In May we teamed up with the Royal College of Art to hold a series of making workshops for people living in SW1, London. We called the event Made in SW1, and through it we explored the notion of Fab City and the potential for a community production space. We were excited by the opportunity that this type of exercise could play in matching demand and supply at a hyper local city scale (plus it was really just a lot of fun.)
The event proved to be such a success that we’ve been inspired to take simple making projects out into more communities. Over the course of the summer and fall we met up with residents in Hackney and Tower Hamlets; we listened to their ideas and provided simple tools to help give these ideas extra life. We’ve called it Making for Good.
During our Making For Good workshops we met a range of people varying from kids with boundless imaginations to long-term area residents who could see an immediate benefit to collaborative making opportunities in their community. We’ve been able to engage more than 100 people already!
Our workshop at Spotlight, a creative youth space in Tower Hamlets that specialises in providing dynamic experiences that inspire young people, was especially poignant. Things took off quickly; kids were encouraged to consider their neighbourhood and quite organically key themes were teased out. Safety. Knife crime. Homelessness. We saw firsthand what was top of mind amongst young people when thinking about their community.
Making For Good has been a hugely inspiring engagement activity alongside being a great deal of fun for everyone. It’s already proven to have great potential; we have a working group with the residents of Wellington Estate in Tower Hamlets to use making to address some community specific needs.
We’re keen to see where else we can bring our workshops and look forward to the potential projects we have in the pipeline already.