Welcome to PLIX Inflatables! Imagine and design interactive, inflatable creations using recycled materials—like chip bags!
🥰 Ages 10+ 🕐 1–1.5 Hours 👩👧👦 up to 15 Participants 🍎 1–2 Facilitators 🎨 Craft Materials
This activity explores pneumatics—a field of engineering that makes use of air under pressure—with applications in a wide range of fields, such as art and architecture; mechanical engineering; fashion; and even deep-sea exploration. Here, you'll combine the power of air with flexible, lightweight materials to bring your creations to life!
Get Inspiration from the PLIX Community
by April Griffith, Eureka Springs Carnegie Library, AR
This sustainable remix of PLIX inflatables introduces local Ozark flora and fauna to youth in an interactive playful exploration of pneumatics
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by the PLIX team
Brought to life with air: a sleepy, snoring frog.
Looking for a heat-free alternative to making inflatables? Check out the remix that only requires paper, tape, scissors, and a straw!
by Kyung Yun Choi
The bionic arm brings cardboard to life, using inflatable movements to mimic joints.
by PLIX Ambassador Allie Affinito
Surprise passers-by with this haunted house pop-up
by Kyung Yun Choi
This inflatable sculpture doubles as a grabber.
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by the PLIX team
A pneumatic doll that does endless sit-ups.
by Kyung Yun Choi
Transform a headband into lively bunny ears.
Prompts from PLIX
PLIX Community Remixes
Looking for a heat-free alternative to making inflatables? Check out the Paperflatables remix that only requires paper, tape, scissors, and a straw!
Check out the shared design journal created by the Inflatables Co-Design Team for some additional project ideas and methods for creating inflatables!
For a deep dive on all things related to pneumatics, soft robotics, and origami, check out this reading list compiled by Dave Fink (Michigan City Library, Indiana)
Take a look at these pneumatic toys created by members of the PLIX community as part of our 2021 winter activity workshops
Inflatables Book Connections
Materials
Supply Kit
Supplementary Resources
PLIX zines are a supplementary resource for patrons and librarians to refer to. Use our guide to cut and assemble them.
Love our zine, but it doesn’t fit your adaptation of the activity? Remix our zine with this Google Slides template!
Get started with different air-powered inflatable movements with these pattern cards
Facilitation
Playtest and Plan
Remember: There’s no one right way to prepare for a workshop. Use these steps as a loose guideline for planning to run this activity.
- Choose one of our prompts, or come up with a prompt that suits your library community. Our activity guides are for getting you started—feel free to change or create new design elements to suit your local community! All PLIX activity guides are designed for a minimum of 1–2 facilitators
- Gather materials and print out the zine.
- Make an example project. Try it out with friends and colleagues. Thoughtfully incomplete, good examples feature a variety of approaches and starting points. Use them to inspire learners to make something uniquely their own. No access→
- Try the activity with your patrons. Set a date and time. Easily promote your workshop with our editable Inflatables flyer template →
- Populate your workshop space with diverse example projects. Create and play together!
- Reflect on what you’ve done and consider doing a remix!
Did you come up with new prompts? Share your ideas with your peers on the PLIX Forum. Try our Remix Share-Out template if you’d like us to feature your remix!
Facilitation Tips
By design, this activity invites learners of all backgrounds to play with form and function. It is a very new set of tools and materials for most people, so make sure that there is enough material to accommodate participants as they get used to the new craft. When facilitating this activity, we encourage you to support a tinkering mindset. In addition, check out our general PLIX Facilitation Techniques →
into creative learning facilitation with our Self-Guided Mini Course. It’ll also help you get started running your first PLIX workshop.
What We ❤️ About This Activity
♻️ Turns trash to treasure! Inflatables is all about using recycled (or upcycled) materials to create; with plenty of material already on-hand, there is plenty of room for patrons to take risks and experiment as they create!
🚶 Multiple paths to success There is no right or wrong way to create an inflatable, so patrons can forge their own path by exploring new methods of crafting designs.
♾ Endless possibilities Inflatables and pneumatics have applications in a massive range of diverse disciplines (art; design; engineering; architecture). This means that not only can patrons explore what interests them most, but also that you can host inflatables workshops multiple times with different themes.
🌟 Sky’s the Limit! There are many ways to augment this activity for those interested by integrating more sophisticated technologies, techniques, and makerspace tools (like 3D printers; microcontrollers and sensors; chemical reactions).
About PLIX Inflatables
This activity was developed in collaboration with Allie Affinito (New York Public Library) and Dave Fink (Michigan City Library, India) as part of the PLIX Co-Design program, in which Media Lab researchers team up with public librarians to create new PLIX programming. The co-design group teamed up with Media Lab graduate student Kyung Yun Choi, whose work focuses on the development of new types of soft robotic systems, and in particular ones that use air (or inflation) for movement.
Other ways to engage with the PLIX Inflatables program:
- Looking for some background music? Check out our PLIX Inflatables Playlist 🎶
- Questions? Ask them on the PLIX Discussion Forum 🙋♀️
- Share your experience running this activity on Twitter or Instagram and tag us @heyplix