Pera Museum Learning Programs is organizing workshops with the theme "School of Schools" for students of all ages, adults, and even for the elderly at the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial.

The participants of the workshops taking place between Oct. 6 and Nov. 4 will be inspired from the works and designs of artists being displayed at Pera Museum.

The exhibition titled, "School of Scales," explores the variability of social, economic and intellectual classifications, measurements, institutionalized norms, standards and values.

The workshops are designed for different age groups and inspired by the exhibition take the scales out of their normal usage areas and allows us to design new measurement models in different areas.

Pera Learning's workshop area also hosts an installation developed with the cooperation of Juliette Pepin, one of the members of Pera Museum Learning team and biennial artist of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial. This installation based on local scales offers an interactive exploration area for the participants.

School groups learn to measure their emotions

Specially designed for kindergarteners, the "Thermometer at Hot, Cold!" workshop enables young participants to discuss and learn how different temperatures are measured in different seasons and then they design their thermometers with colorful chenille.

Steps of Design

The magazine workshop addresses students in elementary and middle school. In the workshop, the participants will first examine a magazine design based on the work of ECAL Art and Design School in Switzerland and then design their own magazines with the collage technique. At the "Faces on Cups" workshop participants examine the works of Studio Legrand Jager and then by using a felt pen and cardboard cups, they design faces that can be changed according to what they feel the most.


"My Scale from Hangers" workshop for children 4-6 years old.

The "Uncertain Measures Dictionary" designed for high school students is inspired by Avşar Gürpınar and Cansu Cürgen's Muğlak Sanatlar Institute project. The participants are separated into groups and form a dictionary from things that cannot be measured with units of measurement in daily life. The "Emotion Maps" workshop starts by examining an installation of Mark Hening, which consists of two parts. The participants create a feeling map by thinking about what they can come across while going through emotions.

People 60 and older create their own designs

The "Tea Cup Measure" workshop, invites participants 60 and older to think about which countries consume which drinks and in what type of cup. The participants discuss the differences between the glasses as a unit of measurement and design their own teacups.

The "Cloth Bag Print Design" workshop and "Mimics from Clay" workshop start with the "School of Scale" exhibition tour at Pera Museum. The participants discuss works in the "Anatolian Weights and Measures" collection of the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation. They then get a chance to design and make prints on their own bags with figures of weights and measures they have selected from the exhibition.

In "Mimics from Clay" the works of Studio Legrand Jager is examined and clay faces that reflect the feelings discussed at the workshop are designed.

Children design their own scales

At the "My Scale from Hangers" workshop for children 4-6 years old, with inspiration from the Unfold artist group's video, children create their own scales by using hangers, ropes and other recycled materials.

Meanwhile at the "Treasure Map" workshop, participants design a map that will help them find their way by using astrolabes, chart plotters and similar tools.

At the "Measure, Try, Be Mistaken, Weigh" workshop, the weights of several objects are measured and experiments for balancing scales and the visuals of equal units are drawn and they are modeled with play dough.

The Labyrinth Game workshop for 7-12 year olds focuses on the concept of measurement. The participants draw a labyrinth template and they cut the labyrinth drawn by straws and affix them to a box.

The workshop "My Eye is on the City, My Dreams are in the Sky" is inspired by the EYESS installation of artists Thibault Brevet and Andrea Anner. The participants design a sky model from cardboard boxes according to the phases of the moon, earth's satellite, and discover what the city and space look like with an eye mechanism.

Teenagers examine the digital measurement concept

"From Digital to Analogue: My Wardrobe of Curiosity" workshop, designed for 13-17 year olds, is based on the installation of Mark Henning. The participants discover digital measurement concepts such as X-rays, bitcoin, face recognition devices, smart clocks, security cameras and so forth, and design measurement units, by embodying them with play dough.

The "Emotion Thermometer" workshop focuses on measuring intellectual and social-emotional characteristics such as being peaceful, tolerant, motivated, self-confident, flexible, creative or depressed. Teenagers at this workshop distinguish their emotions by color and design emotion thermometers, which are turned into posters. The "Milestones Map" workshop offered to young adults 18 and older seeks to answer questions such as, "Can we measure our lives as we measure tables, walls, tables? What if our measurement unit is time and which memories will be the starting point?" The participants create their own measurement units and sew photographs, images, figures and writing on fabric.