Rodas de Invenções  (Circles of Inventions)

By Paola Salmona Ricci

The project “Rodas de Invenções” (Circles of Inventions) is an initiative by

Instituto Catalisador, in Brazil, to further these dialogues and relationships and trigger a culture of creativity in public libraries as children, after reading sessions, engage in the creation of meaningful personal narratives through the construction of artifacts to be played with and shared. The criteria for choosing the materials for the kit were low-cost, reusability, easy replaceability, durability and that, together with repurposed things and clean scraps, may allow for interesting creations. As the children manipulate and create artifacts in an open-ended fashion with wooden shapes, screws, cardboard, fasteners, magnets, LEDs, alligator clips or other conductors, they have a chance to engage in creating three dimensional drafts of ideas that change as they tinker. In this process new thinking paths make space for new narratives that emerge from the children’s own creations that at the end of the session are shared with other children.