Joy is a Pirate Ship in Your Backyard
Ask me the ingredient list for a joyful moment and I’ll tell you:
1 rusty camo row boat
A few trusty 2x4s
Black matte-painted plywood in a variety of perfectly measured sizes
1 drill
1 blueprint
A bucket of styrofoam Halloween skulls
1 brilliant imagination
Directions: Combine these seemingly joy-deficient ingredients–thoughtfully, kindly, and most importantly, with love. And you’ll have one…epic…pirate ship. One my dad planned and prepped and pulled right out of his imagination this summer in the backyard of my sister and brother-in-law’s house. For the kids, but also for the entire family. You’re never too old to build a pirate ship…or to convince your grandkids you arrrrre a pirate.
The scene played out as follows: My nephew and I grabbed our plastic daggers and battled it out. My mom put together post-battle pirate charcuterie. Dad drilled while my sister finished and hung a homemade skull and crossbones flag. My other nephew stood perplexed in a pirate stance. My niece dramatically “walked the plank” (that my dad built into the side of the boat) in her Elsa dress with her silver metallic cowboy boots while her dad took a slo-mo video of her on his iPhone. All of this was accompanied by the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack playing softly on the laptop speaker. It was a scene straight out of a documentary called “Joy.” One that will go on to win many awards and be lovingly tucked within the hearts and minds of my family.
While building a pirate ship might seem like an epic joyful task, joyful moments can come from something as simple as a small treat after dinner. It can be something we look forward to over and over again, we just have to revisit the right cupboard. Taking a step back and reflecting on joyful moments can help you to relive that joy over and over again. I think you could call that, joy recycling?
Joyful moments…seeing Pirate Ships…at Islands of Brilliance
Working at Islands of Brilliance (IOB), I get to see pirate ships built and enjoyed nearly every day. I would like to share a few of my favorite joyful moments from 2023:
A Brilliant Monster Bash
I saw a pirate ship when a student found out he wasn't able to go to Homecoming with his friend (a friend he met through IOB!) because the school would not allow it. The IOB team heard about the situation, swooped in, and made it happen by throwing a Brilliant Monster Bash in place of a Homecoming dance. After all, community joy is at the heart of what we do. When one student is left out, all of us are left out. It turned out to be one of our largest and most successful events of the year! (Success was measured of course by the amount of people giving it their all on the dancefloor.)
Seniors Playing With New Technology
I saw a pirate ship when IOB's Director of Learning and Outcomes, Dr. Kate Siekman, organized an iPad workshop with St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care residents. The IOB team introduced the residents to explore the magic of the iPad for the first time in their lives! Understandably so, many were hesitant to try it at first, but once they got a feel for it their childlike excitement was priceless! I believe our most joyful moments come from observing and replicating our childlike wonder. The residents were prompted with the question, “What brings you joy?” Their response was a conversation turned mission to explore and express their answer creatively on the iPad. This experience translated joy through a digital landscape. We witnessed the residents being able to share some of their favorite memories and reminisce with different generations of people while also learning a new skill. How cool is that?!? Opportunities for joy may be hiding in something we’ve never even tried before!
Participant Turned Intern…Shayne
I saw a pirate ship when long-time IOB participant, Shayne Mack, was brought onto the team as a Creative Technologist Intern. He experienced facilitating our Sandbox programming and assisting with our Digital Academy SideQuest programming. Shayne got the chance to flex his incredible skills as a role model at IOB and got the opportunity to upskill in new creative software. He collaborated on a series of design projects such as the Brilliant Monster Bash flyer, the cutout characters for the photo booth, IOB holiday Christmas cards, and illustrations that told the collaborative story created in our Natterdays programming. He even got to share an anecdote of his internship experience on Fox 6’s Real Milwaukee segment.
As Shayne reflected on his internship with IOB, he wrote, “I realized that the most important things about obtaining a job aren’t the things you can do, or the people that you meet, it’s the experiences that you try to make with your mentors and coworkers. It’s the thing that makes you want to get up in the morning and do the things that you love to do. The intuition and passion that you bring to each project meeting. The conversations between workers. I hope that the staff of IOB was able to gain a new perspective on me and my abilities and can learn something from my adventure. Keep inspiring people, and keep bringing that joy to those who wish to intern with you as much as you did to me!” Shayne has many natural gifts and we are so lucky to get the experience of having him as a participant, intern, and IOB family member.
A Birthday T-rex
I saw a pirate ship when IOB co-founder, Mark Fairbanks, sat down at an iPad hooked up to a monitor at the Children Come First Conference table and drew a T-rex with precision on the iPad within a few minutes of learning Procreate. Feeling proud, he pointed to the drawing on the monitor, “Check it out” he said, and I gave him the thumbs up of approval. Oh and did I mention that this was on his birthday? Birthday T-rex!! To deliver the magic of curiosity that we offer at IOB, we have to stay curious ourselves. To learn more about ourselves and our creative capacity, we have to play. WE HAVE TO!
Build-a-Buddy
Speaking of play, I saw a pirate ship when the IOB staff participated in “Build a Buddy” at this year’s staff retreat. Made from the mundane, these buddies' joyful ingredients included corks, spoons, sequins, pom poms, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and a little hot glue (don't worry…only a few fingers were singed in this creative pursuit). With this simple yet imaginative project, we all managed to create little, joyful extensions of ourselves. Ones that go by the name of Brusha, Chairy, Bertha, Zardy Chaborgbladog, Mr. Fork, John, Steven, Barry, BootyBear (BB for short), Stumpy McStump Stumps, Armful of Joy, and Phyllis. I don’t know about you, but I think all professionals need a little designated play time as well as a fuzzy little sidekick.
Learning Through Play…and Candy Corn
I saw a pirate ship when Chris Willey, Director of Technology, taught the Creative-technology team how to make realistic candy corn and a fuzzy bat during Halloween in Blender, a 3D software we teach to our students! Our upskilling time is a chance for our team to gain more knowledge in the software we explore with our students, but you can’t teach fun if you can’t have fun yourself!
A Restaurant for Bugs
I had the fabulous opportunity to test out some of our joy-filled IOB curriculum at Milwaukee College Prep for their after-school program called Future Urban Leaders. I saw a pirate ship every time I stepped into the classroom to teach my Art & Identity class to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. One particular 3rd grade project that made me giggle was Bug Restaurant. This project was based on one of the Future Urban Leaders’ values: Grit. In class, we discussed that to have grit is to be brave through any challenges we may face. So the prompt was, “Imagine you are a chef! You’ve successfully opened your own restaurant. But the restaurant is only for bugs! Your challenge is to create delicious dishes that bugs would eat!” It's a tough but silly challenge to have!
Here are some top bug chef picks:
3-Layered Big Mac for mosquitoes
Ingredients:
1 km (yes, kilometer) of poop
1 liter of blood fresh from the hospital
4 km of mosquito pee
Directions: Go to the store to get a pack of buns. “Put the poop, put the pee, put the blood.” Finish by putting it all on a plate. Enjoy mosquito.
Poop Soup for flies ($10)
Ingredients:
One bowl of hot water
2 scoops of poop
3 scoops of fly food
3 sprinkles of big poop
And flies. Because Flies are “Canabels”
Directions: Put the bowl on the ground so the flies can get to it.
(When was the last time you could talk about poop in school, huh?!)
A Gnome-filled Adventure
I witnessed a pack of pirate ships during this summer’s Sandbox Summer Camp when students found creative inspiration in unexpected places: among the stuffed this and that's at the Milwaukee Public Museum, meandering outside in the woods at the Urban Ecology Center, creating portals inside the office spaces of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and at UWM’s Kenilworth Building!
Students created a “gnomie homie” on the first day that would accompany them in their explorations throughout the week, and report back on what they thought of Milwaukee! Each day the gnomes traveled through an invisible portal to the next location, a portal we got to design and choose as we moved from place to place. On the last day, our adventures all came together in the form of a travel brochure made in Adobe Express with all the amazing pictures and facts that our gnomie homies took in while visiting the big city. It was a great way to put yourself in the shoes of someone new to the city you live in and even more fun to have them as your adventure partner! But not all the gnomes were successful in making it back home….one gnome in particular disappeared at the Milwaukee Public Museum and may be living out his days there…never to be seen or heard from again. Good for him!
We All Need More Joy!
All in all, if you look hard enough and with practice, you’ll see that we are surrounded by joy-filled pirate ships. Some monstrous, some obscure, and some from the past we haven’t gotten a chance to revisit. Life moves so fast, but we are doing a disservice to ourselves if we think we do not deserve joy–even if the world is suffering. Joy builds resilience. Joy gives us courage. Joy is our protest. And most importantly, joy is the thing that brings us back to ourselves and the people we surround ourselves with.
Although we most commonly associate joy in childlike environments, the reality in what I’ve seen is that there is no age limit to joy nor should anyone believe there is. Speaking from experience, you can’t show others joy unless you know where to find it in yourself.
“The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.”
Joy does not always come easy nor does it come often to some. Joy does not announce itself, joy is modest in this way. That is why it is essential to set out on a quest to find where it already exists in our own lives. Here are a few practical ways to bait your joy:
Print out physical copies of your favorite photos. Frame them, paste them up, or put them in places where you’ll look at them often.
Create a “joy” folder on your computer or decorate a physical box that can be stored under your bed. This is a place to intentionally direct quotes that move you, loving text messages, writings, articles, letters and cards, and pictures of your loved ones. It is a place to revisit when you feel like you need a joyful reboot.
Paint your space a bright new color, or introduce a colorful item into a space you spend a lot of time in. Bright colors can change the way we feel emotionally.
Collect rocks. The ugly, the pretty, the rough, the smooth. Name them if you feel like it! I don’t care, it’s your rock collection. Anytime you’re outside you’ll start thinking more about what rocks you can add to your collection, therefore sneakily making you more aware of your surroundings and appreciative of the diversity of nature.
My personal favorite: ask yourself WWAKD “What would a kid do” and do it. Pick out a Lego set at the store and put it together at home. Watch Bluey. Make mac ‘n cheese for dinner with dino chicken nuggets or smiley fries. Plan a “play date” with a friend where you go to a trampoline park or an arcade. Better yet, just hang out with a kid and pretend you’re peers. Because you are.
Start writing more! Keep a journal and have no real intention of what you will write, but designate a time in the day to start writing and keep doing it for a week. Whatever lives in your mind is so helpful to see on paper. If you’re feeling lost on where to start, write a list of all the things that brought you joy throughout your day, each day.
Pick up a copy of Joyful written by Ingrid Fetell Lee.
Try a few and I hope you find one that works for you, (hey that rhymed!). Join me in being a joyful disruptor–we can help make the world a more tender place to exist together.
Want some more hits of joy? Read some of our Student Stories. They bring as much joy to us as we pack into every program!
<3
XOXO, Creative Technologist Lead aka “Joyful Disruptor”
Natalie Derr
