makezine.com: I’ve been following the TechShop post-apocalypse makerspace landscape. A year after TechShop’s sudden closing, there’s a wave of good news to be found. By now, new organizers have stepped forward to create for-profit and nonprofit makerspaces, motivated to serve the makers who were displaced by the closure. Also, many of those who gained experience working at TechShop have found new jobs in other spaces. It’s a good sign that the maker community is able to rebound from such an unexpected failure.
2 comments:
I'm glad there are new spaces opening up to serve the needs of the maker community. For myself, a personal difficulty I found with using Makerspaces, especially in an area like the Bay Area with high cost of living and gentrification, is how high the prices usually are at all these spaces. I understand the costs of running these kinds of spaces, but I don't think access to these kinds of tools should be restricted to people with money. I am encouraged by reading in this article about the opening of non-profit makerspaces. I think this is the ideal business model and greatly ties in with the concept of "participatory culture" I am learning about in Digitool, a class I am taking in iDeate. The success of a "Maker" culture demands and is enabled by free sharing of information and resources, allowing for a wide range of people across cultures and economic strata to share and create. I think the actual existence of for-profit makerspaces is antithetical to the whole point of the movement and can only serve rich hobbyists rather than enable meaningful social change and creativity.
I remember the sudden closure of TechShop last year. It is still puzzling to hear how such a strong business model started to fail so early in the company’s life. I realize that the technology these maker spaces have to offer has only become more available to everyday consumers, but the concept of these spaces go far beyond the technology they offer. The real value in these spaces is the collaborative environment where innovators and creators can pool their knowledge to grow ideas across the board.
It is nice to see that these resources have not disappeared and organizations still exist out there to serve the community. Makerspaces were such an instrumental part of my time at CMU, and I am so thankful that the university believed in developing these spaces for the students across campus. I look forward to seeing more innovation across campus, and the country as these spaces continue to thrive.
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