The Inventing Box

Alright, everyone. Let's talk Inventing Boxes.

If, in making a program budget, I had to narrow the scope of all of my art-making supplies down to one thing in the whole world, it would be materials for an Inventing Box. I'm being serious. I could do without paint, markers, crayons, clay, and canvas. Gone. Take away the pencils, the pastels, the glitter, and the easels. Easy. All I really need in this world is a plastic tub filled with random recyclables, scissors for everyone, and my body weight in brightly-colored masking tape.

My love affair with the Inventing Box began two summers ago, when I was trapped for hours at a time with two children who were too smart for their own good (or my sanity). Summer can be a terrifying time when you are charged with making sure children don't descend into primal chest-beating and grunting. We had forgotten to put the recycling out on the curb for pick-up a few days prior, and the bin overflowed, sending random plastic brick-a-brack here and yon. Three-year-olds, you might be aware, are attracted to brick-a-brack. I think it has to do with magnets or String Theory or something. Either way, I walked into the kitchen to find this dear sweet precocious boy wearing a (thankfully clean) yogurt container on his head, insisting it was a "brain scratcher." The three of us spent the rest of the day using an unholy amount of tape to make "inventions" from egg cartons, bottles, old cardboard boxes, straws, bottle caps, wire, string, and clothespins.

Since that fateful day, almost every program, camp, class, and workshop I have done (at the Perot, the Greater Denton Arts Council, and at Oil and Cotton) has involved inventing boxes and otherwise recycled (a,k.a. I AM POOR AND SO ARE  YOU AND WANT TO MAKE THINGS WITH PEOPLE) supplies. For toddlers up through adults, people of all ages and backgrounds that have interacted with me at a museum have been converted to the Ideology of the Inventing Box.

My reasons for being utterly devoted to Inventing Boxes are various and sundry, and I decided that they would best be related in the sonnet below:

For sooth, that budget creepeth into red,
When desperately do I attempt to buy
Some brushes for to paint thine wint'ry head.
"Expense!" Unload my cart and mourn must I.

"A box!" I cry, "I dream it to be full
Of buttons, bits of styrofoam and wood,
Of scraps and bobbins, sheets of felted wool,
And cardboard cut with notches would be good.

To fix these things together, you must think!
As teacher, mine's to only lend a hand.
Exertion makes your cheeks a little pink...
When, finally! It works! And by YOUR hand.

Though painting is a fine and noble skill,
Inventing Boxes are my greatest thrill.


That's right, friends. I love Inventing Boxes so much, I wrote a sonnet about them. I love making Invention Boxes because they are generally cheap, it is fun to go looking for strange building materials to include, it is a sustainable/responsible/less wasteful practice, and it serves as a way to offload some of the random objects I hoard in the name of "but it will be useful someday!" Pedagogically, I love Inventing Boxes because they demand problem solving and creative reasoning. Inventing Boxes allow everyone to create together but don't demand that everyone's products look the same. In my experience, my students have seemed less intimidated to make objects using an Inventing Box as opposed to painting or drawing or even using clay. This is purely anecdotal, but I hear "but I'm BAD at making art" way less often when using an Inventing Box than I do when I ask people to draw or paint. I think Inventing Boxes frame "mistakes" in a positive light. And there's something oddly appealing about playing with "trash" (don't deny it!).

Throughout Summer Arts Camp last week, I had a BLAST inventing things with the kids. A while week of cardboard, recycled scrapbook paper, rope, vinyl table cloths, and roughly 30 rolls of colorful duct and masking tape. And, throughout the week, things broke. Cardboard cabins and teepees came apart overnight. Chimneys fell off of houses. Heads, somewhat traumatically, came off of birds, and hands got tied up in knots. But Arts Scouts, I would say, are not to be afraid of mistakes. Making is a process. So if what you just tried didn't work, let's try it again!

But by the end of the week, all the kids would repeat with me when they came to me with a problem:

"So how are we going to fix it?"

A finished campsite installation!

Our Recycled River!

Construction is serious business.

The inside of Megacabin - some industrious boys combined their cabins into a longer one! This was a week-long undertaking with lots of "fixing."

And no campsite installation is complete without a resident owl!