Fablab Workshop Test
La Transplanisphere’s residency at Villette Makerz has come to an end. The Paris Fablab, located in Villette Park, has taught us a lot and has definitely shown us what the idea of a Fablab is, how inspiring its concepts and approaches are and how different they can work.
For two months, we engaged in observation, study, and networking to develop methodologies for the “New Models” chapter of LeCAKE’s Train. On April 24th, Transplanisphère team shared all this material, by organizing a test workshop for our partners.
To better explore the values and principles of Fablab and its links to sustainability and innovation, we kicked off the workshop by listening to the 5-minute podcasts we had prepared. This allowed us to immerse our partners directly into the topic.
The ‘podcast’ format was quite new to us and it was pleasing to see that everyone enjoyed the novelty of it as they shared their thoughts with us during the roundtable discussion. Miro(online workspace) served as a brainstorming mind map, where we could all express what we had gleaned from these short sound clips and discuss whether we were all on the same page.
In the experts’ part, we had a time slot for interviews with the experts (Fablab managers and community engagement coordinators). This gave our partners a deeper understanding of sustainability and innovation in a cultural context in relation to Fablabs. It was crucial for us to establish a clear connection between Fablabs and our work at LeCAKE. Therefore, we invited our partners to reflect on which values, models, and processes they would like to incorporate into their own organizations based on what they had just experienced.
To conclude, transform the knowledge into concrete ideas and develop plans for future sustainable projects, we prompted our partners to divide into groups and collaborate on envisioning future initiatives. The idea was to imagine a new Erasmus+ or Creative Europe project in continuation of LeCAKE Train: each artistic organization would partner up with a Fablab in their city, to create a sustainable cultural project together.
The results of this interactive exercise have even exceeded our expectations, leaving us with a wealth of new insights, initiatives, and ideas that we are eager to put into action.