Events & Workshops
Fire the Inventor workshops and activities are available for any location or event. Please contact stephen@firetheinventor.co.uk for details
Bits ‘n’ Pieces Automata Workshop November 2011
“Many thanks for giving us such a good day yesterday. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and learned so much about the basics of getting things moving. You’re both wonderfully patient teachers!” Tanya and Mike Tier
“I will say again how much I loved your course ‘bits and piece’ and it’s really given me the confidence to make all sorts of automata now!” Rebecca Fox (prop-maker & 3D illustrator)
Fire the Inventor ran its first ever one-day automata-making workshop in November 2011. The Bits ‘n’ Pieces workshop – for adults – provided a workshop space, tools, materials and a collective mechanical-making vibe, not to mention a robotic parrot which kept everyone well entertained.
See video
Make it Move workshops at the Science Museum
“We were at the Science Museum this week and made with our children your models. Our kids absolutely loved making the moving models, as did we.” Fiona Oliver and Anna Colton
We partnered with London’s Science Museum to run three days of mechanical toy workshops during the school holidays at the end of October 2011. These were workshops on an industrial scale with over 750 cardboard box automata kits being constructed by enthusiastic families in three days.
Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Conference 2011
FTI’s Ensemble automata workshop (see V&A below) turned intellectual and academic at the TaPRA conference held at Kingston Uniiversity on 8 September 2011. Theatre and performance academics and practioners gamely participated in the (theory-free) workshop and afterwards gleefully theorised on the experience, including whether a making workshop could be a performance.
Fire the Inventor at the Design Museum’s Family Day
We were thrilled to run two automata-making workshops at the Design Museum’s annual Family Day of activities, workshops and events on Sunday 26 June 2011.
The workshops were a sell-out, and set the Design Museum chattering away with madly inspired cam driven automata.
Launch Event, 25 March 2011, V&A
“What a great event you all put on Friday at the V&A so much energy and enthusiasm it was contagious I went home buzzing, so thank you for that. It was such a thrill to observe people engaging and getting stuck into making stuff”
Tamara Violaris, artist.
Fire the Inventor was launched at London’s V&A museum on 25th March 2011
Called ‘Performing Machines and Automata’, the event was part of the V&A’s hugely popular monthly Friday Lates, this one themed around The Playhouse.
The idea was to create hands-on making opportunities for visitors within a ‘backstage’ theatre workshop – a workshop for performing machines and puppets. Hectic, crowded, buzzy, you could make an automata out of cardboard boxes to take away, experiment with a cam kit, or join the Ensemble Workshop by designing a machine to add to the WORLD RECORD BREAKING line-up of 52 linked automata, which formed a snake-like chain straddling seven large tables down the centre of the room.
Plus, we had exhibits from the legendary Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, the magical DogBus push-along puppet based on Bhajju Shyam’s The London Jungle Book, and the famous mechanical Lipstick Monster created by students from London’s Rose Bruford College.
We estimate at least two thousand people passed through the Art Studio where this event was held. Comments and feedback suggest they were mightily entertained and fascinated by what they saw and made.
Thank you to everyone who came and made it such a success.
See the V&A’s own photos of the event.
Fire the Inventor’s photos
