Writing Sample - Grant Proposal Synopsis

Synopsis: Creating a Language of Widgets
[redacted for confidentiality]


In this project I plan to use the traditional form of Postmodern Widget Making in a series of collaborative workshops employing trained widgeteers in the co-creation of widgets with customers. In these groups the customers will be encouraged to share their experience of what it means to deal with being a widget user– things they want people to know about their widgeting, what it is like to be a user of widgets, the realities of their everyday lives, and their triumphs and challenges in working towards successful widgetry. The workshops will involve a dialogue in which the customers tell the widgeteers what they want people to know about them; the widgeteers will then translate this verbal language into a language of widgetry on their behalf. The customers will be encouraged to give feedback as to the accuracy of the widgetry - whether they accurately reflect the needs they intended to communicate - so that they feel they have an investment and are heard in this process of creating a new language of widgets.

The goal of these workshops is to generate widget components and a widgetry vocabulary that we will then be able to bring into workshops off-site when we are generating a finalized widget. The mined material will then be used to design a widgetry presentation, under the direction of a professional Master Widgeteer to be named at a later date. The presentation will be performed initially on-site, and then as time and the availability of the participants allows, in other venues expressing interest. Throughout this process, a documentary filmmaker will record the entire process from its initiation to its fruition, including interviews, with the intention of creating a valuable historical record.