House-About

We were asked to provide a creative play space for families attending the Winterfest. A celebration of and for all the groups and community involved in Transition Town Totnes. A day to invite others to see what has been achieved in the last 5yrs and the opportunity to join in co-creating the future. We made mice from toilet roll tubes, christmas crackers and sock puppets for the puppet theatre we incorporated into one end of house-About. Paint and brushes were used with colourful abandon on 2 sides of the house which were built of cardboard.

The next event was The Big Draw on 28 th October up in the Rotherfold, a beautiful under used square at the top of Totnes high Street. The day was bright and crisp. We had amassed stacks of cardboard and the Theme was “ taking a line for a walk into the future”. We had black and white paint and chalk. Participants were asked to draw there visions of themselves and community in the future and we had some very beautiful and thought provoking images created. House about had a complete cardboard makeover. This event was co-ordinated by Janey Hunt and myself with our TTTAG hats on and we were ably assisted by Sarah Bainbridge and Ruth Rae, House-About's team as well as local illustrators, Wendy Howarth and Bethan Welby

House-About still had more to offer and I was asked to provide the kids space at the Eco Homes Fair in October 2011. From the the comment of one little girl when asked at the Transition streets event what she thought House-About needed she said, “ a cooker, a washing machine ..” So I decided to offer the opportunity to make all these appliances and more out of cardboard boxes and other scrap. We also made bees on sticks to mark plants bees love in our gardens and their basic formula using a cork and a wooden screwer progressed to butterflies and flowers then roof top gardens with the inspired assistance of my co workers. Some children made dolls houses from the cardboard boxes and there was a lot of child led creativity enabled and encouraged by the three of us. We gave out stickers to 30 children by way of awarding and keeping track of numbers (as we remembered) and many of them stayed with us for 2-3hours, some for the whole event. By the end of the day House-About had a light shad

Next event was Dartington Primary School Summer Fête to support the consultation process for the proposed Transition Housing development in Dartington. Parents could discuss there hopes and concerns for the new development while their children played in the house and drew pictures of their dream home and/or garden. This activity was offered to adults as well with some lovely results. One man said that it had been a long time since anyone had asked him what his dream anything was.  Adults rarely get offered the space to dream in creatively as there is so much emphasis on product and doing. This demonstrated to me how important it is to have this type of creative space available to all ages of people, so that they can take time out of the doing and creatively look at their goals and dreams in a safe playful space.

The first event House-About appeared was the Transition Streets coffee morning on July 2 nd 2011 in the Civic Hall, Totnes. This event was to celebrate the success of the first Transition streets scheme and invite and inform new people to take part in the next wave. House-About provided a creative play area for children, allowing their parents to relax and share. We were busy from the start, making pin wheels from recycled materials and inviting children to draw pictures of their street and neighbours to pin up on the outside of the play house. House was popular with very young children under 3yrs. It provided a small safe shelter in a large and busy hall. Older children stayed longer and after making a pin wheel started to create objects of their own design from the materials provided.

Why House-About? When I first became involved in Transition Town Totnes, I joined the art group. In the year and a half since arriving in Totnes I had seen very little of Transition events being a single parent to a 4yr old, I was not able to attend every meeting. Talking with other parents in my local childrens centre and around play parks not many people seemed to understand what Transition as all about. I joined the art group with the intention of finding some fellow artists to create some public events which would engage the public in a playful and creative way on the themes of transition. I formed a splinter group of activists but we were all too busy to put into action the crazy schemes we had plenty of fun dreaming up . We did make some signs for the planters at steamer quay for the inspirational greenfingered incredable edibles. However all that talk opened a channel and  I had a midnight inspiration to create a Wendy House, which would attract children and their p