Category: News

Nicola Shaw has spent many years working in the NHS. Her experience with the organisation – where she has worked for over 16 years with both patients and behind the scenes – has led her to develop and successfully launch SecureABag. This innovative product – which secures patients’ property while they’re in hospital – is designed to both help the patient experience and save the healthcare industry money. Shaw says her insights into how the NHS works have been the most help to her during the development phase. ‘My knowhow and knowledge is my greatest skill,’ she says. ‘I know and understand how the patient journey works around the hospital, what is needed and what will work. I’ve been able to research first hand with every department that has seen theft,…

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…

Sensor City is a partner in the LCR4.0 programme, which aims to put the Liverpool City Region at the heart of an evolution which is transforming production in the modern world economy. Focusing on what's known as the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution', its aims dovetail closely with that of OpenMaker, and our ambition to transform the production processes and models on which our industrial society has been built...  Alison Mitchell moved to Liverpool in February 2017, to join the team at the city’s newest tech-innovation centre – Sensor City. Sensor City is a collaboration between Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool, fostering the creation, development and production of state of the art technologies to be used across various sectors. With over 25 years’ experience in the Internet of…

Objocopiers scan 3D objects, enabling artists and designers to send a blueprint of an object through media from one place to another. Their creation of an opensource platform  enables collaboration between creatives. Makers Rob Black, from Real Space, and Dave Weaver, from Maiku are OpenMaker finalists, working in collaboration with LJMU Art and Design School to bring the Objocopier into the creative community. When Rob Black’s university was bulldozed, his access to workshop equipment was suddenly cut. A frustrating battle to source elements or equipment that he needed to make things ensued. Rob’s attention quickly turned to makerspaces. Having met Dave whilst studying a psychology PhD at university, the two united to create what would eventually become the Objocopier – a professional self-contained scanner which would connect Liverpool’s diverse creative…

Sally Gilford is an artist and print-maker, working on a number of socially-inclusive projects across the north. She is one of the Openmaker finalists, partnering with Salix Homes Developments and Islington Mill Arts Club to fit out three experimental microhomes. Co-founding print specialist One69A at Salford’s Islington Mill, with Mark Jermyn, Sally’s responsible for looking after the education side of the business. She works with groups from primary schools to secondary and university, alongside a variety of other institutions and groups including 42nd Street, an organisation working with teens with mental health issues, and on Kew Gardens’ ‘Go Wild’ project in Liverpool. One69A also works on a commission basis with galleries and museums including the Whitworth, Leeds City Art Gallery, Museum of Liverpool and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. [caption id="attachment_417" align="alignright" width="300"]…

Startup Sesame, Europe’s largest alliance of tech events, has launched its Season Four call for entries. If you haven’t come across Startup Sesame yet, it runs acceleration programmes which grant promising entrepreneurs premium access to 30+ global tech events, and supports startups by offering resources and insights into tech events. You’ll find more information in this presentation about them – here.   You can also read its first annual report – about the value of tech events for business development – and details of a fourth call for entries here.   This year, Startup Sesame is running accelerators to access tech events in four different sectors: mobility programme focuses on transport and mobility startups entertainment programme is dedicated to creative entrepreneurs, including music, video, gaming and publishing DeepTech programme is for IP intensive…

Jimmy Haughey is a graduate of Liverpool John Moores University, originally from the North West of Ireland. He has worked in South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, China and Vietnam, in varied roles including as executive director of a FTSE100 company, ground management and business acquisition. His vision for Liverpool AquaFarm is to demonstrate a modular, off-grid, aquaculture centre, to produce food in urban locations, using disused space. The test bed will be at Clarence Graving Dock in North Liverpool, carrying out R&D and producing fresh fish, seaweed and shellfish. Its future phases will focus an SME cluster and visitor destination to promote innovation and raise awareness of the sustainability agenda. Jimmy’s family has a long-running farm in the west of Ireland, which farms seaweed and cut turf alongside animals and land.…

Angela Loveridge has had a varied career, teaching English as a foreign language, working in radio, as a counsellor, and with people with mental health issues. It was her work with people with mental health issues that led her to set up an origami group; she now collaborates with business partners Zulay Newell and Dr Lizzie Burns. ‘My whole set of life experiences have been brought together to get me here – focusing on possibilities through numerous avenues of origami,’ says Angela. ‘It has played its part in the technological revolution – I once met with world famous origamist Robert Lang, who is working with NASA to develop a shield to block out light pollution from earth to enable better vision into space. I also worked in one of his classes…

Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs is an author, lecturer and initiator in the fashion and footwear industry, with a particular interest in new and better ways to do business. She is also a director of Baltic Creative CIC, a social enterprise property company established in 2009 to support the creative and digital ecosystem in Liverpool. Fiona led the Liverbird Shoe Project in July 2017, collaborating with Fab Lab Liverpool at the School of Art and Design in LJMU, and with artist and honorary visiting fellow Emma Rodgers. The project originated from an exploration of different approaches to shoes, sculpture and technology, highlighting challenges in the fashion industry around over-production, and developing innovative ways to mix traditional types of making and 3D printing technologies.  ‘I have limited practical skills and hope this project will help…