Exhibition is forty-five minutes, which means the room has to explain itself. Learners hang everything, caption everything, and test it by sending two of their own out and bringing them back in as parents who know nothing. Then a technical rehearsal that drills the handovers rather than the content.
By 3:15 today the room is finished and captioned, and two learners have walked it as strangers and understood what happened here.
One line: what it is, when it was made. This is what lets the room work without a guide standing beside it.
In the real room, at volume, with the real lights. Not the laptop, and not "it worked last week."
Every transition run several times, each person naming the next out loud. That habit prevents most of the failures.
Standard rhythm. Thinking Puzzle up by the cubbies.
Standard rhythm.
Talking points, not a script. Hit these in your own words - the studio can tell the difference, and the ones that land are the ones you actually mean.
The opener (2 min):
"Tomorrow your families walk into this room. Today you decide what they see."
The core (12 min):
Walk Friday's schedule out loud, in order, so nobody is guessing:
Then be honest about the shape of it: "Forty-five minutes is not long. That means the room has to do most of the work - if somebody has to explain what something is, we've hung it wrong."
Give them the test to design against: "Could a parent who knows nothing about this quest walk in, read the walls in order, and understand what happened here?" Every decision today gets measured against that.
The close (6 min):
Assign the room in zones and put names on them. Then: "Nothing goes up because I said so. If you think something's in the wrong place, move it and tell me why."
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm. Schedule ownership continues: math sits inside it, so the block may move - what doesn't move is that it happens and the PWG opens first.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Last one of the quest. A D2 learner should invite the other studios to tomorrow's Exhibition personally - especially Spark, who were mentored in Week 3.
Standard rhythm.
Zones get built by the learners who claimed them. Guide carries things and is told where they go.
Tomorrow's Exhibition is forty-five minutes with four transitions in it, run entirely by learners. Transitions are where learner-run events fail. Today is the only chance to find out where they fail cheaply.
1 - Technical checks (15 min):
2 - Transition drill (25 min):
Don't rehearse the content - rehearse the joins. Run only the six seconds either side of each handover, several times:
Whoever is handing over says the next person's name out loud. That one habit prevents most of the ways this goes wrong.
3 - The walk-through (10 min):
Send two learners out and bring them back in as if they were parents who know nothing. They walk the room in order and say what they understand. Anything they can't work out gets a better caption or a different position, today.
Note the time: if the ten minutes have been handed back, this block runs 1:50–2:50.
The room stays set. Maintenance today is about protecting the setup rather than clearing it - and leaving the floor immaculate, because tomorrow people see it.
If the ten minutes have been handed back (see W5D1) - this block is 2:50–3:00 and Quest ran to 2:50.
Callouts for whoever moved something and explained why. Taking responsibility for a shared space's design is exactly the muscle this week is for.
One question: "What do you want your family to notice first?" Then confirm tomorrow's start time and what to wear.
Send-off by name.
Talking points for this week's email. Drop these into an AI assistant along with two or three live notes from your actual week - a name, a moment, something that surprised you - and it'll give you a draft in your own voice. The specifics are what make it land; the structure below is just the scaffolding.
The draft underneath is an example of the shape and the tone, not a template to send as-is. A parent who gets the same email as every other parent can tell.
Subject: The room is ready - see you tomorrow
Hi families,
The learners built the Exhibition room today. They decided what goes where, hung it themselves, and wrote a caption for every single thing on the wall - one line saying what it is and when it was made. The test they were designing against was whether a parent who knows nothing about this quest could walk in, read the walls in order, and understand what happened. To check, they sent two learners out and brought them back in as strangers.
They also drilled the handovers between sections, which is where learner-run events actually fall apart, and tested the film on the real screen at real volume.
Tomorrow: Exhibition runs 9:15–10:00. Please arrive a few minutes early so they can seat you - they have a dry run at 8:45 and they'll be ready. When you come in, look at the two mirror sheets first. They explain the whole thing faster than I can.
- [your name]