Elephants, Castles, and Maker Faires

This Saturday Maker Faire comes back to London for a second year, and the second year of the Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire. Bigger and better than ever, with over 120 makers in attendance—almost half as many again as last year—this year’s faire looks like it’s going to be a packed show.

Last year’s Elephant & Castle mini Maker Faire

All Maker Faires have their own personality and Elephant & Castle is no different. Held at the London College of Communication the faire is committed to exploring the culture of making and encouraging creative people to self identify as makers.

We went ahead and talked to some of the makers that will be attending this year’s faire to try and get a feel for it.

Ben Gray will be bringing the #MeArm—well a few of them actually. The #MeArm is an open source pocket sized robot arm. The project started earlier in year and has quickly spread—with makers from Peru to Denmark to Japan making their own and holding workshops. It comes as a kit and requires nothing but a screwdriver and some enthusiasm to build.

I love Maker Faires and the Elephant & Castle faire is a great event. There is so much passion and enthusiasm at a Maker Faire that it spurs ideas and they’re the best place to meet like minded Makers, who you can make more things with! — Ben Gray

They’ll also be bringing along with our latest prototype control boards—for the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi!—as well as lots of blocks and things to pick up and move around using the arm.

Commissioned especially for the Elephant & Castle faire by the V&A—Paper Playscapes, by Artemis Papageorgiou and Gabriella Mastrangelo, is an entirely open-ended installation representing a landscape in movement, one made and played collaboratively by the makers and the visitors themselves. By embedding paper electronics and a simple interaction the designers created a truncated tetrahedron cell that, by the end of the installation becomes a spontaneous, responsive, structure.

Coralie Gourguechon will be bringing the anatomical board of a speaker—a cut out and fold out paper circuit that turns into an amplifier and speaker. It’s a project exploring the inner working of devices through the use of conductive ink.

Maker Faire is a great place for discovering crazy projects led by passionate individuals, collectives and communities. Also, it’s always a good opportunity to step a bit outside the research and making process, exchange ideas and get feedback from visitors and exhibitors. — Coralie Gourguechon

Coralie will be bringing along a functioning prototype, with a circuit made out of copper tap, as well as her first ever electronic project—a DIY digital camera with a cardboard case, based around an Arduino.

Gordon Williams will be bringing prototypes of his new Espruino Pico board—a tiny javascript microcontroller. Already fully funded on Kickstarter, the Pico is Gordon’s second crowd-funded board, and as well as the prototypes he’ll be bringing a selection of things that he’s made with it and the original Espruino board—including games, robots, and some examples of simple home automation.

I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t making things. I was really lucky in that my whole family are makers, so as I grew up there was a spare bedroom full of electronic components, a garage full of tools and spare parts, and family that always helped and encouraged me to make whatever I wanted. When you grow up like that, it’s quite hard not to get hooked on making things. — Gordon Williams

You’ll also have the opportunity to try programming Espruino for yourself.

Cory Doctorow keynote from last year’s Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire

All the talks from the faire will be recorded and published at a later date, however they’re also going livestream the event via YouTube.

All day—live from London (see schedule for talk times)