MakerSpace has gone mobile and is traveling around the County from Library to Library. Mobile MakerSpace lets makers come together and create with technology.
Wednesdays through July
10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Mobile MakerSpace's next stop »
Feature Story
The sound of innovation is the rear door of a moving truck clanging open.
Inside lies an assortment of knick knacks and tools to delight tinkerers of all interests. Soldering irons, stomp rockets, the contents are a what’s what of “what’s that for?”
Maker Librarian Meredith Nelson conducts this locomotive of learning, officially called Mobile MakerSpace, each summer as it tours and sets up shop at different Johnson County Library locations. She also manages the Library’s brick-and-mortar MakerSpace, a workshop for creators of all ages located in Central Resource Library and currently being renovated along with the rest of the library.
Together, both MakerSpace offerings serve a growing mindset of learning by rolling up one’s sleeves, sometimes literally, and experimenting. The philosophy didn’t start in libraries, but they’ve embraced it wholeheartedly.
“Libraries are a perfect fit to help carry the maker movement. We’re all about giving our communities the tools and knowledge to make our lives better,” says Nelson. “A book and a 3D printer are the same in that sense.”
The 2015 Mobile MakerSpace tour kicked off recently and brings a sampling of those tools and activities directly to communities.
Participants can learn the finer points of soldering by making solar-powered mechanical cockroaches. Or be introduced to binary code by making bracelets. Or, if those feel tame by mad scientist standards, they can see physics in action by building and, of course, firing miniature catapults.
The Library hopes the mobile programming whets the appetites of young makers across the county, expands awareness of the full-service MakerSpace and ultimately adds fuel to the fire of Kansas City’s growing reputation as a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) hotspot.
Interactive learning, the thinking goes, helps produce the sort of highly-skilled individuals so desperately sought after by these industries. Our culture also benefits in some powerful ways. Take the example of Mason Wilde, a recent Louisburg high school graduate who last year used MakerSpace to build a prosthetic hand for a young friend.
With MakerSpaces leading the charge, libraries are evolving into gathering places where people both consume and create. The number of libraries with some version of them has steadily grown since the early years of this decade. They range in scale from small kits, which are also available at Johnson County Library, to Chattanooga Public Library’s “4th Floor,” a 12,000 square foot facility that literally takes up an entire floor and houses large equipment like a weaving loom.
Other organizations have taken notice and started lending their support. Black & Veatch, the Kauffman Foundation and Google Fiber have all donated funds within the last year to support Johnson County Library’s MakerSpace.
Communities will reap the rewards right along with the inventive types who take advantage of these resources.
Mobile MakerSpace is cosponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.