A short record of Summer Art, Not-School (http://small-workshop.info/sans2016) prepared by Judy Blakey.

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P L A YP L A Y -- f u lf u l ll n e s sn e s s
[ N o u n : L I G H T[ N o u n : L I G H T -- h e a r t e d n e s s ]h e a r t e d n e s s ]
Once upon a magical summer, circa 2015/16, some strange objects popped up around
Mairangi Bay village. With stifling pressures of the school term vaporised in the El Nino
heat, and the shimmering re-emergence of time to invest in being curious, our family
set out to discover what was afoot!
Granddaughter Grace led the way down to the village centre’s southern traffic circle,
where earlier in the day we had spied an incomplete helix of dark blue plastic
buckets, held together with zany coloured tape.
On closer investigation, we discovered the sculptural object on the grass beside the brick
walkway was in fact an incomplete project! The buckets divulged the story of
their complicit involvement in this intriguing project, in a cryptic graphic narrative that read:
“Ran out of time and buckets
back 2 moro
chris b”

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“Aha!” I announced assuredly to my husband (Peter) and Grace, “that must be
Chris Berthelsen, who has some Creative Community funding to try
innovative stuff in and around the Mairangi Art Centre (mac) and our
local community.”
And so, with our curiosity whetted, we headed up the hill to mac, where we
encountered some colourful inducements to come on in! We did just that,
wondering what we’d find!
Inside mac there was HEAPS of stuff and space to explore the
stuff and even though Grace was feeling pretty miserable because her braces had
just been tightened and her mouth was sore, we became distracted by the
SUMMER Art offerings and our interactions with the objects and each other.

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Grace’s discomfort dissolved ...
… whilst we conjured up a Llama family on the back wall and enjoyed
looking at Jonathan Milne’s ’go! the art of change’ textbook which had been
gifted to mac by the author a few days prior to our visit.
I returned to mac later in the week, to supervise young primary school pupils, so that
their holiday programme tutor could have a short lunch break. Most of that time was spent
outdoors, in the upper reaches of mac’s gardens, where the children became
completely absorbed in collaborating to construct a variety of shelters, using recycled
material available in the SUMMER Art. Not School space. The social
interactions during their unstructured play were fascinating, as they negotiated how to use
and share resources, so they could articulate their design concepts to achieve a range of
outcomes.
A few days later another excursion involved a Sunday morning trip to our local
Mairangi Bay beach, where we encountered a swarm of local surf club
nippers buzzing around Chris’ car. Chris’ open invitation to draw on his parked car proved
an irresistibly magnetic attraction. Although the drawing was essentially a solitary activity,
collaborative skills were needed to reach out of the way places, like the car’s roof!

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Tagging was very popular!