🏭Open Workshop
An event format tool to connect makers and places by Amsterdam FCH Team. Find a Makerspace, bring food & drinks and make a good poster.
What is this tool about and why is it relevant ?
Open workshop is an event format that have been designed and implemented by the CENTRINNO Pilot team in Amsterdam. It consist in organising a series of monthly events each hosted in a different makerspaces location.
Workshops and makerspaces are ideal locations to host events and facilitate connections. Actually they offer large open spaces with low noise restrictions and often little used in the evenings.
The local team in Amsterdam is in charge to find available makerspaces and cater beverages and food for the event, while the hosting makers together with the team set out the core thematic for the event. The thematic and format could vary according to specific needs : for examples it could be a practical workshop about a specific activity or technique, or a panel discussion about urgent needs for the local makers community, or a presentation of the hosting maker's work.
The budget and the resources needed for implementing this tool are quite reduced since they should cover only drinks and snacks and a small production capacity. The long term replicability of this tool could become self sustainable and it could be conducted in the form of an estafette format among makerspaces. At the end of each event a new members will take responsibility over the next event.
These monthly werkplaats are nomadic spatial strategies that could help you to find out the better design for your local model of FCH but also it could be used as a tool to reach out and involve new communities. If repeated regularly, it helps to better know and understand your local communities' needs and the type of productive and creative spaces that are available in your neighbourhood.
The regular organisation of these kind of event allowed the local team in Amsterdam to obtain the following:
→ assure a constant physical presence of the local team in the neighbourhood and thus give visibility to their works and actions
→ better understand makers' and makerspaces' conditions and needs in order to design a local model of FCH that will respond to this need
→ enable partnerships among makers, foster stronger connection and knowledge sharing among them
→ give voice to pressing issue regarding makers communities
Key Steps
Find here a list of fundamental steps you should follow if you want to organise an Open Workshop event in your city.
Find a makerspace to organise the event
Choose a topic for the event ( these are some examples Sharing resources, Open Lab, Space Collaboration, Mapping makers)
Send invitation to the network and target audience
Make a good poster and share it online through communication channels
Bring food & drinks and help the maker prepare the space
Thank everyone for coming and ask immediately who wants to host the next session.
Voices from the field :
"open workshops are each time at a different location. With a beer and a snack we discuss a certain topic. Most often introduced by an invited speaker or maker from the network."
"To visit your fellow makers workspaces gives an insight in the way of working and makes it easier to connect professionally. "
It raises relevant questions such as :
How do we ensure that makers in Amsterdam-Noord can keep their making places, while more and more homes are being built in Noord?
And how can makerspaces go hand in hand with their neighbourhoods, and can makers and residents mean something to each other?
Summary Table
Do you want to learn more ?
Here some useful links that you can look at if you want to better understand what Amsterdam is doing to set up their FCH for local craftmaship in the Buiksloterham area :
→ read this article about makership for sustainable and circulart uraban transformations
→ In addition, you can always check the specific page about Amsterdam in the CENTRINNO web page to have an overview about their work and actions towards the setting up of their FCH
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