A successful Maker Faire

Maker Faire San Diego went great! I had too much chocolate, which was the goal (much better than running out). I kept busy almost the entire weekend, with only a few short breaks. It was so much fun promoting making, and spreading the spirit of kintsugi. While I plan not to present next year (I'd like to see the rest of the Faire) I learned that I really love advocating for making, and I'd like to do more.

Many people were interested in doing chocolate kintsugi themselves. I have instructions posted on this page, but I should create more visual explanations.

I believe in always striving to improve. In a way, I see myself as a continual kintsugi project, always trying to find my own weaknesses and strengthen them. In that spirit, here are some improvements and changes I could make if I did this again. 

• Have examples of real kintsugi to show. Many people asked to see actual kintsugi, and I didn't have any.
• Recruit some helpers! I enjoyed talking to people, but I spent two full days without any breaks. I didn't get to see any of the other exhibits, which was a bit disappointing.
• Get permission to distribute food, and then get funding, so it isn't all out of pocket.

P.S. This was posted over a year after Maker Faire. Oops. Better late than never!

The path to chocolate kintsugi

When I first heard that San Diego was going to host a Maker Faire, I knew I wanted to be involved. I've been making things for as long as I can remember, but my latest interest is kintsugi. I love the ethos behind kintsugi: the rejection of waste, the honoring of history, and the deliberate process of creating a quality repair. Since I just got involved in kintsugi I don't have much to display, and the time intensive process isn't conducive to live demos. My passion is getting other people excited about science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM), so a hands-on booth would be ideal.

So here is my problem: what can I have for visitors to do? If it is too time consuming to demonstrate kintsugi, how can I possibly expect others to do it?

The obvious answer is to use a more modernized version of kintsugi, substituting epoxy mixed with metal flakes for the multiple applications of lacquer and metal. It seems like the perfect answer; it dries much more quickly, and isn't allergenic. There are even kits for doing this style of kintsugi. However, I have two problems with this solution:

1. The fast process leaves out the fine detail steps of sanding and applying the delicate line of gold. I feel that the time spent is an invaluable part of the process, highlighting the value of the object being repaired. This accelerated technique doesn't provide that same feel of quality that comes with a careful repair.
2. It is very unlikely that the visitors would have a loved, but broken, item with them to be repaired. I could provide inexpensive broken items, but the point of kintsugi is to maintain items with history and prevent waste, not make more of it.

Between these two, both of my core values of kintsugi are lost: the attention to detail and the honoring of history. I want to get people excited about kintsugi, repair, and making, but this approach doesn't work for me.

I thought of many ways to address these limitations: promotions to get attendees to bring broken objects with them, multi-part workshops to allow more time consuming repairs, and more. After some time I decided that I wasn't approaching the problem in the right way. Maker Faire is about promoting and teaching making, not actually doing the making. So I needed to do something to promote kintsugi within the limitations. I would have to provide the broken objects and accept that they would be repaired quickly then discarded.

Those of you who read the title of this post should be able to see where this is going: 

Chocolate. 

Chocolate is relatively easy to work with (easy to learn. hard to master - more on that in a later post). I can provide whole chocolates in various shapes, the visitors can break them, fix them with melted chocolates, possibly even finish them off with gold (colored sugar), then consume them. 

If I do this right, visitors will learn about kintsugi, have fun, and end up with some edible art. I'm hoping that I'll find some others who are interested in learning traditional kintsugi with me, or at least inspire them to try it themselves. To that end, I created this website, applied to the Maker Faire, and bought some chocolates and chocolate tools. I've done a quick proof of concept that worked quite well, so stay tuned as I fine tune the process and (hopefully) prepare a Maker Faire booth.