Week 10: Alissa

Immaterial Labours Expo (Phenomicon)

Being a host

Our set up went really well. The majority of the group turned up the night before and filled all of the glitter and confetti balloons. We put up our gazebo and strung up all of our strings. We taped on the tarp and the nonslip mats. We pumped up all of the empty balloons that went along the sides as decoration and stuck them on. 

I went home and made some more popping tools and the first larger white dot. 

The next morning the other group member blew up all the confetti and glitter balloons while I filled and blew up all the water balloons. I was doing this in the bathroom by myself for a while but Holly came and helped me when they were done with the other balloons. Krista also printed a small sign and the yellow and black striped trip hazard tape to go on the front and back raised lips of the tarp. 

We had a wee meeting about our roles and before we knew it we had visitors crawling through their own spinal cord (tunnel from health and safety) and had to start greeting our visitors and moving them into the expo. 

It took us a few groups to get ourselves into the right rhythm but once we had found it, everything ran soo smoothly and easily. Every time we had a new challenge or a problem, we handled it very quickly and effectively. For example when the first person came through carrying a bag, we had not thought or prepared for that situation, but we just started passing them through the balloon tunnel before we started asking them questions and placing them on a chair at the end our offering. When we started running out of one colour of balloons we just had a very quick meeting between groups of visitors and switched resultant colours for the answers to that question. 

I think our interactions were all polite but direct. I hope the visitors never felt confused or unsafe. As the group member that interacted with people after they had had their balloon popped on them, I saw a lot of different emotions, which was our goal. People looked nervous before their balloon was popped, they were laughing at themselves and with their friends who had been watching them, they were joyfully playing in the confetti as it fell around them. The only thing I didn't see were people getting annoyed. Even the few people who got a water balloon and didn't have their hood up. They just laughed and realized how unimportant little unplanned, unpredictable or uncontrollable things like getting a tiny  bit of water on your head can be. 

I was very happy with our offering, and our teams ability to resolve issues and work together so smoothly. I think people enjoyed our offering and it set a good playful mood for the rest of the expo.