Stone Soup...

In my Design 1 class we were told to bring material for the stone soup activity. Everyone was anxious what we are going to do as we had never heard of a stone soup that was being made without food, and we knew that according to the stone soup story three travelers tricks the villagers to contribute the food that they were hiding, and eventually the cooked food was enjoyed by everyone.  Anyway we went out of the classroom in the courtyard. All of us were pondering upon idea’s for the stone soup collaborating with each other. My group was siting on the grass and we took out all of the materials that we brought for the stone soup activity. Each one of us was coming up with different and interesting idea’s such as making a chandelier or making a lamp by folding a lot of papers. We then saw a light pole next to a tree closer to us, we thought of decorating it with the objects made with different materials that we brought with us. We started folding papers of different colors in to a cone shape and made a whole bunch of those cones. We made origami cranes and flowers. we then took all of these things to the light pole and made a circular stair case with the folded paper cones. Then we hanged cranes to the ropes that were tying the tree to the light pole, and on the tree we wrapped colorful strings and at the bottom we placed the origami flowers. 

(image by Faizan Dar)

It was a colorful and abstract piece of art. The interesting part of this activity is that in the beginning we were not sure of what we will end up making. The process of this stone soup activity was fun. Seven of us in one group contributed what ever we had in our bags, we worked on it without any arguments which was an excellent example of team work. The sad part was that in the end we had to put everything that we made in trash, but we took the origami flowers as a memory of our first stone soup with us. 

(image by Faizan Dar)

I came to learn the reason of this activity which was basically a team work. As young designers we learnt that when you are working in a team it is very important to collaborate with other team members. If you want to achieve something recognizable you have to collaborate and contribute your ideas and efforts, and you will end up enjoying the whole process. Just Like those villagers.

(image by Faizan Dar)