A visit to a makerspace this weekend provided powerful reminders of what human ingenuity, collaboration, appropriate workspaces, and tools–as well as simply just playing around–can produce in the way of innovation and goodness for the world. In this space, people were playing games, making leather boots (!), working on a global challenge competition to design a drone that can deliver relief supplies to remote areas cut off by natural disasters, and painting (and sketching) :-).
Makerspaces are places where people’s ideas can come alive, and where the tools and other equipment are readily available–and similarly inventive people (and sometimes organizations) provide ready support.
Illustration: Watercolor and Platinum Carbon pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author
They are part of the natural movement of the “democratization” of know-how which–of course, as the sad events in the global space this weekend tragically reminded us–can be harnessed for good or ill. Hopefully makerspaces such as this can produce more inventors of better futures than the one that threatened the world in Paris, and devastated so many lives, this past weekend.
Illustration: Watercolor and Platinum Carbon pen and ink by Black Elephant Blog author
Black Elephant Blog 