Joyous Exploratorium
Traveling Creative Expression and Education Center
In a time marked by division, exasperated by oppression, with generational patterning plucked from connective threads and showing the age of fraying, efforts to remember common humanity, and reparations for people and place are needed. Efforts that spark creative expression, resilience, exploration of history, self and surroundings are examples of unifying healing modalities.
It is in this vein that I launch a "Joyous Exploratorium", a traveling community-based resource center in the state of Maine and starting in the rural region of the Central Highlands. The objective of this roving resource center is to instill a sense of wonder for the natural world- to bring closer the individual to the sense of connection with an “other”- to foster imagination, stimulate curiosity and creative expression. I consider this project a mobile, service-based, multimedia public art work that emphasizes reclaiming time and quality interactions.
Components:
1. Digital Listening and Storytelling Station, in Partnership with Voices from Home, Oral History Project in Central Maine
2. Readers Theatre bringing archived narratives, and first-hand accounts to life for neighborhood audiences
3. Nature Library: An interactive creative work and play-space to explore the external world.
4. Creative Expression and Education Resources: typewriter, treadle-powered sewing machine, art and makers supplies with opportunities for creatives, teachers and activists of all kinds to teach and share around the county.
4. Culminating exhibits at venues surrounding the Piscataquis "Frontier" County (such as Central Hall Commons and Piscataquis Regional Food Center) to widen discussion, curiosity and inquiry of this particular rural social fabric.
5. Accessible resources to meet basic needs will always be "on deck"
(ie food access information, financial support, hotspot for wifi, books, contact information for supports-oriented organizations)
This work doesn't just belong to me.
The work of Joyous Exploratorium as connector and weaver between neighbors and towns is a communal process.
This truck doesn't move without a deep understanding of what this project means to the community.
What would you like to learn?
What would you like to say?
What do you need?
Send Inquiries and Feedback to: Merrilee c/o aeonsbydesign@gmail.com
