Month: June 2018

In May we visited Makerstown in Brussels, a one-day event where inventors, makers, schools, businesses and policymakers join together to discuss what the town of the future will look like. Makerstown gives a space for makers to display innovative products, which range from 3D printed robots to on-the-spot blood testing kits, offers platform for policymakers and startups to debate how makers can be supported, and provides an educational opportunity for children – inspiring the next generation of makers. Here, we caught up with maker Paul Myers, co-founder of Farm Urban, a Liverpool-based social enterprise which researches sustainable and efficient methods of growing food, and develops tools to make these methods available to everybody. At Makerstown, Farm Urban exhibited the Produce Pod, an open source aquaponic system for home and educational…

Alex Christey-Kelly has a national diploma in fashion design and degree in fashion communication, concentrating on sustainable making projects throughout her courses. Working in fashion retail, she became increasingly uncomfortable and disillusioned with the ethics of the market-driven fashion world. As a director of north Liverpool’s Make makerspace, Christey-Kelly’s OpenMaker project involves the fashion industry, steering a political agenda towards ever-increasing change. Often considered an unethical industry, with dated operational practices, her idea focuses on bringing together designers, makers and a creative community. Christey-Kelly’s fashion communications degree enables her to understand how to get people making things, she says, and how to market them. ‘Part of the idea behind Make has been to provide access to tools that I found lacking after leaving college. We’ve developed a community of makers that…