Venice themed workshop series
Another VIVITA & Seaplane Harbour cooperation project started in November 2022. This time, Seaplane Harbour’s team approached VIVITA’s youth with a challenge to create an interesting experiences for the children area in connection to their next exhibition “Venice- the queen of the Seas”. Of course, we took the challenge and this is how it all started…
The opening event took place on the 29th of November 2022 in Vivistop Telliskivi studio and was named The Mystery of Masks. In the workshop Venice Carnaval tradition was discovered, that has influenced the daily life of venecians in centuries. Pantalone, Arlecchino and Marco Polo were some of the many characters and real life people, we got to know about. All participants got to think themselves into the vivid life of Venice, while creating masks and characters for themselves and introducing them to each other. In order to connect to each other in the city of envision, all the created characters also were provided with a custom made house, made by Vivinauts.
Alltogether 8 different and unique characters were created, with vustom made masks and house mock-ups. That all brought us closer to the daily life of venecian people.
The next workshop about Venice took place on the 19th of December 2022 and was named The Floating Cities. In this workshop the focus was on the sea level rise and together with the Vivinauts, different ways of approching this challenge were discovered.
Did you know, that the longest dame in Europe is 32 km long and is located in Netherlans, that houses in Venice are built on top of long wooden poles and there is a 4 square kilometer big island in Maldives, that is man made? You bet, that the Vivinauts who participated in the workshop know all about it. The real life approach seemed to fit this crowd, since the solutions to this global issue were impressive!
After an informative intro about the world cities built under the sea level, the Vivinauts were given a challenge to build a house that can float on water. You got it right. For this challenge a pool was installed in the studioa, and the waves.. well the Vivinauts got that covered also.
The upcoming work was approched in teams. All the teams got a ceramic tile for the foundation of the house. The house materials were limited as well:a piece of penoplast, wine : a small piece of Styrofoam, bottle caps, skewers, glue and string. Easy, huh? This was also the opinion of the vivinauts, who bravely faced the challenge in teams. However, it soon became clear that yes, it is easy to make the house float for a moment, but in order for the house not to capsize in the rippling water, it is also necessary to deal with the center of gravity of the house. By solving the problem in teams, the young people came up with very interesting and unique solutions, and at the end of the workshop, all four of the four houses were able to swim stably in the stormy sea. Hooray!
The series of workshops has now proudly finished in the second joint design sprint of Lennusadama and VIVITA, this time called: Life in the City. While the first two workshops opened up the different aspects and characteristics of the city of Venice, the motivation of the design sprint was to bring the new knowledge and thoughts that had arisen into the context of the children’s area of the exhibition.
The Seaplane Harbour Museum’s desire was to hear fresh input from children to create a Venice-themed children’s area, and thus the central task of the design sprint was to create an experience or exhibit for the children’s area of the exhibition that would be playful but educational.
This task was solved in four teams, through three different themes (food, culture and urban space) and the whole activity took place through the 6 stages of the design sprint: DISCOVER > FEEL > FOCUS > IMAGINE > PLAY > SHARE.
In the first stage of the design sprint, DISCOVER, we got to know the theme of the design sprint. To this end, we invited Vivistop’s Laura Kipper, the project manager of the “Venezia — Queen of the Seas” exhibition at the Airport, to tell the young people what the exciting exhibition is and what the plans and ideas are for the Venice-themed children’s area. The model of the children’s area of the exhibition was also viewed together.
In the second stage, FEEL, the focus was to find exactly those topics related to Venice that speak to and touch young people the most. For this purpose, together with the young people, a mind map on Venice was made, where all knowledge and keywords about Venice were collected together. Each young person could choose a topic of their choice and four teams were formed: two teams focused on Italian food, the third team took urban space as a starting point, and the fourth team took the culture of Venice. However, in order for the teamwork to run smoothly, it was also necessary to practice working in a team, i.e. cooperation!
In the FOCUS stage, the young people were given a common design mission to solve, to create an activity or exhibit for the Venice-themed children’s area of the Airport, which would be playful and educational. The task of each team was to come up with as many ideas as possible on how to implement this mission based on the topic of their team. Based on the filtered ideas, each team formulated its own problem statement, which was solved, planned and played out in the following stages of IMAGINE and PLAY. For this, the young people’s favourite method, Crazy 8, was used, and then a scenario was created from the selected solutions, and the ideas were played out in stop-motion.
After only 4 hours, the sixth stage of the design sprint, SHARE, was reached. The mission of the SHARE stage is to inspire others. Each team had the opportunity to present their idea to other teams and guests from Lennusadama. The youth teams presented who their idea was meant for and explained why their idea was special and needed to be implemented. In addition, each team presented a stop-motion created from their own idea, and then gave each other valuable feedback. In the case of Sprint FINIŠ, all participants received a useful VIVITA measuring stick for further activities and a VIP invitation from Lennusadam to the “Queen of the Venetian Seas” exhibition.
Text and photos: Vivita Estonia
november 2022 — january 2023
