Designers and makers have worked together to produce a range of interesting designs. These were fabricated on CNC routers at MAKLab Glasgow by the makers and sent by courier to the designers.
Designers and makers will now assess their designs against the brief and reflect on opportunities for improvement.
As part of RE:FORM we are organising a 12 week design-make project, with the brief to design a chair made from plywood sheets. This will involve design students who have just completed a second level design course with the Open University working alongside vocational trainees based at MAKLab Glasgow.
The project replicates real-world distributed manufacturing scenarios with designers electronically sending design files to manufacturers who have to interpret design intent and fabricate them. Through three iterations of the design-make process we hope to encourage learning through reflection and communication.
8 design participants have started and begun initial design exploration. Maker participants will be inducted on MAKLab’s CNC routers on 30th July and will also be introduced to their designer partners electronically. First prototypes will be made on 10th August.
Our 3rd July workshop brought together 14 participants from makerspaces, education, young entrepreneurs and industry background. We discussed how makerspaces might work with educators to provide the skills future redistributed manufacturing might need, both in terms of employers and employees.
“Less than half of businesses agree that they are able to recruit young people in Scotland with the global skills required by the business” Scottish Council for Development and Industry, 2014.
The OU and Maklab are looking at how education and accreditation in makespaces can equip people with the skills and aptitudes industry needs for redistributed manufacturing, and will be testing this approach through a 12 week case study. We were keen to bring people together to inform this case study, and help us identify key challenges, and identify who could be invited to a broader conversation over the next six months.
In the morning, we broke into groups to explore two questions:
Over lunch, participants selected their key challenges to focus on, and we broke into different groups to consider potential solutions or ways forward. These were:
This was a really active session, with a range of ideas explored from discussions around the general areas to some specific, concrete plans for solutions.
“…this is such a valuable process but we’ve never actually sat down and done it… it was just by you asking me these questions…”
We’re still looking over what people wrote and we’ll be aiming to synthesise the key thoughts over the next few weeks.
We’re going to set up a mailing list to help start building a network to discuss these topics, and we’re keen to invite more people to join in. Please get in touch if these challenges are relevant to you and you’d like to join in our research.
Our next workshop will be on the 4th September, and will focus on “Innovating Accreditation”.
We’d love to see you there. If it sounds interesting, get in touch, or sign up online.
The RE:FORM project (Reimagining Education for the Future of Redistributed Manufacturing) is a collaboration between The Open University and MAKLab Limited to explore how makerspaces can play a role in the future of redistributed manufacturing, and what role education will play.