How does Ecobuttons run

A Summary

    This is how I envision the activity running:  

• This is a week long activity which would grow and evolve within that time span thanks to the cooperation and collaboration of visitors.

• The activity will be suitable for both school groups and general visitors.

• The exhibit space would begin as an unordered collection of ‘buttons’

• These ‘buttons’ I imagine as coloured disks on which are images of the creatures they represent These creatures represent entire species. The designs must be colourful and full of personality and I would hope to collaborate with an artist to achieve this. The creatures should be very simple to begin with.

• The activity can be participated in by a limited group of people at a time.

As the visitor enters the exhibit space they are given the opportunity to ’adopt’ a creature of their choice.

• This will remain that participant’s creature for the rest of the session. This creature represents not only an individual but an entire species.

• The participant will be given a card picturing the creature of their choice, a card which will also present statistics for various attributes of that creature, such as it’s agility, intelligence, brutality, sociability etc…

• The activity will now progress by two of the participants being chosen at random to partake in a ‘battle’. For this, I get inspiration from the recent Pokemon/Digimon phenomenon and also the popular card game Top Trumps- in this game players are required to battle with a chosen statistic (usually their highest) and basically, whoever has the highest is the winner.

• In this case, these battles would represent battles for food, or for habitat for instance.

• The ‘winner’ of this battle would be then entitled to link up more of the ‘buttons’ in the exhibit space. Precisely, they could link up two of their ‘buttons’ to one of their adversaries buttons.

• The ‘loser’ of the battle can then if they wish design extra features for their creature (they could create bigger claws for example)- this will emphasize the dynamic quality of nature, something that never stands still. Bigger claws equals bigger statistics.

• The activity proceeds in this way, with two adversaries been chosen each time. The activity continues for a set number of fights or until all participants have had a chance to fight.

• Each new group of participants will continue building the network from where it was left off before, adopting from the same selection of creatures, and struggling to survive in the same way, and linking their ‘buttons’ in the same fashion.

• On a larger scale, we begin to see structure emerge. Despite these local struggles between participants (the old nineteenth century notion of ‘survival of the fittest’) we see that on this larger scale as ecosystem is built up by the interactions and in many cases cooperation between its inhabitants.

As you can see then, although the concepts might at first seem difficult, in practise it is actually very simple. The question that the activity should bring about is- ‘this is how nature works, how can we apply what we have learnt here into building our own human systems, the structures of society; emphasizing cooperation and equality?…’

As regards to education, the activity will increase the understanding of how ecosystems work and about food-webs and evolution. But aside from this I am designing the activity in a way so that it encourages the understanding of citizenship, another vital important of a child’s education.

But, most of all, this activity is fun. And it works on the same basis as games that children and adults have already played. Children love to adopt animals. They love even more to fight with them. They love to make and to build. But the activity is, I feel, weighty enough to interest adults too. Put together, I believe that this activity represents an opportunity for learning that is also entertaining. An opportunity that I believe should not be missed.

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