Makerspaces

Book Excerpt: FabLab—Of Machines, Makers and Inventors

Book Excerpt: FabLab—Of Machines, Makers and Inventors

The following excerpt is taken from Paulo Blikstein’s essay, “Digital Fabrication and ‘Making’ in Education: The Democratization of Invention.” The essay comes from the recently published FabLab: Of Machines, Makers, and Inventors edited bu Julia Walter-Herrmann and Corine Buching. Blikstein’s project concerns the role of fablabs in the future of engineering eduction. It is one of four “vignettes” from Blikstein’s own experiences in conducting digital fabrication workshops with secondary school students around the world.

Continue Reading Stett Holbrook6
An Early Maker Story From Holland

An Early Maker Story From Holland

We think of the maker movement as a modern phenomena propelled by the internet, growth of makerspaces, and increasingly affordable digital technology. But making, of course, is anything but new. It’s part of what it means to be human. Dutch lutier Jan van Cappelle’s career as a maker began when he read a novel by Leonard de Vries called The Boys of the Hobby Club. Written under Nazi occupation and published in 1947, it’s essentially the story of a group of boys creating a makerspace before such a word existed. The book, which sadly is not available in English, had a lasting impact on Jan. “De Vries showed that you can make something yourself, in collaboration with others, instead of buying it of-the-rack.

Continue Reading Stett Holbrook18
The Remaking of Detroit

The Remaking of Detroit

Detroit is a modern wonder. You’d be hard pressed to find an American city that rose so high and fell so far. At the height of its stature as the Motor City in 1950s, Detroit had a population of about 2 million. White flight to suburbs, the decline of the automobile industry, and resulting loss of the city’s tax base and crumbling infrastructure have whittled the city’s population down to about 750,000. But Detroit is far from out. Cheap rents, readily available real estate, and an ingrained culture of making are contributing to a grass roots renaissance that’s truly exciting to behold. The city is being reborn in real time. Our friends at Dark Rye created an inspiring video about the remaking of Detroit that focuses on Nick Britsky and i3Detroit.

Continue Reading Stett Holbrook
Making Makerspaces: Creating a Business Model

Making Makerspaces: Creating a Business Model

This is the second in a series of posts called Making Makerspaces, a distillation of the information gathered for a series of How to Make a Makerspace workshops produced by Artisan’s Asylum and MAKE. These posts will appear on a more-or-less weekly basis, and will focus on mission-critical topics related to founding and running creative manufacturing space. Today, we’ll be discussing common types of expenses and income that makerspaces around the world experience on a regular basis in order to help you create a business model for a space of your own. In the process of identifying these expenses and income, we’ll review examples from several well-established spaces across the U.S. for reference.

Continue Reading Gui Cavalcanti14