.  Specifically, I wanted to learn how I might incorporate eBooks and StoryCubes into the work that I do at the museum, and to see how these tools might lead to new programs or projects.

The best approach for me was to begin by “jumping right in” and producing an eBook.  The technical and intellectual process of making my first eBook became a way of thinking through how I might use the eBooks (and StoryCubes) at the Dundas Museum.  Additionally, having the opportunity to speak at length with Giles, and other members of Proboscis, about the many innovative and creative ways in which the Generator has been used by others, was a very significant aspect of this residency.  Being in the studio, and being able to share ideas and to have an open exchange, was invaluable.  Further, having the opportunity to put some distance between myself and the museum allowed me to see things a bit more objectively, which is often difficult to do when you are in the thick of the day to day work.

I think the greatest benefit of this residency was that it resulted in a definite shift in my thinking about how a museum can interact with, and respond to, the community it serves.  My approach has always been to encourage dialogue between the museum and the public, but the tools for doing so in an informal yet elegant way have been missing.  Consequently, those efforts to facilitate exchange have been sporadic.  Those of us who work in smaller museums can often feel very limited in our ability to disseminate ideas, partly because of a longstanding tradition of thematically narrow, expensive and poorly distributed publishing ventures.  The Generator, conversely, allows for spontaneous, experimental, low cost initiatives that can be distributed more widely than was ever possible.  I think that our future success as a museum will depend on our ability to continue and deepen an ongoing exchange with our local community, and that the eBooks and StoryCubes are excellent tools for us in this regard.

Although the actual residency was for a one week period, I feel that my work with it is just beginning.  Not only have I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how past projects might have been enhanced or done differently with the utilization of the Generator tools, but I have also been developing a number of future initiatives, in consultation with other members of the museum staff.  While it seems that the eBooks and StoryCubes will need some time to become an automatic part of our curatorial “toolbox,” (i.e. to become a part of our organizational culture), there is a lot of enthusiasm and interest within the organization at this time.  There are currently two eBooks under development, and a plan in place to create a StoryCube set for a senior citizens’ education program in the coming weeks. Other uses are also being considered for future projects.

The residency with Proboscis was an extremely useful, thought-provoking, energizing experience, and I feel very privileged to have been invited to take part.  The new insights I gained are being shared with my colleagues at the museum, and I am hopeful that it will be the basis for a new, creative approach that will permeate our organization.  Working with Proboscis has been very inspiring, and has given me a fresh enthusiasm for pursing my curatorial goals.

The eBooks

Button Doll
Despair
Forget Me Not

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 2.8Mb

About : A wild, and wonderful, bright, splashy, squiggly, smudgy, splotchy, blotchy, fingerprinty, rainbow A to Z. Painted in watercolour by Clara aged 3 (and three quarters), who likes to do different things with letters, some mad, some neat, some clear, some dark.

Published April 2008

About : These eBooks were produced by students at the University of Waterloo for the Anarchaeology: Collecting Curating and Communicating Culture course, run jointly by Proboscis and Render in Winter/Spring 2008.

Downloads

• Diane Braga – Cambridge, The City I Didn’t Know A4 | US Letter PDF 1.2Mb
• Colin Carney – KW Bug Out – A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
• Meghan Doherty – My Town, My Community, My Identity A4 | US Letter PDF 2.2Mb
• Angie Gaal – My UW Campus A4 | US Letter PDF 514Kb
• Christina Gatchene – Alexandra’s Arrangements A4 | US Letter PDF 1.7Mb
• Katie Gatenby – Your Guide to the Sculptures of the University of Waterloo A4 | US Letter PDF 700Kb
• Ruth van Gurp – Guides to Galt: A Brief History of Architectural Spaces A4 | US Letter PDF 1Mb
• Vicky Huang – Something is Missing! A4 | US Letter PDF 3.8Mb
• Amy Lyons – Guides to Galt: Downtown Restaurants A4 | US Letter PDF 1.84Mb
• Rebecca Macdonald & Andrew Guaglio – The Dissatisfied Art Student’s Guide to the Lounges of UW: Volume 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 1.6Mb
• Rebecca Macdonald & Andrew Guaglio – The Dissatisfied Art Student’s Guide to the Lounges of UW: Volume 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 2.6Mb
• Adam Meyer – Prolegomena to Mundanity A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
• Heidi Overhill – The Wreck of the “Julie Plante” A4 | US Letter PDF 2.8Mb
• Leslie-Anne Purdy – Activism on the UW Campus A4 | US Letter PDF 1.1Mb
• Nathalie Quagliotto – Guide to Proper Etiquette… A4 | US Letter PDF 385Kb
• Kristina Rogers – The Result of a Petition from 1896 A4 | US Letter PDF 4.5Mb
• Jen Stanfel – Campus Space A4 | US Letter PDF 1.8Mb
• Catherine Telford_Keogh – Positive Space Information Booklet A4 | US Letter PDF 300Kb
• Katie Thiel – Katie Thiel: Artist, Waitress, Student, Daughter… A4 | US Letter PDF 835Mb
• Christina Vannelli – Spaces Defined A4 | US Letter PDF 3.8Mb
• Heather Voituk – Local Culinary Talent A4 | US Letter PDF 550Kb

Published March-April 2008

Over a week in late July/early August 2007 Proboscis hosted a writing workshop for four teenage girls. The girls were invited to participate as part of the Case Study Residencies programme and spent an intense five days in the Proboscis studio during which they conceived, created, wrote, designed and produced illustrated stories to be published via the Diffusion Generator.

The week began with an introduction to Proboscis and the project and the girls talked about their experiences of writing and illustrating stories – what they enjoyed doing, what they found hard, why they wanted to achieve etc. All four were keen artists and writers interested in Manga; they discussed the kinds of things they currently wrote and the problems they faced. All of them commented that they very rarely finished stories – ideas came and went – and that they would move onto another story before they had finished the previous one.

A walk around Clerkenwell and Smithfield Market, an area steeped in history and vibrant with everyday life and change, formed the basis for the girls’ stories. Each of the girls was given a digital camera and sound recorder to capture images and sounds of the area that interested them. Our route took us past Mount Pleasant, through Finsbury down to Clerkenwell Green and St John’s Gate, through to Charterhouse Square, round Smithfield and St Barts, up Saffron and Herbal Hills and back to Rosebery Avenue. Using a small library of books about London’s past and present, we researched histories of some of the building, who lived in these places and what took place there. In particular the girls became fascinated with a former Victorian school building erected on the site of Clerkenwell’s notorious House of Correction, an underground prison of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Using the walk, their research, and the photos and sounds recorded on the walk as the source material, we spent a few hours as a group planning a master narrative and skeleton storyboard. This set out a single plot and selection of characters which they could all use and base their stories around, with individual stories deviating from this central concept as they chose. Once the bones of the narrative were in place we spent a while coming up with the elements to be included in each scene using the StoryCubes to think about what should and shouldn’t be included.

Concentrating on the storyboarding was quite a difficult task and different to the girls’ usual methods of writing, however it provided a useful framework for working out the characters, their relationships and the major events of the main story. We pushed them to come up with the skeleton story but also let them know that they had the freedom to do what they liked with the stories after this – they could miss out chapters, start at a different point or change whatever they wished.

Focusing on the school and the prison as the place of the story, the characters’ images and their names became important to the girls and they did more intense work on the various chapters and the characters throughout the week. The illustrations for the eBooks were drawn first before being scanned. Some of them were then coloured using Painter and Photoshop. The girls worked on the drawings and stories simultaneously, making decisions as they went along about what images were needed and where. A lot of the Manga-style images were shared between a number of the girls with several of the same characters appearing in more than one of the girls stories. This interweaving of narrative and character giving this series of eBooks a particular coherence and sense of multiple authorship.

By the end of the five day workshop each of the girls had completed the stories and illustrations for at least one eBook; over the next couple of months these were refined and edited before being published on the Diffusion site in November 2007.

The eBooks
Kiddie Crunch Time – Vanda Rjechko
KCT– Grandma’s Story – Georgia Hudson
Crunch! – AyaOluwa Aloa
Deep_’n_Dark 2: Mo(u)rning Rises – Eloise Mitchell
Deep_’n_Dark 1: Dusk Descends – Eloise Mitchell

Why did you take part?
I was invited to take part by Giles, and was delighted at the opportunity given to me to learn how to develop ‘eBooks’ on the Diffusion Generator and work in the Proboscis studio with Karen (mentor) and support from Giles and the rest of the team. I took part because it fitted in well to the aims of an arts and communication project I have been developing with a school in Umulogho Village in Nigeria since January 2007 and art workshops I have been running in the Watford area.

What did you achieve?

• I learnt how to use the Diffusion Generator, with excellent support from my mentor Karen.
• I wanted my eBooks to be illustrative, including photographs and painted images, with some text to ‘tell the story’.
• I learnt how to import scanned images from ‘Flickr’, which was a new site to me.
• I developed two eBooks. The first was an eBook called ‘A Little Something About Me’ and the second was called ‘Kedu?’ (How are You?)
• The eBooks were used as a tool for discussion about the village of Umulogho, Nigeria, with primary, junior and secondary aged pupils in schools in the Watford area.

How did you go about this – what was the process involved / your approach to the eBook Generator…?
I spent about five days in the Proboscis studio between May to September 2007. Karen was assigned as my mentor and guided me through the Diffusion site, she helped me to understand how to develop a draft eBook up to the generated version, scan in images from ‘Flickr’, write text and resolve any problems encountered. This help was definitely necessary and I don’t think I could have worked out all technical issues, without her help. I understand it was useful to Proboscis to have my feedback on my experience of making the eBooks (plus experience of other case studies) and this helped in making further improvements to the Generator, which I gained the benefit of in my later sessions in the studio.

My approach to developing the eBook was as follows:

• The first eBook ‘A Little Something About Me’ summarized the words/ messages that were written by Umulogho Village students and included copies of their paintings, so that a short story could be told of their concerns, hopes and dreams for the improvement of their school, and to tell the reader something about their life and experiences in Umulogho Village.
• The second eBook is called ‘Kedu?’ ‘(How are you?’) This is a collection of questions that came from primary to secondary aged children from Watford (plus some of my own). The aim was to capture their curiosity about Umulogho Village life and young people’s experiences there after seeing the first eBook and a look at the paintings made by Umulogho pupils. These questions were asked by pupils during art/discussion workshops in the five schools I have been working in. The ages of the children I worked with ranged from 6 year olds to 13 year olds. Some of these questions were inputted into the ‘Kedu?’ eBook alongside pictures of the Umulogho students’ paintings. The eBook will be sent to the students in Umulogho Village in March 2008. I have already discussed how the eBooks will be used by students in Umulogho and I am trying to resource this to happen.

What did you learn from this process? How did this process influence (if it did) your way of working?
The experience of the case study helped me to further develop the overall strategy for the work I have been doing with Umulogho Village and schools in Watford and it has had a positive impact on the development of a new charity I have been setting up called ‘Friends Out There’.

Although I have not yet used the eBook in schools as the main focus in the workshops I have been running, it has been an excellent resource to hand out to the pupils after the initial discussion about Umulogho Village and as an aid to the paintings, questions and messages that pupils in England have been making, with the intention to sent back to Umulogho. It was good to watch the pupils look through the eBooks, see their interest in them and want to talk to each other about their content.

What other ways could you see yourself using the Generator for in the future?

• I would still like to develop a few variations to the eBook, ‘A Little Something About me’ changing the amount of words, length of the eBook and use of language for different audiences/ages etc and perhaps breaking up into different themes about village life.
• I have about 200 paintings that have now been produced by up to five schools in Watford and I am excited about developing further eBooks, hopefully with some school and pupil involvement in the process. The next set of eBooks I hope to make are from the paintings and messages produced by Queens Secondary School and from Field Junior School in Watford. They would like to send a record of their images back to students in Umulogho and get a dialogue going between the schools. I haven’t approached the school about making an eBook yet. Queens have made a four minute DVD of the art workshop I ran with them that I would also like to send back to Umulogho Village.

Any other comments?
I think the case study experience has been a fantastic opportunity for me and I now need to find the time to continue on with ideas I have for future eBooks and look forward to discussing this with Giles. I could see it becoming more integrated into the work I am doing, not just as part of the workshops, but using the format of the eBook as a way to record events, workshops with schools, helping to establish and continue conversations between different school communities I have been working with in England and in Nigeria.

Overall, I think it’s an excellent, usable tool for educational learning and sharing. I particularly like the detective like, pocket sized feel of it. It’s great that it is available on the Diffusion website, and so can be accessed around the world and I have sign-posted many people to it.

Bev Carter
February 2008

The eBooks
Kedu? How are you?
A Little Something About Me

Proboscis and Render are currently running a mixed graduate/under-graduate studio and seminar course at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) based on our concept of Anarchaeology. Over the next 12 weeks the students will conduct individual and group investigations into the environment of the university, Kitchener-Waterloo and the local region and, through a series of assignments, build up a body of artefacts (StoryCubes, postcards, eBooks, podcasts) for exhibition. A course blog will act as a repository of research, fabricated artefacts and discussion.

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3.7Mb

Abstract : Second in a series of eBooks created by Bev Carter as part of Proboscis’ Generator Case Study Residencies. This eBook has been designed for students at the village school in Umologho to fill in, responding to questions asked about them and their lives by British schoolchildren who have previously encountered the paintings and stories of the ‘A Little Something About Me’ project. This eNotebook will, in turn, enable the children of Umologho to ask questions of British schoolchildren in a future eBook for the project, In this way we hope to establish an evolving dialogue across continents and cultures.

Published November 2007

Bev Carter has been developing an arts and communication project with students in Umologho village, Nigeria since December 2006. “I’m excited that there are many ways that the eBook can be used explore how people feel about and interpret the environment around them, using pictures and words. I like the idea that thoughts, on the run, can be captured.” Bev is finding ways to share this information between young people in Nigeria and England. Contact bevalittlesomething@hotmail.co.uk

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3.7Mb

Abstract : The first in a series of eBooks created by Bev Carter as part of Proboscis’ Generator Case Study Residencies. This eBook contains paintings, pictures and information by the students of a local school in the village of Umologho, Imo state, Nigeria. The students were asked to write ‘a little something about me’ describing what learning meant to them, their hopes, fears, likes, dislikes etc. This eBook attempts to capture some of the richness of what they had to say and has been designed to open up a conversation with British schoolchildren, who have helped devise the questions in a second eBook to be sent out to Umologho in the new year.

Published November 2007

Bev Carter has been developing an arts and communication project with students in Umologho village, Nigeria since December 2006. “I’m excited that there are many ways that the eBook can be used explore how people feel about and interpret the environment around them, using pictures and words. I like the idea that thoughts, on the run, can be captured.” Bev is finding ways to share this information between young people in Nigeria and England. Contact bevalittlesomething@hotmail.co.uk

In addition to using the Diffusion eBook format to publish essays and artists books, Proboscis has also been using it to create notebooks for specific activities and projects. The eBook format allows us to design and distribute a notebook that participants in a project or workshop can fill in by hand (writing, drawing or adding stickers as they wish) which can then be scanned and turned back into a PDF file for sharing – either within the group or more widely. This ‘virtuous circle’ moving from digital to material to digital is at the core of the ‘Shareables’ concept. We have designed the Shareables so that they can be used without always needing a computer, but still providing a path for capturing and sharing digitally.

Proboscis has successfully used ‘eNotebooks‘ in our schools projects as learning diaries (e.g. Sound Scavenging, Everyday Archaeology and Experiencing Democracy) and, in our community projects as a simple means of gathering local knowledge and information (e.g. Robotic Feral Public Authoring, St. Marks and Conversations and Connections).

Learning Diaries
The eNotebooks have been very effective for the schoolchildren participating in our projects, giving them a single place to record and reflect on what they have learned from the different activities and how they are integrated into everyday learning. Over the three years we have collaborated with the Jenny Hammond Primary school on Social Tapestries projects, we have worked ever more closely with the teachers to use the learning diaries to make the bridge between the activities of the workshop and what the children are learning as part of everyday school. The diaries themselves are also an invaluable tool for the teachers and us to gauge each child’s engagement with the project and its concepts – some children choose to do the minimum whilst others spend considerable time and effort embellishing their drawings and writings. This serves an additional function in helping to assess the impact on learning that the workshop has had – the diaries show how the children are absorbing new ideas, vocabulary and improving their spelling as the project progresses.

Examples: Sound Scavenging, Everyday Archaeology, Experiencing Democracy

Field Notebooks
We have also used the eNotebooks in community-based projects and workshops to record knowledge about places and communities. The eNotebooks offer a familiar ‘interface’ and technology (paper and pens) that is very inclusive and engaging – allowing people to write, draw or stick photos into them. In communities and situations where access to computers and broadband internet was not possible the eNotebooks allowed us to design a simple and effective means of asking open (but targeted) questions and enabling people to complete them there and then or post them back to us at their leisure. We see many other possible uses of this kind of eNotebook for researchers in the field doing ethnographic or anthropological studies.

We have also speculated on using the Diffusion Generator in brainstorming activities, where the eBooks are used to create iterations or snapshots of the process in situ. This would both provide an immediate outcome to the activity, but also document the creative processes along the way.

Examples: Robotic Feral Public Authoring, St Marks, Havelock Community Mapping

Evaluation Tool
Proboscis has begun to experiment with creating structured notebooks for people to give feedback and evaluation on an event (such as a conference or workshop) or project. The StoryCubes have also been used in this way – at the Enter Festival in Cambridge (April 2007) conference delgates helped create a landscape of ideas, images and themes relating to the event. Futurelab also used the StoryCubes to engage delegates at their Why Don’t You… conference (October 2007) in mapping and exploring ideas relating to new education practices and uses of innovative technologies in schools and learning. Proboscis also uses the StoryCubes as a notetaking tool (instead of taking minutes) for its own advisory group meetings, enabling us to combine the questions and observations that the group members note down in an ever-growing and evolving landscape.

Examples: Enter Conference,

Other Ideas
One of our key aims for Diffusion is to explore its uses in places (such as developing countries) with poor access to publishing technologies (both traditional print and electronic). A Diffusion eBook can, of course, be made with nothing more than some blank sheets of paper which can then be written and drawn on – or even have sections of typwritten text pasted onto them. Once made, these unique handmade books can be scanned and turned into Shareable eBooks (PDF files), endlessly reproducible and distributable through email and web downloads.

Examples: we plan to make some illustrative examples available soon