In the first week of our Expressive Arts and Culture module we were thinking about evocative objects. An evocative object is “an everyday object becoming part of our inner life: how we use them to extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within” according to Turkle (2011).

I had never thought that an object could be evocative until now but since this workshop I have had a think about other every day objects I know are special to me but had never thought about the emotions that I feel.

The object I brought to class was my Granny’s weddings rings I was given after she passed away. It evoked a lot of emotion as it was a year since she passed this week so I was thinking a lot about her. The rings are not something I wear everyday but I see them everyday when I look in my jewellery box. Whenever I see them I think about how special she was to me and I reminisce of the memories I have. ,

 

Although, I was anxious and felt a little upset when I had to speak to my peers about my evocative object in hindsight it was an interesting task to do and also to hear about my peers objects and what their objects meant to them. Although, some people had similar objects they all had a different meaning and were special in different ways.

This would be an interesting activity to do with children during circle time. I would allow each child in the class a minute to speak about their evocative object, this may be too long for early level children, but would be interesting to do with children in middle-upper primary.

Our task for next was to think of sixty-two words that links to our evocative object which will then be created into a concrete poem. I felt this task was challenging to think of words to describe an object that was very personal to me. Below is a video of my saying the sixty-two words I chose to describe my evocative object.

 

Reference:

Turkle, S. (2011). Evocative objects. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.