#smedby

[lassefredrikson]

Överraskande härligt fredagskväll när Åkerlund inbjöd till Smedbys varma källor @miaakerlund60 #smedby #varmakällor #inorrköping #fredagskväll (på/i Smedby) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsy27SolSEg/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=tnmxdw929lqp

[mathiasbohman]

Trevlig midsommar!☀️ @upplandsvasbykommun #väsby #gunnesgård #smedby

[olemon]

The Island of Öland, Smedby church: Baptismal font (lime stone) by Calcarius, early 13th century, Parrot, a wood fragment & Carl Linnaeus sketches of the 12th century church, disused in mid 19th century.

[thespiritofplay]

Yesterday we run our first spontaneous workshop. Or more like it run itself. First one of local craftsmen and also owner of the little theater in Smedbyn came to visit us with his grandsons. He is very interested in our project, because he makes wooden toys himself and also work with children doing the theater. So he often comes to visit and talk to us and when he said his grandsons are coming to see him for a day we invited them to our place. The boys were first very shy, but then when we said they can touch anything and also do their own stuff using the materials we have, they started doing things immediately and it was impossible to make them stop so their granddad asked if they can just leave them here as he needs to take care of his shop and cannot stay longer. Of course the boys stayed with us and had a lot of fun creating. They also worked as a life advertisement of our 'services'. There were two German families who came in to see what is going on in our 'store' and when they saw two boys playing they asked their children if they want to stay. Kids from one family were too shy, but other girl was quite interested and her parents decided they will leave her here as they go and visit the rest of the street. The girl was a bit slow to start and when they came back she was still making stuff so all in all they had to stay here for another half an hour and wait until she's finished. The boys stayed here for few hour and then took a short break and came back to make more things. In the evening we also had some Polish visitors, who have been living in Jönköping. There were three kids in the family and even though I said they can touch anything they were a bit scared and didn't want to even come close to things. But after a while two girls started making somethings with the materials. However it seemed parents were in a hurry and the dad kept telling them to finish already, so they left without finishing. But I said if they want to come back we are here and we are happy to run more spontaneous workshops like this. I also talked a bit with the dad and he said even though they leave in Jönköping, they never come to Huskvarna because there is nothing to do here. They were only here because his son had a football training nearby. This is the opinion we heard form some other people too, and also our own observation, especially when it comes to child visitors. Adults have shops to visit, and come here mainly for this, unless they are stray tourist coming here from the factory museum. But kids are quite bored here, and even our small workshop yesterday provided a lot of entertainment and became kind of day care, like for example in IKEA stores. I noticed few kids running up to few more interesting things like a wooden postbox or a strange looking bin, trying to open them, see if there is anything inside, or just because it's an object that sparks some curiosity, being different to museum stuff. We are thinking about working on solutions to make this area more interesting and fun for kids. We don't really know yet how it will materialise, but this is something that will come out through the workshops with preschool children and some more experiments.

[thespiritofplay]

We had eventful couple of days. At the end of last week we had some visitors coming and trying out our creations. It was Niklas, one of our hosts here and his children, reviewing our work so far. We did some playing and storytelling - the small girl was very talkative, too bad we couldn't understand her! She played with almost anything she got in her hands, the best game was to throw stones into rain drain and making the 'plop' sound. She also played horse and cart with Dawn using some of the long sticks we got from Niklas, some fresh wood similar to willow, a new material that we will use. On Moday we had a meeting at the local kindergarten with one of the teachers and Kari, our other host. We have been discussing our project and details about workshops we want to run with children and finally! we will start next week. We arranged first meeting to be on Wednesday. Most of the children and teachers are still away but some of the adults are coming back on Monday and it seems like there is enough children staying in the kindergarten over the holidays for us to have workshops with. That's a big step forward.