@ maakleerplek Leuven
On 25 October, Crafting Futures organised the first working group on Maker Spaces in maakleerplek Leuven. Maakleerplek is an umbrella that connects and houses several organisations, including artist studios, a co-working space, a textile lab, the Repair Hub, a tool library and an open lab with a focus on new technology, the High Tech Lab.
PhD researcher Vic Bervoets organised the working group as part of his research within Crafting Futures, which focuses on the broad field of Maker Spaces in Flanders.
Among other things, he is looking at the position such organisations/spaces occupy today and what role they can play in the broader field of craft making in Flanders in the future. Here, attention will be paid to the role of technology but also how knowledge transfer takes place here.
Maker Space, Fablab or maakleerplek?
During the working group, one immediately noticed the diversity of practices sitting around the table. Although all the partners present fall under the broad heading of ‘Maker Space’, their actual practices differ from one another, both in terms of objectives and practical implementation. Some workplaces are embedded in a museum space and are therefore linked to the various forms of heritage in the collections present (eg. Industriemuseum, DIVA). Others such as the Fablabs and Maker Spaces linked to libraries or educational institutions position themselves primarily in the field of STEM education. In addition, there are many other forms where the focus is on social, cultural, ecological or economic goals.
Daily practice varies between shared ateliers with shared space and machinerie for a more or less fixed community, albeit including a public program of workshops (like the Maakfabriek in Antwerpen) to more open organizations that invite and reach out to a broader audience to come and experiment with technologies and maker practices in a shared space with shared tools and machines (as for example High Tech lab Leuven or the Mind- and Makerspace in Bruges).
Fab Charter
During the workshop, we explored the differences and similarities between places by starting from the Fab Charter.
This document is part of the foundation of the Fablab movement that emerged at MIT at the beginning of the 21st century. Meanwhile, the Fablab model has grown into a global community, which in the Benelux, gathers under this website. At the same time, the Fablab is only one possible model of Maker Spaces, usually one embedded in an educational context (secondary, college or university). Fablab+ in Antwerp, linked to urban education, is a case in point. Consequently, not all participants could fully identify with the terminology and guidelines described in the charter. However, some broad lines were generally endorsed: the focus on and importance of a community-oriented operation and attention to the open sharing of different forms of knowledge.
Future topics of discussion
The conversation covered a variety of topics, for example, how different financial models, with or without the support of subsidies, have a place in the field and how these models also shape the way things work. How the variety of forms and insertions of Maker Spaces could complement each other. How there is currently no shared network where Maker Spaces can share experiences, concerns or good practices. These are some of the themes we will work on in the further course of the project.
Finally, we discussed the many ways in which knowledge transfer is given a place within the makerspaces. Here, too, we saw a lot of variation in terms of form, ranging from informal to structured, target group, staying either within the own community or reaching out to external (project-based) audiences, but also in terms of the type of knowledge being transferred, from handling specific materials, use of machines/tools to safety, entrepreneurship…
This first meeting has certainly provided many new insights. The different ways of working, objectives and approaches show the richness of diverse making practices and maker spaces in Flanders. The input from the working group provides a sharper picture on which we will build during further research.