The FrankenToyMobile will officially be retiring this month! Our final workshop will be on August 15th, in the same location as our very first public event: Davis Square Park, about a mile south of our home.
Since the FrankenToyMobile hit the streets in summer 2015—this is our fifth summer of programming!—we have offered over 100 free public workshops all around Chicago, especially on the South and Southwest sides, in partnership with so many wonderful local groups and with more than 5,000 total workshop participants. It is hard to sum up in few words what this project has meant to us, and of course it's not about the numbers, and it's not even necessarily about the toys. We're proud and grateful to have been able to provide an opportunity for people of all ages to come together—to meet each other, to create together, to rethink and see new possibilities in objects and the world around them, to share joy in the public spaces of their communities. We feel honored and humbled that so many people entrusted us with their ideas, their visions, their places, and their time.
What's next for us? While Andrés Lemus-Spont and I are officially retiring the FrankenToyMobile as a project and activity, we do intend to continue our mobile making practice (including our involvement with the Mobilize Creative Collaborative), likely using the same physical bicycle to offer activities other than FrankenToy-making. We are still committed to the values and drive behind this project, and we want to make room for other ways of engaging, questioning, and making.
We invite you to participate in one of our final workshops, if you can (schedule online). A new addition we're especially excited about is that we will be joined for these by four Guest Artists! Since the founding of the FrankenToyMobile, we have hired teens/young adults (often former students of ours) to co-facilitate FrankenToyMobile workshops with us. Something we've been wanting to do for a while—and finally have been able to do—is invite a few of these individuals to serve as Guest Artists by leading their own workshops alongside the platform that relate to their own creative practices (you will also still be able to make FrankenToys at these events). We're excited for you—and us!—to learn from our Guest Artists in these coming workshops! We'll be sharing more info about each Guest Artist—Emmanuel Dunagan, Margo O’Neill, Simone Reynolds, and Alisha Webster—and their workshop @ https://instagram.com/frankentoy.
We are sad to let the FrankenToyMobile project go, but also excited to see what we can open ourselves up to learn and do next. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this project one of the most rewarding experiences of our personal and creative lives. <3
Image description: Three FrankenToys—toys made of parts of other toys—sit in the foreground. In the background, children and adults gather a modified bicycle, which has toys, tools, and fasteners on its tabletop. Photo by Sara Pooley.