We closed out the week of actions with a picnic in the park near the base of the Queensboro bridge, Queens side. We had a lot of good snacks: saltines with sardines, fluffernutters, homemade cookies, chips, stuff like that.

Some of us ate strange concoctions of various foods while blindfolded. Always good for a laugh.

We made kites out of things like paper, tape, plastic bags, twigs.

Some of them flew a little bit, and we learned a lot. Yes, definitely educational.

We made K.I.D.S. kits to give out to participants from the week. This youth displays the contents of her kit: moustache, glove, stick, cape, badge, etc.

And of course, mudpies. This was a good way to wind down from a hectic week of playing at work.

Photos by Chen Tamir, Emcee C.M.

On Friday, we set up a card table near a high school in Long Island City Queens, around the time school let out. Eva had prepared a bunch of hybrid multi-user balloons by cutting and pasting balloon parts together with rubber cement. People came along and blew up the balloons: you had to work together with at least one friend, because all of them had multiple openings.

We gave all the balloons special names beginning with the letter B.

The balloons went fast, kids love them.

Photos by Emcee C.M., Eva Jung, Diana Ro, Greem

We met up at Diane’s place on Thursday for a balloon parade along Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy. You can get helium-filled balloons at lots of dollar stores for about 50 cents or less, just f.y.i.

We played around with the balloons removing our hats and filling our umbrellas and such. Then on the way back we gave them away and/or popped them all.

We met this amazing dancer along the parade route. He schooled us all! These are the types of leaders we need in the Kindness and Imagination Development Society.

Photos by Huong Ngo, I think.

On Wednesday, we did another pop-up action in midtown at lunchtime. We set up a card table and offered to make PB&J sandwiches for people passing by. To hold up their part of the bargain, folks just had to direct us as to where to find the needed ingredients on the table, since we were blindfolded and all.

Who knew making sandwiches could be such an exciting spectator sport? The man in the middle here was a returning participant from the previous day.

Things got pretty messy.

This fellow instructed Huong on how to make his sandwich using only music. Astounding!

Photos by Stephanie Beaulieu

We did a pop-up action at lunch time on Tuesday, May 20th, right outside Grand Central Station on 42nd Street. Text Me Theater was all about dramatically performing our old text messages from our cellphone archives, and performing new messages sent to us by passersby while we were on “stage” (milk crates).

We took turns and had signs around our necks with our phone numbers so as to receive texts from the audience.

Some people in the crowd got pretty into it. People started texting us their confessions, secrets, all kinds of things. A few strangers even jumped up to perform.

It was pretty neat because people could have something read out loud right on the street, but retain some anonymity. Further work in this area seems potentially fruitful!

Photos by Stephanie Beaulieu

We threw a pep rally in Herald Square from 8 to 10 a.m. Monday morning. We greeted and cheered people coming out of the subway on their way to work. Surprisingly, very few people looked annoyed, we actually got a lot of smiles and some folks even joined in on the cheering! Diane made some awesome pom-poms out of newspaper. We also had some kinda grungy looking donuts to give people, but they sure tasted good. My favorite cheer was: “BE PRO-DUC-TIVE OR UN-PRO-DUC-TIVE,” which we modified from the common ballfield cheer that goes “BE AG-RESS-IVE, B-E AG-RESS-IVE.”

Photos by Dianna Johnson

On Sunday, May 18th, we joined Elizabeth and friends for a neighborhood walk and sing on the upper west side.

As we walked around singing songs by composers famous and not who lived in that area, we made more kick-the-can ice cream along the way.

We discovered that the tin can telephone worked great for jumprope too!

After that, a few of us stopped by the steps of this cathedral and played for awhile longer.

The bannisters were nice and slick for sliding down. It was a bit chilly and wet, so we had a nice cookie hot chocolate break as well before calling it a day.

Photos by Caroline Boileau, Stephanie Beaulieu, Emcee C.M.

EMT started things off by displaying his encyclopedic knowledge of handshakes, high-fives, and hugs. He taught us what he knew going around a circle of folks we knew before and folks we met that day. Then we broke into small groups and worked on developing new secret handshakes.

Here, Emmett and Diane show us how it’s done in fine fashion.

These were some cool K.I.D.S we met in Union Square, who knew a lot of their own handshakes. They rocked the wings and tutus all day!

We met this guy who was dressed up like a pea. Remember to eat your vegetables, kids!

While we were all dressing up and high-fiving and stuff, Caroline was busy making somatic maps of everyone’s aches and pains. She listened to people talk about their pains and put them down on paper with watercolors. It was very therapeutic, much like our playtime.

We finished off our handshake demos with a wave current running around the circle.

Then we got into building stuff out of cardboard boxes and wrapping people up with string and tape for awhile. We declared it a “public information area.” We made a big mess, but the authorities didn’t seem to care. Who knew, fun is permitted!

Later on we played kick-the-can with old coffee cans outfitted for making ice cream. All you need is a small can (10 oz.) inside of a big can (2 pound) with ice and salt in the space between. Ingredients go in the smaller can. Seal well and agitate by kicking. We met some kids fresh off the boat (literally) from Norway who were really into kicking stuff! They were pretty into eating ice cream too.

For advanced can fun, you can also make tin can telephones and talk on the phone with your friends while making the tin can ice cream. We don’t know about you guys, but we generally prefer maximum fun. That was a great day.

Photos by Chen Tamir, Stephanie Beaulieu

The K.I.D.S. Has Some Work to Do

Fellow K.I.D.s,

Here’s a wrap up for everyone who wasn’t at the meeting on Thursday, and an idea of how to proceed… Sorry it’s so long, ach!
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Christine counted 18 people at the meeting. There are 40 people on this email list, and maybe 10 of them are far away, so it was a  pretty good turnout.

I thought we had a good hangout session. We started with snacks and mingling, then brought the snacks and had a picnic on the floor while going around and each telling two truths and a lie about ourselves. Some good stories, fact and fiction came out. And we all voted on which one was the lie.

Then we got down to “serious” “business.” We drew pictures and schematics of different projects we are all interested in doing, and put them up on the wall. Then we took turns presenting the projects of others based on the visuals, followed by the person who made the drawing saying a few words about what they had intended, and then interpreting the next person’s drawing. So it was a chain of ideas/interpretation/brainstorming. After that, we talked about the connections and overlapping parts of the various projects and tried to match things up so that we can help each other help ourselves make it all happen. One general contrast that emerged was between (a.) mobile/movement based projects, like walks, parades, etc. and (b.) projects with specific sites or temporarily installed in a fixed location.
Some pictures of the drawings and groupings are on the web here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/thekidsforever/KIDSIdeasOnTheDrawingBoard?feat=directlink

If you took any pictures that night, it would be cool to put them up too…

In general, it seems like the projects are most all quite temporary, sparse on material (more reliant on people power), and oftentimes having to do with an inclusive shared experience or exchange among people.

We also talked some logistics whilst all that productive playing went on…
SCHEDULING:
-The dates for the concentrated project time is pencilled in for May 16-24. Probably the larger events that require all or most of the group to take part would happen on the weekends, with smaller projects that only require a few people spread throughout the week.

LOCATION:
-Starting in April, we are able to work out of the new Flux Factory, a raw space near Queens Plaza, as a temporary homebase. The place is two blocks north of Queens Plaza at 39-31 29th street, Queens, NY 11101. So some of these outdoor projects could happen in that area, within walking distance, and others could spread over the bridge into Manhattan for higher foot traffic of grownups. Basically the homebase could be a central information point for maps/scavenger hunt kits/whatnot during the project period, as well as a meeting & material storage place for us.

NEXT MEETING:
-The next meeting could be April 5th, around 3-6p.m. How about we do a paper bag lunch swap at flux factory and take a walk around the neighborhood there. As we walk, we could maybe try a few games out spontaneously to think/play more. So everybody please bring a paper bag of edible things to trade with someone else. Sound good?
-Also, if you have a chance, before that meeting, it has been proposed that we do the following by email (send to thekidsforever@gmail.com for compiling):
—-Solidified ideas for those without a clear description so far (a few sentences)
—-What other projects on the table do your ideas/interests seem to coincide with most?
—-A list of materials needed for each project that we can work on trying to scavenge/save/get over the next 6 weeks (coffee cans, for example).
—-Some idea of a location/day of the week/time of the day for each project, if you have one in mind.

Also, we’ve talked about the fact that these kinds of simple actions can and should take place whenever, wherever we want them to, and they don’t need to be bound to the situation of this “show” (non-show) necessarily. Just good to keep in mind – so there’s no pressure!

Great to meet you all…
Colin