Reflections on North Quad MakerFest

Grad school is tough work when you’re a student, but it’s no cake walk for faculty or staff, either. So Saturday’s North Quad MakerFest, in which we all took a few hours out from exam study days, was powerful.

Under Sofia and Stephen’s leadership, volunteers, students, professors and their kids, and even family members snowed in after December’s graduation dropped in to weave, drop spindle, 3D model, make an Arduino blink, make LEGO towers, play with Squishy Circuits, assemble Snap Circuits, make Little Bits do little bitty things, 3D print, knit, crochet, or decorate cookies. (Yeah, we had a whole section of the MakerFest designed for your inner child so we could use a lot of our Michigan Makers inventory.)

It was a much-needed time for me to spend time just being with one another, for our hands to be busy, for us to chat, and for us to just concentrate on process and not product. And whether you gravitated toward a new creation tool or a centuries-old one, there was something for everyone. We didn’t see anyone come in, look around, and leave without seeing something that appealed to them.
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This idea of makerspace as inclusive  — not tied to any one technology, tool set, or modality — is more and more important to me. I don’t want to privilege one group over another. I’ve been known to say, in other projects, “Everybody in, nobody out, unless you’re mean,” but I hadn’t really drawn the connection between that philosophy in another context and what I want the makerspaces I work in to be like until last week.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what drop spindles are and do, here’s a look (I didn’t really understand until I saw them in action, either!).

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