Hello Glasgow!

Hello Glasgow! After a two-day build (watch Geraldine’s excellent time lapse video here) and a week of sessions already behind us we are fully settled in to our final location: the Tramway! It’s really exciting to be here with the games, Glasgow is totally buzzing and all our sessions have been full to the brim. It’s great to arrive at the end of a tour with a feeling of celebration: the project has essentially ‘come home’ back to the space that it was designed for.

About this time last year, I attended a development day with the creative team in the upstairs foyer (where the Blue Block is now). We had some coloured tissue paper, perspex shapes, a model of the space and Katy walked around the foyer explaining where the walls were going to be.

It’s quite amazing to stand in the upstairs foyer now, welcoming babies and their adults into a life sized Blue Block; we still have perspex shapes and tissue paper but now we have all the rest of the beautiful objects, lights, and music that have made Blue Block Studio what it is. So here we are now, in Tramway, in our fully formed Blue Block with some more great pictures from Geraldine!

We’ve also made an appearance on Festival Daily 2014 which you can watch here and a great review from Mary Brennan in the Herald which you can read here

Mull parents: Love laughing and playing

With the Isle of Mull disappearing slowly into the distance it seems only fitting to blog Blue Block Studio’s Island residency from the sea! Currently on the Craigmure-Oban ferry and finding it hard to believe that our much-anticipated week in Mull is over already. And what a week it’s been. Our first session on Monday was a lovely one-on-one with a mother and her wee boy. I wasn’t sure how many island babies there would be so half expected it to be a quiet week. However, as we learned over the week, word of mouth was our most effective marketing tool, bringing more and more parents to the block as the week progressed.

The overarching feedback from the parents in Mull (most of whom were locals) was how much they appreciated having something specifically for 0-24 month babies.. One parent specifically said how great it was to have something that was for early years that looked so good. She commented that usually, things designed for early years are tacky and garish, which isn’t so stimulating for adults (and perhaps babies?) As the project continues I am progressively more aware of how innovative an idea Blue Block Studio is. It not only provides a much-needed space for creative play but also maintains a sophisticated aesthetic. Every detail in Blue Block Studio is, as a professional piece of work should be, thoughtfully considered in both form and function, to look exciting and at the same time be completely accessible to babies and adults alike. I feel immensely proud to be part of a project that values the experience of early years and their parents, that a team of exciting and exceptional artists have put time into creating something that is of such a high standard for such wee people.

Moments to remember from Mull:

One of our first visitors to the Block on Mull was a wee boy who loved to examine how things worked. His Mum says he rarely plays with toys; rather he likes to take them apart and figure out how they work. He had a great time with the ball run and the torches, the fan and the led light, which he pulled apart and with great inquisitiveness watched attentively as Zoe came in to fix it.

 At one session the parents came in saying ‘WOW!!!” they seemed just as excited (if not more so) to be in the Blue Block as their babies. It was extremely enjoyable to see the parents laughing and playing, and in fact there seemed to be quite a few playful adults at our sessions this week. Mull parents: Love laughing and playing.

One wee girl, who came to three sessions over the week, tried numerous times to sit on the tiny green chair. In one session Drew from Yellow Valley was there and his daughter, after seeing this wee girl, Drew’s daughter attempted the same task. Toddler vs tiny chair. The tiny chair is still intact. We love that tiny chair.

I had some rave helpers over the week, some wee ones gathering tissue paper and throwing it into the air with delight, some ribbon holders and many attempts to put fingers into the fan, here at Blue Block Studio we understand curiosity, we also understand that sometimes safety measures need to be in place: such as mesh to eliminate the danger of curious wee fingers in electric fans.

Blue Blog Studio

“What are you doing tomorrow Geraldine?”

“I’m going to [insert Scottish Location] to film some babies having a nice time.”

This has become a bit of a catch phrase for me over the last couple of months, as once a week I join ‘Blue Block Studio’ in one of it’s Scottish locations.

I’m a filmmaker and have been lucky to be part of the Blue Block Team since early on in proceedings. I’ve been documenting the whole process from artist meetings, development days, and trial audiences all the way to the build of the studio. Now my role is to visit the Block in it’s various locations to document the interaction from different communities.

Being part of the whole project has been pretty inspiring. At the beginning there was a lot of collaboration and experimenting. All of the artists really took on board and worked responsively to the needs, interests and curiosities of the babies and adults we played with in development.

Now working in ‘da Block’ with Becki, Yvonne and Zoe, it feels like that inspired, responsive attitude has continued. There is a real sense of care from the team over the space and the experience for everyone that comes along. The response has been brilliant; people are really enjoying it and getting a lot out of it.

For me it’s been really important that when I’m in a session that me being there with a camera doesn’t affect the way that people interact with the space. I tend to try and think of it as ‘I’m just another thing in the space that parents and babies can choose to interact with if they want.’ I’m not trying to be invisible, I’m not a fly on the wall, I’m just in the space getting involved or quietly observing.

I feel privileged to have worked with this brilliant team of people, I’m proud of being part of Blue Block Studio and most of all I’ve really enjoyed filming lots of babies having a nice time.

And there’s more to come!

Kilmarnock Babies! Perth Babies!

Blue Block 3 quarters through…..

Today’s entry comes to you from inside the Blue Block. I’m currently sitting on some soft play beside a shimmery wall, ribbons dangling above me, fluorescent lights glowing in the corner of my eye. It’s such a blissful place to be. Half way through and the feeling of gratitude that this is my job, still hasn’t’ worn off. Lucky me! We’re in Perth this week in the re-commissioned Horsecross studio theatre. We had a great week in Kilmarnock’s Palace theatre last week. Many of the sessions last week were quietly attended with some sessions being for one baby and their adult. Although it is preferable to have as many people in to experience Blue Block as possible, the one on one session were just as valuable and exciting: the single babies and their parents still fully explored with the space with the ‘after party’ looking not dissimilar to than that of a full house. With all the one on one sessions the parent and the baby both fully engaged with each other and really delved into playing together. I also found myself playing more, exploring and re-examining the objects in the space. Much to my own and the delight of the wee ones, we found that with so few people in the space, we could really throw and bounce the flashing rubber balls around everywhere. When the lights went down for the fan dance party, this really made for quite the disco vibe.

One of my highlights of the week was an access session with children from Hillside Nursery. The children in the group were 3-4years old, and because they were older they really used the space in a way that I hadn’t seen before. I particularly enjoyed that the soft play was used for building and climbing. Even though the children were older they were still very gentle with the space, but because it was an exclusive session there was no anxiety about tiny babies being stepped on (although some toddlers do like to kiss the babies, cuddle them and then sometimes head-but/poke the babies in the eyes….) The children came along with parents, grandparents and nursery staff all of whom got fully involved in playing and exploring with the children. We had the pleasure of having Geraldine, our project photographer and film maker with us in the space. Geraldine is a joy to have with us; she embeds herself into the sessions, playing and exploring herself, and in turn the documentation seamlessly becomes another element of the session. It is no surprise then that Geraldine and her camera attract the attention of curious babies who like to press buttons and look through the lens. With the same level of ease and enthusiasm, Geraldine gently guides the wee ones to take their own pictures and see themselves and their adults through the lens. As a result we have some excellent ‘baby selfies’ some amazingly composed baby-view pictures of the space and some beautiful portraits of the parents that capture the intimate and unique moment that only occurs when a parent is looking at their child.

Another highlight from Kilmarnock was a visit from the Blue Block composer: Kim Moore. Kim brought in her viola and played live in the space. It was great to have this added layer in the Blue Block, Kim, like Geraldine, embedded herself in the space and enhanced an already stunning soundtrack with a live jam. I’ve since missed having live music, I think it really fits in with the Blue Block session, on this note perhaps Sprog Rock (another Starcatchers/Katy Wilson Project) and Blue Block could combine to create Sprog Block?

We’re now coming to the end of our week in Perth. A few moments I’d like to share are:

A Mum took the clear tubing off the ball run and used it to create a new game with her son. I love that she felt so comfortable that she was able to dismantle what was there and make something new.

Often, while playing at the O.H.P, I’ll hold a perspex shape or a coloured gel up to my face and repeated this a few times. Later on I’ll see a baby repeating this for the adult that they are with. Sometimes, perhaps because they can’t tell you, and you can’t always see it in their bodies, you don’t always know what babies are taking in. It’s in these moments that I am reminded of the importance of patience and allowing each child to take their own time as they develop and grow.

Baby shouting is great. Here in the Blue Block Studio we get a lot of shouting and squeals of excitement. I especially enjoy when it is discovered that shouting/speaking/blowing raspberries down the tubes is loads of fun. As much as I love the baby chill, I do enjoy the moments of anarchy whether that be the gleeful destruction of building block towers, or throwing all the bouncy balls around the space and laughing their heads off, or using the soft play as a rocking horse, or high fiving the mirrored wall, or eating the perspex shapes, or chewing the ribbons, or catching the flying tissue paper and ripping in to small pieces, or by anarchy do I really just mean playing? Babies. Just doing what they want, just living in the moment.

A Mum came in with a 5-week old baby, she lay her baby on the blue bean bag and placed a Budda Machine at each of her babies ear. The baby, wide awake, lay there transfixed on the mirrored wall, completely relaxed, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby so chilled out who wasn’t fast asleep. I love that Blue Block Studio can simultaneously be a gentle, calm space for some wee ones and a total rave for others.

Wee faces – Lochgelly Centre, Fife

I have recently been improvising with the Blue Block Melodica. In previous sessions there have been one or two babies that have taken interest in my ‘live music’ addition to the block, they like to watch me then have a go themselves. Today however, one by one each baby in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me, within seconds a semi circle of open-mouthed wide-eyed faces had formed in a semi circle around me, utterly transfixed. For about 2 minutes it was just me and the babies, the focus tangible in the air. However, being someone who struggles to maintain a straight face in such situations, it wasn’t long before I broke the magic by laughing into the Melodica tube. The delight of 8 wee faces staring with such captivation and sincerity was evidently too much and we swiftly moved into the baby rave section of the session: fan dance party.

Rosie Gibson, a fellow artist and friend of ours came to visit Blue Block today. I first met Rosie and Katy at North Edinburgh Arts Centre when Rosie ran a project called ‘Big Art Wee Hands’. This was a gallery space designed for children to simultaneously play and make art. Rosie had created play furniture (tunnels, blocks, bridges) from corrugated cardboard that was strong enough for the children to climb on but also able to cover in paint, glitter, whatever they wished. This was back in 2005 yet I still talk about it as an inspiring model that absolutely valued the ways that very young children do and can interact with art and play, putting them at the centre of the process and allowing them to lead.

Speaking to Rosie after the session, she said something that has stuck with me. She said we need to be in awe of children, rather than see them as unlearned. I whole-heartedly agree with Rosie. If we view babies in this way then we allow ourselves to see their many and varying capacities and capabilities, we allow ourselves to learn from and be amazed by them, and in turn allow them to teach us something new about the world.

Half way point

I am so excited by the way Blue Block is working out in the communities. Any fears and insecurities were either unnecessary or we have managed to combat them. I can’t believe the very positive response –I look into the feedback box with slight trepidation because I want to take on board any negative feedback – every single time I’ve been at Blue Block every single response is amazing. I’m starting to get suspicious… ‘Becki are you filtering these?’ I’m not used to this.. I always want to make things that are unusual and unfamiliar – which can often cause more awkward reactions. But these reactions are just so nice!  It’s a dream!

Blue Block Studio is just what we set out for it to be. which is unusual too – it didn’t make any major tangents during the process of realising it. I’ve always said in artist statements that ‘In my work I want to lift spirits, create fantastical worlds and encourage people (big and little) to think and act playfully. Blue Block studio kind of fulfills a lot of these ideas for early years and their adults. The team had a really strong collective vision that we managed to bring to life. It is, in my eyes a little haven which can work almost anywhere (that has electricity and is big enough). So far it has been in a shopping centre where we able to invite people in who were just out getting their messages, it has been in an odd green room at the back of a community centre, a few studio theatres, and it’s going on a boat to Mull soon before going to international art space Tramway for the Commonwealth Games.

When I’m inside the Block I look around and see such lovely relationships and communication – I feel like it is good for me as well as the others. I’m surprised at how relaxed and playful the adults are everywhere we go. I think it has a lot to do with Becki and her warm and non-judgemental style and her introduction – she tells us that ‘ it’s a bit like an art gallery or a museum but you get to touch and play with everything – you can’t go wrong’. Then she asks them to ‘forget about everything else and be in the moment with your baby for the next 30 minutes or so’.  I think that this set up really works.. along with Kim’s beautiful dreamy music the adults often take the lead at first, and then their baby takes over, and then they enjoy babies who they don’t know coming into their game or up onto their lap.

The informal style of Blue Block has let us have some good conversations along the way that sometimes you can miss out on after a theatre show. There’s going to be a similar ball run to ours in a child’s bedroom soon – the nurseries have picked up ideas – particularly keen on the projectors and the white space – we’ve been told it would work brilliantly in a school for children with additional support needs – and other artists have talked to me about making work for children and how they never considered it before having their own.. but would like to now. The babies’ response has been generally the happiest looking group of little people I’ve seen.. although we (Becki, Yvonne and I) have no fear of tears and all things natural with babies – they really have been very happy – I think Geraldine is about to release a film showing their feedback and squealy wee excited bodies.

I have to say that this dream like ease and happiness has a lot of behind the scenes elbow grease, and incredible problem solving skills from the legend and project / production manager Zoe Squair – she’s a quiet one who could do all the hard work and never take any credit but she deserves soooo much credit!

Becki and Yvonne are not bad too – in fact they are amazing. I feel like its their Block now and it couldn’t be in better hands.

Blue Block Studio with Artist Host Becki

Hi, I’m Becki. I’m the Blue Block Studio artist host. We’re currently in week 3 of our tour and so much as happened already that I have decided to start blogging before I forget it all! The project opened at Platform in Easterhouse on Tueday the 20^th May, we spent a week there, followed by a week at The Postings Shopping Centre in Kircaldy and are now coming to the end of a week at Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline. So far I have been amazed at how different every session feels. The space, music and lighting are set but each baby and their adult brings their own way of interacting with the space that no session is ever the same.

I was once walking around an exhibition with my Granny and she gave me some advice on how to remember the experience. She said if I tried to look at all the paintings, I wouldn’t take anything in and I would remember it as a blur. However, if I took the time to look at one painting, to really look at it and take in the detail then even if I forgot all the other paintings I would at least have one clear memory of that experience. I have been thinking about this in relation to Blue Block Studio, I won’t be able to remember all the sessions but there may be moments that stand out.

General Observations so far….

I’ve noticed that when babies are excited, they look at the thing they are excited by really intensely and wriggle their arms and legs.

The older babies that come in love the ball run. It has made quite a number of toddlers laugh and scream with delight. They also love putting the balls in the tubes. They can do this for quite some time.

The Postings, Kirkcaldy

A mother laid her baby on the floor at the foot of the fan and held the gold ribbon over her baby’s face, the baby, about 6 months old was lying there mesmerised as her mother laughed.

 A ninth month old picked up a yellow block and didn’t let go of for the entire session. He moved around and played with other things without ever putting it down.

Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline

Yvonne and I have decided to try a healthy tour where we don’t eat a shed load of sugar and get some yoga (and sometimes boxing training) into each day.  We did a lovely gentle session of yoga on Thursday which included the boat pose http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/489. Half an hour later we’re mid Blue Block session and I see a baby lying on the silver mat. She’s on her back and is lifting her head, arms and legs slightly off the floor and stays in that position without breaking a sweat. This baby is using her core muscles to lift her limbs up. Amazing.

We also had a ‘first climb’ in a Kirkcaldy session last week. It’s made me think about a baby’s muscles and the importance of having things to climb up, lie on, roll around on.  We spend the first few years of our lives in constant adventure mode then somehow end up sitting around a lot, for instance I’m currently sitting at a desk at my laptop. Thinking about these adventure babies makes me want to go out and climb on stuff.

In yesterday’s session a mother came in with her sleeping daughter. As she lifted her daughter out of the pram her daughter woke up. I wonder what it’s like for babies constantly waking up in new places. As an adult one generally wakes up in the place where one lay down to sleep. Imagine napping and waking up to a giant blue block filled with magical lights and cool soft play. Babies. Ultimate Adventurers.

Lochgelly Centre, Lochgelly

Wee faces.

I have recently been improvising with the Blue Block Melodica. In previous sessions there have been one or two babies that have taken interest in my ‘live music’ addition to the block, they like to watch me then have a go themselves. Today however, one by one each baby in the room stopped what they were doing and turned to look at me, within seconds a semi circle of open-mouthed wide-eyed faces had formed in a semi circle around me, utterly transfixed. For about 2 minutes it was just me and the babies, the focus tangible in the air. However, being someone who struggles to maintain a straight face in such situations, it wasn’t long before I broke the magic by laughing into the Melodica tube. The delight of 8 wee faces staring with such captivation and sincerity was evidently too much, though we all moved on, that moment of magic remained, lingering in the air taking us in to the fan dance party.

 Rosie Gibson, a fellow artist and friend of ours came to visit Blue Block today. I first met Rosie and Katy at North Edinburgh Arts Centre when Rosie ran a project called ‘Big Art Wee Hands’. This was a gallery space designed for children to simultaneously play and make art in. Rosie had created play furniture (tunnels, blocks, bridges) from corrugated cardboard that was strong enough for the children to climb on but also able to cover in paint, glitter, whatever they wished. This was back in 2005 yet I still talk about it as an inspiring model that absolutely valued the ways that very young children do and can interact with art and play, putting them at the centre of the process and allowing them to lead.

 Speaking to Rosie after the session, she said something that has stuck with me. She said we need to be in awe of children, rather than see them as unlearned. I whole-heartedly agree with Rosie. If we view babies in this way then we allow ourselves to see their many and varying capacities and capabilities, we allow ourselves to learn from and be amazed by them, and in turn allow them to teach us something new about the world.

The Fisherrow Centre, Edinburgh

Three mums lay their three babies on the silver mat. The babies lie there wriggling and holding on to one another, looking up at the canopy above.

Yvonne and a wee boy play at the overhead projector. Yvonne holds the perspex to her face, the wee boy copies. They do this for quite some time, both are giggling.

The fans come up, the lights come down, the ribbons fly, tissue paper soars into the air, the spinny coloured wheel is moving around the room, the music builds, babies are dancing and squealing into the wind. It’s a full on baby rave.

Why we made Blue Block Studio

Early childhood is…a period of momentous significance for people growing up in our culture. By the time this period is over, children will have formed conceptions of themselves as social beings, as thinkers, as language users, and they will have reached certain important decisions about their own abilities and their own worth.

Margaret Donaldson, Professor of Developmental Psychology, Edinburgh University

I’ve been working on new types of experience for under 5s for about 6 years now with Starcatchers. We are always experimenting. I’m interested in how arts experiences affect young children and their adults – I’m always thinking about what is important to offer young children/babies and their parents, what we miss in our lives at the moment and how the arts can provide this. I want to uplift people’s spirits with what I make – even if it’s just for 1/2 an hour.

Doing theatre for babies is to explore the unknown. It goes against common sense. It’s political. It’s also necessary, I believe, because babies have a right to beauty and they’re not always exposed to it. Theatre for babies implies commitment, but a commitment that draws us in. It’s the opposite of cynicism. It’s hope in its purest form. It’s an attempt to talk with the beginning of the world. Veronique Cote, theatre director

This particular project – Blue Block Studio– looks at genuine connection, interaction and play between an adult and a child. At a time when the government is attempting to’ schoolify’ children younger and younger, testing and ticking boxes in a ‘one size fits all’ programme.

We must value play as vital to physical and mental development.

With Blue Block Studio we want to focus on this early time in life and encourage the possibility for connected play.

Albert Einstein said Play is the highest form of research.

Creative play fosters divergent thinking, the capacity to think ‘outside the box’ imagining ideas and solutions to problems that go beyond convention.  Divergent thinking is a threat to totalitarianism. It is essential to democracy.  If we constrict children’s opportunities for creative play from birth, they won’t even begin to know how to generate new ideas, challenge existing norms, or revel in their own creativity’.

Susan Linn, Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

We want to provide a sense of freedom, physically.

We want to make a safe environment – when you look around there are very few places that have thought about babies, and how they can be in the space. Sometimes they are determined to explore but there are few public places you can let them down to crawl.

Giving our infants a safe environment with opportunities for free, unconfined, and self-directed movement fosters their innate desire to explore, practice and perfect physical skills. They are then naturally geared toward a lifelong inclination to exercise, which (as stacks of research conclude) will lead them to a longer, healthier, (brainier) and happier life. Janet Lansbury, Child Care Educarer

I’ve experimented in the past with including a narrative in work for 0-2 year olds – knowing that it is really there for the parents, the babies don’t need it necessarily. I’ve also experimented frequently with work in the context of ‘theatre’, but from a visual art background I am more drawn to white spaces. We are making something closer to an art studio than a theatre experience. It is interactive – the children create some of the images, working with the idea that young children can create and play unselfconsciously – they make instant fleeting sculptures, images – things can fall down and move on, as at this age children are not generally precious about the things they make.

Many little children, I’ve found, don’t want to enter a dark space – so we are trying out a white space with a low door so you can get a feel for the space before entering.

We are exploring the idea that sometimes less is more. We want to avoid visual clutter and sound clutter. Babies pick up sounds so sensitively – for example if you read them a story when the telly is on it’s over stimulating.

In Blue Block we are hoping people will let their babies absorb the sounds we’ve created.

Blue Block Studio is a special opportunity for 1-1 interaction between adult and baby aged between 0-24 months. It is an unusual place for 0-2 year olds and their parents or carers that makes a very small dent (but hopefully a nice dent) into the lack of spaces made for them.

Katy

We’ve created a video with ideas of ways to enjoy Blue Block Studio with your baby: 10 things to do in Blue Block Studio

 

 

Babies, tiny babies

It’s 3.20 am and I’m wide awake – so might be the lovely mums and babies who joined us yesterday [10.04.14] for a Blue Block development day – and are keeping my head buzzing.

It was an achievement to get 5 babies under 8 weeks old and their mums in our space. Getting out of the house on time is hard at that age.  I’m buzzing with the challenge of their needs and their parent’s within the block.

The mums said they were shattered. The babies were new to looking around – maybe they could only see centimetres in front of them…it was hard to tell. For the tinies we hope to be providing a lovely atmosphere, it could be like a giant immersive mobile, which sparkles and reflects coloured lights – where they explore the things around, or their parent’s face, or a new face, or a  pair of toddler legs waddling past. They hear Kim’s twinkly, popping and glowing music and the voices around them in a positive atmosphere.

Tricky thing is that everyone is a part of creating this atmosphere. But how do you get everyone in the right frame of mind?
I think the babies will be totally loving our space, the bigger challenge is relaxing the parents. The babies will feel if their parent is stressed at all .

“Your infant may not be able to tell you that you seem stressed or ask you what is wrong, but our work shows that, as soon as she is in your arms, she is picking up on the bodily responses accompanying your emotional state and immediately begins to feel in her own body your own negative emotion,” study researcher Sara Waters, of New York University

I wish we could organise a yoga class before to get everyone into the best mind set. We’ll just have a few minutes, a few words  to find a way of shaking off our adult tensions -to try to make the shoulders go down, their eyes  widen, their hearts and brains open up. Just to be ready to play in the here and now with their baby for about 40 minutes.

“We need to look at the whole of life through the eyes of a child” Henri Matisse, painter

We need to set up the experience so that people have a sense of how to approach it. We want people to be active and open – the way you might play in a child’s area in a museum or maybe in soft play. We have called it a creative play space in the hope that people will arrive expecting to play. We also want them to know that they can’t do anything wrong and neither can their babies . It’s not going to be a passive experience like going to the theatre – the adult and baby will be entertaining each other -will be likely to be looking at each other – to be interacting and  connecting – even if the babies are tiny and the interaction seems subtle – it’s still the earliest form of play.The tiny babies are possibly the hardest audience – their reactions are harder to read sometimes and you need to pay close attention to get an idea of how they are responding. For that reason I can imagine the parents getting a bit more  frustrated and wanting entertained more than the parents of even a 6 month old who might react, play and interact in more clear and potentially satisfying way. We need to think about this and how to approach it .. Becki ( our artist host who will run the studio ) will help with this.. I’m thinking maybe Becki could be like a  DJ or a VJ but  more of an EJ or  PJ ( environment jockey or a play jockey-  just made that up) and help people  to play .

New mums tend to want to talk to each other for reassurance. It’s a time where people are can be particularly sensitive, sometimes feeling their whole life has been chucked up in the air and they have lost the control they once had. We want to find a way that coming to Blue Block allows the adults to relax and not feel the need to talk as much.

In the space we hope it will be about the adult connecting quietly with their baby and letting their babies absorb the ambient sounds we’ve created.

When they are so little I think we are often out of practise of play. We watched two dads of two years olds in the afternoon yesterday  play in our space without inhibition. These particular dads  seemed to find it easy to be childlike instantly and were such a positive influence in the room. It would be good to see how dads of tiny babies respond. ( I know they will all be different!)  I really hope that Blue Block appeals to men, and they want to bring their little ones.

I have been doing some research into positive environments for little children – their need for hidey spaces as well as open spaces. So that’s coming into Blue Block at the moment.
We want things to be different from what you get at home – maybe simpler,  less cluttered , different objects to look at. There will be no ‘toys’ in the space. It’s an edit of interesting things… something a bit magical.. most of which has been hand made by the team.

The big blue block is being built by  Bscenic the builders (Bob actually!-That’s a lot of ‘Bs!’) at the moment – well not right now as its not quite 4am.  Above is a photo of the build plans designed by myself and the team and drawn up by the expert Neil Wilson ( my dad)  Thought it might be interesting to see… only 1 week until we have an actual blue block to go inside! 

Right now…back to bed for me…I’ll be wakened in a couple of hours by my two year old.

 

Katy x

“We both like rainbows..”

I’ve worked with the Katy for a few years on a couple of different projects. She first asked me to work with her while she was doing a long term residency at the Tramway in Glasgow. I think she saw some kind of similarity in our approaches to making art, even though what we both do looks quite different we have a really easy way of working together which is a lot of fun. To sum this up from my point of view; we both like rainbows, interesting shapes and making things out of coloured paper. Its a very hands on visual way of working and absolutely about taking risks, experimenting and being imaginative.

So far the development work for Blue Block Studio has been a bit like intermittently taking a step inside Katy Wilson’s head, a nice escape from the mundanity of the real world into a place made out of soft shapes, coloured light, flashing balls and beautiful mesmeric music. That’s not to say its not serious work, I really enjoy the uncompromising level of collaboration, commitment and above all insight into what the world might be like for a very tiny person. A typical development session looks to me like a spectral art installation cum obstacle course consisting of obscure surfaces, sparkly paper, high-tech gadgetry and relentless optimism.

As a father of two small people (I have two daughters aged one and three) its great to be working on something that I can test out at home – an instant focus group can be assembled under the kitchen table to gauge the durability of a sculptural music box or explore the possibilities of very small video projectors. Both were a big hit and the music box is still just about in one piece! It makes sense to me that there should be people thinking about and making really exciting and engaging places for these small but infinitely playful little people. I hope that the things that parents and babies discover together in Blue Block Studio will be experiences that they can take home with them to inform the way that they continue to play together under their kitchen tables and beyond.

Ewan Sinclair
Visual Artist