A Maker Space for the 21st Century
Making Lewes is developing plans for an original and distinctive Lewes Maker Space.
With Lewes District Council’s rethink decision on the future of the Turkish Baths (see here), on thursday, 23rd February 2017, Making Lewes will be submitting a more detailed proposals for our envisaging of the Maker Space.
Download our first draft lewes-maker-space-v1 and let us know what you think. Email us if you want to get involved – info@makinglewes.org
The Lewes Maker Space will be a community and educational hub for the town and environs while also acting at the national and international level.
Our aim is to create a distinctive, cross-disciplinary and individual Maker Space, reflecting and helping maintain Lewes’s great individual sensibility, identity and character.
It will draw on, complement, and add to the town’s strong individual identity and community spirit, often considered as encompassing making, craft and other related creative cultures as at its heart.
As a hub for makers our Maker Space will host events, exhibitions, and provide workspace, training, courses and classes for all ages. Acting as a showcase shop front for Lewes’s communities of makers. We envisage including a repair cafe, a makers and materials library, and an emphasis on re-use and the circular economy. The Maker Space model we’re developing will likely be Membership based.
The Lewes Maker Space – its history and story
The Lewes Maker Space emerged out of Making Lewes’s work that has been ongoing over the last three years. It develops an initial envisioning proposal, Re-envisioning the Phoenix by ML’s co-founder Oliver Lowenstein in October 2014.
Since then we have run a series of events introducing, highlighting and exploring Maker Spaces and related culture as part of our efforts towards making the case for a Lewes based Makers hub. These included: the Re-Make, ReModel symposium and exhibition in Autumn 2015’s Make Lewes Festival. Spring 2016 Maker Places talks series, and our pop-up community use of the Turkish Baths as a main hub of last years Festival, including pop-up workshops and the Kinship workshop which recreated the Baths in the days leading up to the main festival events.
The popularity, success and support we received last autumn regarding the community use of the Baths during the last festival convinced us of making the case for its continued community use as a Maker Space.
You can find further information in our resources section on Maker Spaces, including Fab Labs and Building Materials Re-Use Centres.
Making Lewes 