Open World: Jumpstart Your Creative Career with Makerversity

Workshop
Open World: Jumpstart Your Creative Career with Makerversity

The Open World series of articles documents Liam Grace-Flood’s year of traveling all over the world exploring maker culture and spaces.


Makerversity is a “pioneering community of Maker businesses” growing out of London and Amsterdam. They offer space, tools, and community to promising people and projects, and run a pair of funded residency programs to make those resources more broadly accessible.

One of Makerversity London’s workshop spaces

The first, called U25, is a free 3-month membership for makers under 25 years old focused specifically on helping young people jump start their creative careers and businesses. Among Makerversity’s many U25 alumni are up-and-coming designer Harry Grundy and artist Ikra Arshad.

Left, one of Ikra Arshad’s sketchbook pages via her website. Right, Harry Grundy’s “Rocking Robin” via his website.

The second, 6-month residency program, Makers with a Mission, is open to a broader range of applicants, but remains focused on emerging talent and ideas. In line with Makerversity’s social enterprise mindset, Makers with a Mission are value-driven people and projects working to make a better world.

You might have already seen some of their projects — Petit Pli, for example, makes clothing that grows with children:

Chip[s] Board is making materials from recycled potato waste:

Image via Makerversity

Sabina Weiss made tools for “evolving craft through human-machine interface” via lowering barriers for entry into digital embroidery:

Image via Sabina Weiss’ website

And Yun-Pei Hsiung explored IoT tools for future protests:

Image via Makerversity

If you’d like to participate in Makerversity’s community of cool people and projects, check out their website. They’re currently accepting applications for both residency programs.

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Liam Grace-Flood

An artist, engineer, and researcher, Liam makes all kinds of things, including public policy, fine art, electric motorcycles, and computational models. His passion for making is rivaled only by his dedication to ensuring other people have the resources they need to make, too. In that vein, as a 2017 Watson Fellow he's exploring how open workshops democratize and decentralize education, innovation, and industry to make better things, people, and communities.

You can find him at his website or on instagram

View more articles by Liam Grace-Flood

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