Museum Craftland

This post was contributed by Carole Ann Penney, the Museum’s queen of all things crafty, who recently inspired us to celebrate our creations and the creative process.

It’s no secret that members of the Providence Children's Museum staff community are a creative bunch – thinking up imaginative activities and programs and creative solutions for exhibits. It is kind of a secret, though, how we channel that creativity in our personal time. On Tuesday night, after the Museum closed its doors to the public, staff, AmeriCorps members and volunteers gathered for our first annual “Museum Craftland.” Inspired by Providence’s popular downtown holiday sale, we transformed the Assembly Space into a celebration of our creative community and workplace.
Almost 20 staff members came with creative work to show off, barter and sell, and many others came simply to shop and enjoy. The diversity of mediums was incredible – purses made from crocheted plastic bags, hand-stamped holiday cards, etchings, charcoal drawings, hand-printed wrapping paper, ‘zines, photos, jewelry and so much more. For those that consider themselves artists in the kitchen, there was a cookie swap of all sorts of delicious treats (and lucky for the rest of us, plenty of extras to snack on throughout the night!).
Throughout the night, there was a buzz of mutual admiration as people excitedly shared their process – from rolling scraps of magazine pages into beads, to hand-painting designs onto silk scarves to rescuing zippers from thrift stores and transforming them into flower brooches. There was lots of difficult decision making: “Well, I like this one, and I like this one…I just can’t decide!” And there was the excited arrangement of trades: “Oh! I love this print! Stop by my table and see if there’s anything you might want to trade for…”
At the end of the night, I came home with lots of inspiration and ideas, beautiful pieces of art made by people I feel connected to and a warm feeling for the wonderful Providence Children's Museum community that I’m a part of.