Hive76 Maker Space Opens at Bok School in Philadelphia
Maker City
Maker spaces similar Hive76 are reinventing manufacturing and reshaping cities
Mar. 01, 2016
Walk into a first floor studio of the newly reimagined Bok Building any night of the week, and y'all'll discover yourself among Philadelphian manufacturers hard at work: Making a 14-human foot "Connect Four" set that can be played with a Trip the light fantastic toe Dance Revolution pad, turning a 1930s radio the size of a dresser drawer into a karaoke machine, repurposing old newspaper boxes into instantaneous printshops, or only tinkering with a wide array of electrical parts and equipment on hand.
This is Hive76, a DIY maker infinite that opened in the shuttered Bok school building, near East Passyunk, a few weeks ago. Like other maker spaces in the metropolis—including The Hacktory and The Department of Making and Doing, from which information technology dissever in 2009—Hive76 captures 2 ideas of working that have grown around the land: A render to (at to the lowest degree small calibration) local manufacturing, and co-working spaces, with all the inherent collaboration that goes with them.
"It'due south adept to keep the door open," says Hive76 president Chris Terrell. "You never know when someone who has totally different experiences than yous is going to walk past and solve your trouble."
This is the essence of how maker spaces work: People with a drive to create annihilation in fields every bit varied as fine fine art to technology to bioengineering come together to share tools, ideas, and a common creative surroundings. It is a modern and commonage riff on what people take been doing for centuries past themselves in basements and spare rooms and on top of kitchen tables after dinner—tinkering. What could we create if we tinkered together? asks the maker move.
The maker industry has potential to create jobs, bring people to the city, and support local businesses. This is what has happened in Pittsburgh which, the National League of Cities noted, has become a dark equus caballus hub of innovation in recent years.
The answer could be: A meliorate metropolis. According to a National League of Cities report issued concluding calendar week, an estimated 35 million adults in the United States are makers, and 26 pct of cities—and growing—have shared maker spaces, like Hive76. And they are increasingly manufacturing things that people desire to purchase. From 2022 to 2022 lonely, sales of locally-crafted products around the state, like wood crafts and leather goods, grew 29 percent; by 2017, the market is expected to be as high every bit $6 billion.
In cities like Philadelphia, where big manufacturing has taken a olfactory organ dive, small makers—crafts people and artists and tech nerds who create products from their own homes or in maker spaces—are unexpectedly taking its place. The maker industry has potential to create jobs, bring people to the urban center, and support local businesses. This is what has happened in Pittsburgh which, the National League of Cities noted, has get a dark horse hub of innovation in contempo years. In Philadelphia, BioBots, a 3D medical tissue printing company, was devised in a Penn dorm room—but the founders made the first prototypes at NextFab, another Philly maker infinite close to Hive76. They went on to get more than $200,000 in investments, and are now on their second model.
"The maker movement has such peachy potential to modify the fabric of business and manufacturing in cities," says Brooks Rainwater, co-writer of the National League of Cities report. "The urban center itself is the place where the maker movement lives, breathes and succeeds. What you have here is the ability to localize the manufacturing of goods for people in that local area."
Hive76 takes the community aspect of maker spaces a pace further with a membership model in which members own and operate the organization, paying dues and meeting regularly to make decisions together about everything from whether to interact with the Delaware Center of Contemporary Art, to which new members to accept. Criteria for membership include agreeing to care for the space and its members and articulating what the member hopes to receive and requite to the infinite—as well every bit a want to better Philadelphia through their commonage efforts.
The commonage started with only a handful of members, but now has nigh 30, who come from all parts of the city and suburbs, and several unlike fields, though fine arts and applied science are the most common. Terrell went to schoolhouse for printmaking and bookbinding at University of the Arts, but sought out Hive76 because he wanted to larn how to practise 3D press. His current project is repurposing former metallic newspaper dispenser boxes by putting wireless printers inside them that can print a publication on the spot whenever a box is opened. He plans on using these to raise awareness about the maker motility, and contour the work of innovative Philadelphia artists and makers.
"The maker movement has such cracking potential to alter the fabric of business and manufacturing in cities," says Brooks Rainwater, co-author of the National League of Cities written report . "The metropolis itself is the place where the maker motion lives, breathes and succeeds. What you take here is the power to localize the manufacturing of goods for people in that local expanse."
Other Hive members take come to the maker space for skills that have changed their career trajectories or helped their careers explode. Member Chris Thompson likewise has a fine art groundwork, but using skills he learned at Hive76, he'south now education laser cutting and 3D printing at Philadelphia Academy. Hashemite kingdom of jordan Miller, a biomedical researcher at Penn, developed a 3D printer at Hive76 that could print sugar; his invention, like BioBots', could also print the vasculature of different human organs, leading to the ability to grow new organs outside a human body, an of import contribution to bioengineering research.
"We keep the doors open for ourselves, but other people just come up in and nosotros help them," says Terrell. "Students working on projects will come in and be stumped with their work, and people merely volunteer their help, without asking 'what's in this for me?'"
This kind of democratic distribution of technical and artistic noesis at gratis or low price is what renders maker spaces unique and makes them poised possibly to alter our city's relationship to innovation education and small-calibration production. Community-run maker spaces might also be a valuable bridge to help open up applied science and tech innovation to groups that have been historically underrepresented in those fields, including women. Leslie Birch is a writer and web content producer, and one of six female members at Hive76. She joined because she needed access to more than tools and people who knew how to work the equipment she wanted to learn nigh and lacked entree into the male person-dominated world of tech.
"At the tech briefing I just went to of maybe ten thousand attendees, more than than three quarters were men," says Birch. "Men can get really defensive in tech and information technology can be intimidating. Merely not at Hive76. They welcome women. If you are bold enough to walk in the door, yous are certain to get support and help for your project."
When she did walk through the door, she said she institute a cracking customs synergy. "The guys already there had the tools and the knowledge, but they needed good ideas. I brought a great idea and an artist's vision and they helped me get going right away."
"We can practice things that we could never pull off working alone," Terrell agrees. "To practise something groovy, you have to work together."
Header Photo: Flickr/Mitch Altman
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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/hive76-philadelphia-maker-space/
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