DI ...Y not give it a try
There aren’t too many family-friendly festivals where children are encouraged to use a soldering iron to fuse wires to a circuit board. Or enable toddlers to pick up real hand tools and saw a piece of wood in half. Or let little girls find out that they, too, can make a steampunk prop rifle.
“We have stories,” said Karen Corliss, a Denver Maker Faire organizer since the 2013 inception of the event celebrating people who make stuff. “One of our team members was talking to a little girl and she was just staring at the (steampunk) rifle. And he said, ‘You can make that too,’ and her eyes lit up. That was a moment.”
Moments like these are the raison d’être for organizers of the DIY-minded event, which dropped “mini” from its moniker this year to graduate to “feature” status. Word has spread and now this year’s two-day festival, which opens Saturday at the Denver Mart, is expected to attract out-of-state exhibitors like the New Mexico arts group Meow Wolf and at least 124 combat bots, all sorts of fashion hackers and members of the Rocky Mountain Lace Guild demonstrating how lace is made. By hand.
“We work really hard at finding the right balance. How do you break down the silos between tech, crafters and artisans and schools?” said Elise Van Dyne, a.k.a. Maker Faire-y, who is credited with bringing the event to Colorado. “This isn’t about just math. But here’s science. Here’s art. Here are amazing things that happen to bring those people together.”
Makers have been around for centuries. But the movement to bring the creative community together under the maker label arguably dates back to 2005 when Make Magazine launched. A year later, the first Maker Faire debuted in the Bay Area. This year, there will be 221 of them worldwide, with most being the mini faires, said Sherry Huss, co-creator of Maker Faire.
“The true beauty is giving people hands on (experiences) like learning to solder or knit, and learn something new. We felt that was missing everywhere,” said Huss, vice president of Maker Media in San Francisco. “We liked the metaphor of a fairground and the values of a country fair and multi-generational learning — learning from grandparents, aunts and uncles. People just don’t have the chance to do that anymore. That’s why this is so special because it is a place where you can get excited about doing something yourself rather than watching it be done.”
Modern makers use technology to refine products partly because the tools and training are readily available via online tutorials or stores like SparkFun, the Niwot retailer that sells all sorts of electronics to equip doit-yourselfers.
“The changes we’re seeing has a lot to do with larger cultural shifts and the way people think about technology,” said Megan Arnold, a SparkFun spokeswoman. “Schools are adding STEM so kids are seeing coding offered at school. We’re hearing from colleges that kids are coming in because they learned to code in the fifth grade. There’s a hunger to take it into your own hands.”
Every exhibitor at the show has something to share — or do. Sheet Metal Workers Local 9 plans to show up again to help kids (and adults) use shop tools that bend sheet metal
into a toolbox. The Loveland CreatorSpace is bringing back Nerdy Derby for anyone who wants to build and race a wooden derby car. This year, there’s also 16-yearold Ethan Milligan, who built a small scale assembly machine; Metropolitan State University of Denver graduate Stephen Chavez, who hacked his wheelchair; and a DIY gardening sensor built by Colorado State University.
Gathering the community together has been a blast, but after last year’s event, Van Dyne, executive director of Colorado Maker Hub, almost gave up.
“When we started 2017, I was exhausted, broke and thinking, ‘Am I ever going to do this again?’ I really didn’t know,” she said. “…We do five events every year. I can’t do them all. I felt that if I do anymore, I needed to go big or go home.”
She told Maker Media she was ready for a feature faire. Denver got one.
“Really in Denver, it seemed like it was time,” said Huss, because the key was community support and a committed team.
And with that, Van Dyne went bigger. The Denver Mart has about 160,000 square feet. A huge chunk is outdoors, which is important for any faire.
“One of the reasons we went so much bigger this year was we wanted to put in more of the really big messy stuff,” Van Dyne said. “The Denver science museum was a great partner. ...But we couldn’t do the messy stuff, which is the hallmark of making.”
Outside, art students from the University of Colorado will be pouring bronze. The Denver Museum of Nature and Science will have cardboard rocket launch competitions. The pièce de résistance, however, may just be what SparkFun is bringing: Its AVC competition, which includes 67 autonomous vehicles and 124 combat bots, making it the third largest combat bot fight in the world.
“It just seemed that by combining both our events, it’s a great way to mark the growth of the maker movement and bring the community together,” said Arnold, with SparkFun. “It’s just so much more fun to celebrate with a bigger party.”