A day at the Institute of Making

I spent yesterday amongst 40 makers exploring the materials library, and playing around with 'stuff' at the Institute of Making.    Hosted by Dr Zoe Laughlin, Co-founder and Director of the institute, along with Richard and Arron, of R&A Collaboration,  who also documented the event.

As well as being the right balance of informative and fun, it was a great opportunity to meet some talented makers and get carried away talking about, amongst other things; where to source the best metal mesh, how long plasti-dip takes to dry, and importantly, how lucky we are to work for ourselves, doing a job we love. 

Highlights of the day included pewter casting in cuttle fish moulds, crocheting in fine copper wire, and fishing 'coolmorph' thermoplastic out of warm water with chopsticks, ready to mould and sculpt with our hands.

 Shelves of wood and metal samples in the materials library.  Each material in the library has a unique number, and is searchable on the library's own app, downloadable from the Apple App store.

Zoe explained that the workshops are designed to be domestic in scale so that one machine sits enticingly next to another, encouraging exploration of more than just the tools you came in to use.  Workshops can be intimidating places for the un-initiated; you search for a 'way in', some way to get started.  Here, not only are the workshops deliberately un-intimidating, but technical help is on hand to help UCL staff and students make something for their course / research, or just for fun.

A rich and meaningful engagement with materials is at the heart of the Institute of Making. I am in awe.

Here's a link to Richard & Arron's photos of the day:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.899310810087867.1073741847.318160774869543&type=1

MAKE: SHIFT Crafts Council conference

I spent two days last week immersed in craft innovation.

I'm really interested in the idea of collaborating; with industry, museums, science....  This was a really great opportunity to hear about makers doing exactly that: 

Matt Duran's collaboration with medical research at the Royal Free hospital in London, to create glass moulds for growing a polymer in, which provides the scaffolding for new noses. More here


Designer / Maker  Lizete Druka; project designer, Advanced Colour & Materials at Jaguar.

Sara Robertson and Sarah Taylor showed us their incredible innovative cloth that incorporates light;
made from black Holland Linen printed with a newly developed, white-scattering liquid crystal thermochromic dye, polymer optical fibres and heat sinks.  More information here

I was so inspired by Dr Sarat Babu's passion for creating new materials through new manufacturing processes.  Below are samples of architectured materials developed through selective laser sintering.  More here

Finally, I missed her talk, but am a huge fan of what Fi Scott of Make Works has achieved; an online comprehensive directory of Scottish makers, manufacturers, material suppliers and factories.   When can we have one for England!

MATERIAL LAB's Jim Biddulph writes a great blog report from the conference:
http://www.material-lab.co.uk/blog/post/makeshift-2014/