‘Do You Wanna Build a Spaceman’ – Street Cosmos, Blackhall
February 23, 2024
10:00–3:00 pm
Blackhall Community Centre, Blackhall, County Durham, TS27 4LG
Event passed
‘Do You Wanna Build a Spaceman’ was a free, unique, immersive, experiential science and arts workshop that represents a new high watermark for the Street Cosmos collaboration.
“This is the best day of my life!” – Ameila, aged 5.
More below…
This event built upon the 3-year relationship between Durham University’s ‘Street’ projects and Blackhall Hall Community Centre, and enabled a deeper collaboration between scientists, the centre team and local arts providers.
It sounded simple on the surface: a half-term workshop for 50 Blackhall children and their parent/carer, where they made their own spacesuit through arts and crafts, played and talked to real scientists. What the more integrated collaboration allowed us to do was:
- make an immersive theatre environment for the learning to take place
- have real NASA spacesuit smart material expertise embedded
- let the children ask questions to a world-renowned astrophysicist
- creative a narrative where the children met a ‘real’ alien and learned about theories of extra-terrestrial life from experts.
The story we created was that the children were going to travel through the ‘Blackhall Wormhole’ to an alien planet (Keplar 452-b, the “Super Earth”), where they would meet a real alien, whose language would be interpreted by Professor Martin Ward of Durham University, who had been on secondment there for 6 months.
To travel through the Blackhall Wormhole they would need to make a spacesuit. The spacesuit workshop facilitators were local artists, who in the lead up to the event had an intensive smart materials session with scientists from Durham University. Offering knowledge and expertise that could be layered and embedded into the spacesuit-making activity.
On the day, whilst the children were making their own spacesuits (which they could take home after the event) we also had real samples of spacesuit smart materials they could play with, and hear from Durham University scientists about how they are used. Once kitted-out the children then travelled through the Blackhall Wormhole to Keplar 452-b.
We were lucky to have Professor Martin Ward with us the whole day. Martin has worked on both the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes for NASA. The age range of the children in the cohort was 3 – 11. A typical lecture and Q&A would, of course, not be effective for this age group so a more creative approach was necessary, and we were lucky that Martin was very understanding of this approach. We framed it as the children were meeting an alien that only Martin could understand and interpret. The kids asked the alien questions (about how she travels, what her planet is like) but Martin answered – effectively a Q&A with an astrophysicist.
For the alien herself: Blackhall Community Centre have an interest in body painting art and had previously engaged a local agency for other events. The Street Cosmos team were happy for Blackhall to take the lead and the agency offered a number of ‘alien’ options and completely understood the theatrical experience we were creating.
As a model for a space science engagement event, it was extremely successful as the feedback from children, parents/carers alike was ecstatic, and continued through the weeks after the event had finished. Several of the children used their spacesuit as their costume for World Book Day (7 March) school dress-up.
There has been much demand for a return to Keplar 452-b
Get Involved
We’d love to hear from you! If you are a community member who’d like to bring Street Museum to your neighbourhood, or a cultural, arts or science organisation looking to connect with your communities in a direct way, a technology company with a relevant new product, or you’re just interested and want to know more – just drop Ged a line on [email protected].