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Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle (Otago Museum 2018)

Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle (Otago Museum 2018)

What is "Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle"?

"Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle" is a large (3.1m by .4m) puzzle depicting wild Dunedin. It has approximately 620 pieces of all shapes and sizes. The pieces that make up the puzzle are the distinctive animals, plants and environment of wild Dunedin. Participants at the interactive were invited to take a piece of the puzzle and bring it to life by drawing in the detail and then placing it in the scene to help solve the puzzle. Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle was funded and hosted by Otago Museum from Monday 16th-Friday 20th April 2018. This was the first week of the school holidays and part of the Museum's 'Wild Dunedin Festival' offerings.

The instructions

Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle at Otago Museum

The setup at Otago Museum

Our Wild Dunedin was set up in the 1st floor atrium. I made a frame for the puzzle out of MDF and we put a printed copy of the puzzle in the background of the frame. We provided instructions, the puzzle pieces, felt-tip pens for colouring and some image references for the pieces (photos of animals, plants, etc.).

Puzzle piece drawing and solving in action

Here are some photos that show progress over the five days at Otago Museum (Monday 16th-Friday 20th April 2018).

The puzzle is solved at last

In the end, almost all of the 140 animals were coloured, but only about half of the other pieces got drawn on and the puzzle was not completely solved. With a bit of help from my friends we completed the puzzle at home and here is a picture of the final result.

'Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle'

'Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle'

How I brought wild Dunedin to life

These photos document some of the stages of bringing 'Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle' to life.

Design stage

Cut and solve

Base colour painting

Acknowledgements

This project was funded and hosted by Otago Museum. Thanks to Rachel Cooper at Otago Museum for coordinating everything to help me deliver this interactive. Thanks also, to my wonderful friends and family that helped me develop this interactive by solving puzzles and painting pieces!

Licence for reuse

'Our Wild Dunedin Community Puzzle' by Luke Easterbrook is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://lukeeasterbrook.org/