From the Sandy Spieler digital collection
Back when I was in library school, I was introduced to makerspaces, and I got hooked. I fell in love with this idea of playing in the library and creating something out of scraps. I leaned into learning from my mistakes and found my own intersection of art and technology. I loved creating in the library as much as I loved getting lost in a book. The idea of making tools available to people and showing them how to use those tools stuck with me. I think that’s what access to resources means. A resource can be a 3D printer or a digital document, or a ledger from the 1850s.
If you aren’t familiar with makerspaces, they are spaces where people can explore concepts with hi-tech or low-tech tools or equipment. Users are afforded the instruction, time, and grace to construct things outside of their usual trade, like woodworking, laser or 3D printing, sewing, or robotics.
Arduino microcontroller
After my first introduction to makerspaces, I prototyped a home security system using an Arduino microcontroller, a solderless breadboard, and jump wires. I learned a ton from the experience and gained more confidence with the technology. I felt as if I had harnessed something and brought it closer. The tech just wasn’t that aloof anymore.
I think making is a through-line to creativity and essential for deeper learning and progress. This was one reason I thought that providing access to digitization tools in our memory lab was an important addition to our library here at Hennepin History.
We recently completed an oral history collection with Kim Heikkila of Spotlight Oral History in which the narrators were steeped in making. In the Heart of the Beast Theater’s Circle of Water Circus (COWC) oral histories describe making on many different levels that all came together to make the production as successful as it was and as memorable as it will remain.
If you haven’t seen the Circle of Water Circus exhibit in our main gallery, you’re missing out. Puppeteer Sandy Spieler co-curated the exhibit, and in a few hundred square feet, the exhibit immerses the viewer in that incredible performance – the one that traveled down the Mississippi in the early ‘80s with “25 adults, five children, and two dogs”. COWC took the maker attitude toward everything: let’s write a play, let’s build puppets, let’s build a boat, let’s learn how to sail, let’s learn how to play music to enhance our play, let’s build a circus, let’s travel down the Mississippi on our boat, and who’s night is it to cook!
In spite of all the hard work for the show, narrator Kevin Kling labels joining the cast as one of the best decisions he ever made. Steven Epp who played trumpet in the band was also a puppeteer. He joined the production to act but started making puppets for COWC, drawn in by the power of the medium.
Performers appreciated the political nature of the performance as well. “We were all pretty much of the mind that the Western mindset that had driven us all forward to this point had some serious flaws…especially in its relationship to the land,” Bob Hughes said. Hughes played the accordion…on stilts.
I can’t do these oral histories justice in this blog post. You have to listen to them for yourselves. They’re available on our MNCollections site. You can listen as well as read the transcripts.
Circle of Water Circus Oral History Narrators:
| B292OH1 Lucinda Anderson |
| B292OH2 Steven Epp |
| B292OH3 Robert Hughes |
| B292OH4 Kevin Kling |
| B292OH5 Larry Long |
| B292OH6 Nanci Olesen |
| B292OH7 Esther Ouray |
| B292OH8 Jim Ouray |
| B292OH9 Marg Rozycki |
| B292OH10 Steve Sandberg |
Written by Michele Pollard |Hennepin History Museum Archivist
This project was financed in part by funds provided by the state of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.
