Maker Assembly

We are very much looking forward to our next gathering in Manchester, in conjunction with the Crafts Council’s Make:Shift innovation conference.

Our Manchester event will explore international maker cultures and what the UK can learn from them; the relationship between making and manufacturing in the UK and the role of makerspaces within the sector, as well as Making and Humanitarian Relief, discussing the role making can play within responses to humanitarian challenges. We have some great speakers joining us, so watch this space for updates.

With Maker Assembly, we aim to bring people together to have a critical conversation about the cultures of making* – its meaning, politics, history and future. We encourage everyone to participate by combining short talks with contributions from the attendees. Maker Assembly is peer-to-peer, informal and conversational.

Speakers

Session 1 – Learning from International Making Cultures

Justyna Swat – Strategic designer and architect, designing for social impact and co-founder POC 21, Paris, France 

Craig Dunlop – maker, founder of Workshop, Cape Town, South Africa 

David Li – founder of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab, Shenzhen, China

Session 2 – Making and Humanitarian Relief

Laura James – co-founder 0f Field Ready, co-founder of Makespace
– What roles can making play within responses to humanitarian challenges?

Session 3 – Making and Manufacturing Session

Ruth Claxton – artist and half of MakeWorks Birmingham 

Adrian McEwen – founder of MCQN Ltd., co-founder of DoES Liverpool, author of Designing the Internet of Things – Indie manufacturing

Paul Sohi – Product designer for Autodesk 

Alon Meron – Tutor in Design Products, Royal College of Art

Keynote Address

Laura Billings – Project Lead on The Open Works project and Author of Designed to Scale. Keynote Address title: The role of making in wider civic infrastructure.

Tickets

Thanks to support from the Comino Foundation, ticket prices are heavily subsidised. Your ticket also includes a communal lunch and refreshments during the day.

Schedule

The current schedule, subject to change is:

Venue

We’ll be holding Maker Assembly in Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab), a grassroots innovation organisation based in Manchester UK focusing on science and technology, arts and culture.

*What do we mean by “making”?

We’re talking about people who craft, design, manufacture, tinker with, engineer, fabricate, and repair physical things. Art, craft, electronics, textiles, products, robots. Hi-tech and low-tech, amateur and professional, young and old, with digital tools or by hand. Historical perspectives, what’s happening here and now, and how things might change in the future. We aim to be diverse and inclusive. If what you make, or how you see yourself, is a little bit on the fringes, you’re doubly welcome.

Maker Assembly is coming to Sheffield this August. We bring people together to have a critical conversation about the cultures of making ¹ – its meaning, politics, history and future. We encourage everyone to participate by combining short talks with contributions from the attendees. Maker Assembly is peer-to-peer, informal and conversational.

Update – September 2016: Thanks to everyone who came along; it was a great event, and we enjoyed meeting and talking with so many interesting makers. You can see some pictures from the day, kindly taken by Dan Sumption, over on Flickr.

Speakers

Akiko Kobayashi, architect and now facilitator of community-led building projects. She works with groups to communicate their vision and gain practical skills, and also has hands-on construction experience, most recently as part of the Tiree Noust Boathouse and Wikihouse v4.2 live build projects.

Annebella Pollen, author of Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a beautiful book on the esoteric mid-war group of pacifists and woodcrafters, who set out to create a revolutionary movement through craft, propaganda, ritual and outdoor living.

Clementine Blakemore, an architectural designer whose practice focuses on the relationship between design, production and place. Alongside a position as Designer in Residence at the Design Museum, and teaching at the AA School of Architecture, she is currently working on a range of small-scale projects in the UK.

Heather Corcoran, a curator and cultural producer with a specialism in art, design and technology. She leads outreach for Kickstarter in the UK and Europe, with a focus on the design & technology communities. Previously, she was Executive Director of Rhizome, the influential digital art nonprofit based at the New Museum, New York.

Huw Wahl, who recently made a film about Action Space, the radical artists’ group that operated in London and Sheffield in the 1960s and ’70s, and set out to champion the role of creative experience in the transformation of society, becoming famous for their giant inflatable structures.

Jon Flint, a designer at Anglo-Indian design practice, Superflux. He has worked on a variety of projects around drones, air quality and Graphene. He has an interest in the public perception of new technologies, trying to understand perspectives through hands-on workshops or inventive methods.

Liam Healy, from the collaborative art and design group Design unlikely futures, which emerged from Goldsmiths via the Calais ‘Jungle’ while the members worked as volunteer builders in the camp. Their aim is to collaboratively design alternative futures for capturing the social, political and physical fabric of the site, and to document the camp as a space, a community, and a population locked in transit.

Sarah Corbett, the founder of Craftivist Collective, a global social enterprise using craft a tool for slow, gentle & intriguing activism.

Tom Tobia, developer of products, spaces and businesses that encourage people to make things, not least Makerversity, the makers’ coworking incubator.

Schedule

The current schedule, subject to change is:

Venue

We’ll be holding Maker Assembly in the beautiful new Roco Creative Co-op, with its friendly event space, well-stocked bar, deleicious food and always-sunny roof terrace. This event coincides with the launch of their new maker space, providing the kit and tools for designers and makers to prototype and test their ideas and micro-manufacture their products.

Tickets

Thanks to support from Comino Foundation, ticket prices are heavily subsidised. Your ticket also includes a communal lunch and refreshments during the day.

Footnote: What do we mean by “making”?
We’re talking about people who craft, design, manufacture, tinker with, engineer, fabricate, and repair physical things. Art, craft, electronics, textiles, products, robots. Hi-tech and low-tech, amateur and professional, young and old, with digital tools or by hand. Historical perspectives, what’s happening here and now, and how things might change in the future. We aim to be diverse and inclusive. If what you make, or how you see yourself, is a little bit on the fringes, you’re doubly welcome. (←Back)

This event is still in the planning, but if you’re based in the area and are interested in getting involved, come along to our meetup on 20th April. Full details and registration here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/maker-assembly-sheffield-meetup-tickets-24656816201

Update: please see the follow-up post here.

Our friends at Farset Labs in Belfast organised a Maker Assembly there on 16th March 2016. More event details at their site: https://getinvited.to/farsetlabs/makerassemblyni/

Session 1: Making & Peace Building

Kicking off Maker Assembly NI is a session about the politics and nuances of community-facing digital fabrication projects. It will look at how maker cultures are emerging at the grassroots and how local organisations are contributing to the peace-building project currently underway in Northern Ireland. It hopes to reveal how the idea of ‘critical making’ can be adjusted to suit the specificities of different contexts.

Speakers

• Adam Wallace & Eamon Durey, Fab Labs NI
• John Peto, Nerve Centre

Session 2: Speculative Making: New Contexts and Futures

As the idea of digital making beds down—and practices become more visible and accessible—what new trajectories are emerging and how are speculative futures being framed? This session hopes to reveal the supports we might need to maintain a critical forecast of making and maker culture.

Speakers

• Nora O’Murchu, University of Limerick
• Kat Braybrooke, University of Sussex

Session 3: Governance, Sustainability & Maker Networks

How are maker networks nurtured and sustained? And how ‘critical’ are the governance strategies of the physical spaces and networked platforms that mediate maker networks?

This session hopes to somewhat unravel the entanglements of people, places, and things, to better understand how maker culture is being facilitated.

Speakers

• Javier Burón, Fab Lab Limerick & University of Limerick
• Hannah Stewart, Royal College of Art, Future Makerspaces Project

Session 4: Critics of the world, create!

Final session was a making exercise, inspired by the Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska’s (2012) Creative Media Manifesto and Garnet Hertz’s Critical Making zine series.

Our thanks to Andre Bolster, Pip Shea and all at Farset Labs for putting on a great event. If you’re interested in holding a Maker Assembly in your makerspace, library or other institution, please get in touch.

Assembly #1 took place on Saturday, 24th October 2015 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London as part of the Crafts Council’s nationwide Make:Shift:Do programme.

Highlights

Continue reading “V&A, London, October 2015”