User groups.................
Get your hands on maker tools a-plenty!
Les Pounder emigrates to the beautiful land of Preston, Lancashire.
Preston Hackspace started in late 2015/early 2016 after members of the local Geekup community, itself a monthly social meeting for local tech experts, wanted to create a central hub for makers to meet and work together. The first meeting for the makerspace took place in the pub and centered around a 3D printer.
Preston Hackspace isn’t just a place where you can learn how to use a 3D printer. One of the success stories for the group is their Code Up group, a social outreach project created by Claire Wicher to help adults learn how to code. Preston Code Up now operates thanks to the knowledge and time of Chris Dell, a local developer and maker, who also donates resources and time to the makerspace as one of its founder members.
As the Makerspace grew, so did its requirements, and in early 2018 the group moved in to a larger premises that offered configurable spaces, needed for the many aspects and interests of the group. With this extra space the group are now able to use larger tools (wood turning, CNC machinery) alongside offering courses in HTML and JavaScript.
Preston Hackspace has come a long way from that first pub meeting, but the same core beliefs − sharing space, learning from each other and helping one another − still stand true. This is the ethos of many user groups: we don’t share our time and knowledge with friends and colleagues for financial gain, rather for intellectual gain and social benefits, the foundations of the communities that we know and love.
Learn more about their hackspace by visiting its website on the interwebs: https://prestonhackspace.org.uk.