It might be April Fool’s Day this Saturday, but there’s no joking around about all the amazing opportunities for making + exploring that will take place at Los Angeles Historic State Park near the Chinatown Metro Stop. This year, the event brings together two leaders in the STEAM community as a newly expanded Maker Faire Los Angeles (a production of LAPL as DTLA Mini Maker Faire since 2016) spearheaded by the Los Angeles Public Library joins forces with City of STEM. City of STEM is L.A.’s largest community-based initiative focused on science, technology, engineering, and math. Created in 2015 by the Columbia Memorial Space Center to encourage and inspire the public, City of STEM is also a celebration of Southern California’s historic achievements in science.
This mega event will feature:
- Over 200 exhibits highlighting organizations and innovators – including scientists, engineers, artists, major museums, NASA, and tech companies.
- Hands-on activities and unique experiences for adults, teens, and kids.
- A special appearance by Bill Nye, the Science Guy to kick off the event.
- Workshops for all skill levels
- Bilingual programming in English + Spanish
Here’s a peek at the 2019 LAPL event!
Makers + Workshops
A city as big as Los Angeles hides may secrets and we’re looking forward to seeing them come out this Saturday and share what they’ve been working on. In addition to a few luminaries–Bill Nye (!!)–the City of STEM crew is bringing a host of hands on workshops for curiosity of every type.
BIll Nye The Science Guy!
Tireless science advocate Bill Nye will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Maker Faire LA + City of STEM event. Sientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, Nye is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. You can find his various shows on everything under the sun, podcasts, documentaries and more at: https://www.billnye.com/
Ayden Wardell Aerospace is proud to showcase many of the numerous projects from the last few years. From rocketry to electric go-karts, you can see what is possible from learning by building. Be inspired and explore the possibilities of making. I am a 17 year old maker who works on many engineering projects, composes music and runs the STEM club of Alta Loma High School.
Do you like cats, electronics, and hacking? Stop by the Nugget booth to build & customize your own cat-shaped hacking device – and learn to code, hack, and build fun projects with bite-sized classes throughout the day!
Alex Lynd is a 19 year old hardware developer & cybersecurity content creator who appears on shows like Hak5, where he creates educational hacking videos. He builds low-cost Signals Intelligence demos using microcontrollers, and also enjoys building environmental sensing / sustainable focused tech. Alex also created the Nugget, an educational cat-shaped console that makes it fun for beginners to learn hardware & ethical hacking! Angelina is a software developer and tinkerer interested in hardware, cybersecurity, and mechatronics. Carina is an environmental engineering student interested in researching sustainable energy. She’s enjoys welding, gardening, and volunteering in local community projects!
Polystruder Brings Filament Production To Your Desktop
One thing that almost any 3D printing enthusiast will agree on is that filament waste is a frustrating concern. Depending on the machine you’re using, your failure rate, or how it handles purging, the amount of wasted filament can sometimes be shocking. This adds up not only to wasted money, but also more stuff in landfills. Polystruder is the latest to attempt to bring the production of filament home, so you can make your own and even possibly recycle some of those failures. READ MORE
Barry Rothstein has been making 3-dimensional images since 2003. He specializes in “photographic phantograms”, a highly photo-realistic reach-out-and-touch style of 3-D imagery. He has produced six books of 3-D imagery and regularly teaches his techniques at national and international 3-D photography gatherings, as well as numerous Maker Faires. Participants will help shoot and process a 3-D image of themselves or other type of shot. Resulting images will be emailed to them. They will be provided with a pair of 3-D glasses to take home and an example image to enjoy.
Cyborg Fairy
Cyborg Fairy aka Bianca Vasquez is a multitalented creative technologist, editor, augmented reality developer, and fashion enthusiast with a passion for pushing the boundaries of technology and design. In her presentation, Cyborg Fairy shares her knowledge developing Augmented Reality filters and experiences, from concept to deployment, including the latest trends, best practices and challenges- using Meta’s Spark AR Studio platform.
Bicycle trailers by Bill McCown
Lifelong maker and follower of the two greatest makers of all time, Ed “Big Daddy” Roth and Wyle Coyote. Mr. McCown is a retired mechanical engineer and has participated in development of many aerospace related projects including several aircraft, the space station, space missions to Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and the Webb Space Telescope. Mr. McCown is also a lifetime bicycle fan, restores old bicycles, has built several bicycle trailers, and is currently working on a book that reviews all of the current types of bicycles in the world, of which there are 591(as of January 9, 2023).
Seville for the People
Born and raised in New York City, Seville Michelle is a self-taught jewelry designer who brings her unique background to life in her work by re-imagining the accessories of her youth.
Seville for the People is committed to developing compelling lesson plans that center around jewelry design. Our workshops include imaginative material that encourage creative exploration. Our focus is to ignite creativity, laughter and joy by providing fun and challenging ways to explore jewelry design. With an eye that sees the world through an aperture of optimism and possibility. Handmade and built from a heritage in jewelry design spanning 14 years, our signature Seville for the People jewelry workshops are a colorful and imaginative way to share in the fun of expressing ourselves. We believe that sharing creativity fosters happiness for a better, and brighter community. Our mission is to curate interactive, and inspiring spaces that engage, challenge and entertain using a variety of upcycled material. By reimagining broken and discarded jewelry parts we aim to teach participants to reimagine possibilities, and redefine creativity as a utility for self improvement.
My exhibit teaches kids the basics of circuitry by challenging them to figure out how to make a light-up hairclip using an LED, a battery, a hairclip, and tape. I am exhibiting a clock made out of 3 3D-printed dominos with LEDs underneath the dots. Zygmunt Ramsay am a high school student living in Los Angeles. I love to Make. Specifically, I love 3D designing and printing alongside Arduino projects. It’s so cool to be able to fully design and code something digitally and then have a physical device that does what I intended.
Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a light source while taking a long exposure photograph. The Light Painting Stick uses an array of densely packed RGB LEDs to produce vibrant and realistic images.
Sahas has been building projects since he was 5 years old. His parents recall stories of him breaking open his toys more often than playing with them. He has been breaking and building stuff since. To his surprise, a number of his projects have been really popular on Instructables earning over 1.2 million views and winning a dozen competitions. The most viewed being, the Biogas project, the DIY electric mountain board and a GPS shoe to keep kids safe.
Find more projects and organizations devoted to expanding opportunities for STEAM education in Los Angeles County at https://losangeles.makerfaire.com/ and https://www.cityofstem.org/ .
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