Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire, London’s first maker faire, is a go for Saturday, July 6 in Elephant & Castle, a small, bustling London neighborhood just south of the River Thames. The fair is being hosted by the London College of Communication. The Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire will offer a day of family-friendly making, learning, crafting, inventing and tinkering in the heart of London. Be inspired by arts, crafts, engineering, science and technology from more than 70 Makers offering demonstrations and hands on workshops in electronics, coding, hacking, tinkering, 3D printing, crafting and much more. Entry is free.
Keynote speakers include Cory Doctorow and Tim Hunkin. There will be three panel discussions: The Politics of Making; Making in Design Education; Maker Urbanism. Panelists include Makers, hackers, academics, writers and designers drawn from organizations including: London Hackspace; Raspberry Pi; Changify; Craftivist Collective; University of the Arts London; Dundee University; and the Royal College of Art. There’s also a great line-up of workshops.
Following the fair will be a second day of debates and discussion about making organized in part by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The organizing committee includes members of the 600-strong London Hackspace.
The Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire is supported by MAKE magazine, element14, London College of Communication, University for the Creative Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, Technology Will Save Us, Codasign, Bare Conductive, Kitronik, Phenoptix, Wiley, iMakr, Beta LAYOUT and Faberdashery.
Here are a couple of notable makers and projects that will be at the fair:
*LHS Bikeshed is a collaborative project between London Hackspace members Charles Yarnold, Christopher Paton and Tom Wyatt.
The aim of the project is to build a multi-person starship simulator in a caravan. The project debuted at Maker Faire UK earlier this year and was featured at Electromagnetic Wave last month.
*Paulo Goldstein is a Maker who has a passion for making things and a deep interest in art and design. He graduated Fine Art at FAAP in 2003 before going on to work as magazine illustrator. Recently he completed his Masters in Industrial Design at University of the Arts London’s Central Saint Martins College.
Repair is Beautiful is Paulo’s most recent work which, began with the idea of solving frustration. A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn’t achieve its functionality, but the same principle applies to a broken system that caused the financial crisis, which has affected our lives since 2008. In a time of uncertainty, taking things into our own hands and having the feeling of control back can be very therapeutic. Repair is Beautiful aims to give back this feeling of control – by scaling down a major society problem to a human size and projecting frustration upon broken objects that can be repaired through design and craftsmanship. The final outcome is a collection of intriguingly repaired objects imbued with new meaning and functionality. The once rejected objects reflect the environment that created them and call us to question our society as a whole.
*Pollie is an artist, researcher and game designer who designs urban games with a focus being inclusive of people with all abilities. She is currently a PhD Researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Firefly, co-designed with Chloe Varelidi, explores her research in memory and play.
Pollie will be presenting Firefly a tagging game that exploits the balance of collaboration and competition. The player can only steal a firefly when the light is OFF. The players can track each fireflies when they are lit up but must find and steal fireflies when they go dark. The exploration of temporal memory to the continual tracking of fireflies after the light is gone. The game is designed to be played in the dark.
For more information and tickets please go here.
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