Young people making handcrafted holiday items at Providence Fab Lab

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Young people making handcrafted holiday items at Providence Fab Lab

Kafumba Bility at AS220 Labs

The youth from AS220’s Broad Street Studio program have been making (and selling) some very cool things in the Providence Fab Lab at AS220 Labs:

Kafumba is a member of AS220’s Broad Street Studio youth program, which offers arts and technology workshops to at-risk and under-served youth at AS220’s building in downtown Providence and inside Rhode Island’s juvenile prison.

This holiday season, Kafumba and about 30 other youth, are taking a product design class at AS220 Labs, taught by AS220 Labs staff and a designer from the Providence-based medical device product development firm Ximedica. The young people have been making and selling handcrafted merchandise in AS220’s Fab Lab — a suite of personal fabrication equipment and software created at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. They include a laser cutter, milling machine, and a vinyl cutter.

Kafumba, a freshman at Community College of Rhode Island, is picking up his ESL credits there and plans to transfer to a four-year art school next year. He is working in AS220’s Fab Lab to improve his college portfolio.

This work is being done on a shoestring budget. The young people at AS220 Labs have accomplished all this in the Fab Lab with a $500 supply budget that is quickly dwindling.

Youth making handcrafted holiday merch in AS220 Labs

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I'm a tinkerer and finally reached the point where I fix more things than I break. When I'm not tinkering, I'm probably editing a book for Maker Media.

View more articles by Brian Jepson

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