The essence of a workshop with the Do-organ is simple: from chaos to order, …uhh sorry…. to ORGEL!
A box with 128 parts, lay the material mostly disordered on a table, and then discuss with the children what they all see. What shapes do you see, and what materials is it made of? That’s enough for the simple and effective start of a fun organ-building workshop.
Then the builders get the message that there are certain specialists working in each organ builder’s workshop, who in the end can only make a good organ together. In this way, you simply but clearly create the right expectations: we are going to work in groups, each group has its own important task and soon everything will come together and we can really make music.
The instruction card accompanying each task provides a good guide with little text and lots of pictures. First they serve as a ‘shopping list’: what does your group need from the table? Then the children see step by step what to do. Only a few short instructions are sometimes needed to get started.
This is what it looked like on 18 November 2023 in the Dom Church in Utrecht, where children built the Do-organ, which immediately afterwards had an important role in the family performance Maarten & Maarten. And of course the builders were also allowed to go upstairs to look at the large organ.
[Click on a picture to enlarge and browse].
