Week 9 – On Maker Spaces

What I love most about this article is that it opened my eyes and introduced me to a whole new world that I hadn’t known existed! I had heard the term “Maker Space” before, but never really knew what it was until reading this article. So firstly, I am grateful for the opportunity to have read this article and learned about something so interesting.

“The maker mindset empowers people not just to seek out jobs in STEM or creative fields, but to make their own jobs and industries, depending on their interests and the emerging needs they see in a rapidly changing society.”

The above quote really resonated with me. I am an entrepreneur and I feel very strongly that entrepreneurship is a key element in finding a solution to a lot of problems in the world, especially in my neck of the woods (the Middle East). Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, and Maker Spaces foster this state of mind by giving the maker the opportunity to physically making something. I think that is very empowering and to see the physical manifestation of your mind’s creativity is both symbolic and powerful. I think this physical manifestation is even more important in our digital world, where concepts and creativity are becoming more abstract and I feel less accessible for children to grasp the true power of their minds. That is not to say that digital creativity isn’t important, the article goes deep into how diverse maker spaces can be, from software to robotics to design. However, there is a shared element of some celebrated “physical” manifestation, even if it is a software program it is a program that has a use-case as opposed to a cog in a system.

I also like the scrappiness that maker spaces embody, the “do what you can, with what you have, where you are” attitude. This inspired me to search for Maker Spaces in my own country 🙂 Who knows, perhaps I will start one! I love the idea of educating youth while also bringing together a community and even solving issues for the community.