The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts held the first-ever Public Access Fab Lab winter workshop on February 15, teaching local people how to use a laser cutter.
The Fab Lab, a digital fabrication studio, has small-scale, high-tech production equipment that artisans can use to make things from delicate wood inlay to 4’ by 8’ furniture.
During its nine-year existence, the Fab Lab has reached out to the Union 76 schools, as well as Haystack’s summer residents.
Now the winter workshops, part of a series, represent Haystack’s efforts to further expand its Fab Lab resources to the larger community, said Paul Sacaridiz, executive director.
“Haystack is a privileged institution, we have an incredible set of resources,” he said in a phone interview. “What’s our responsibility to the community we live in in terms of access to funding models and grants and partnerships?”
The answer has been the Fab Lab working with Union 76 elementary school students. They got hooked on the equipment and then went to high school, Sacaridiz said. Then they became full-time paid summer interns working at the Fab Lab with graduate students from the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT and the Harvard School of Design.
The Fab Lab has had six paid interns, who by the end of the second year were training adults on Fab Lab equipment, Sacaridiz said.
And some of the adults said they learned faster with the high school interns than with the MIT graduate students, he said.
“The next step is how do we offer opportunities for people in the local community to access the equipment and the knowledge base?” he said. Answer: the winter workshops.
James Rutter, Haystack’s Fab Lab coordinator, is teaching the winter workshops. He said he’s just finished a mural project with Mickie Flores’ 7th and 8th grade science classes at the Deer Isle-Stonington Elementary School. “It got the kids really excited,” he said in a phone interview. “It was really just great to see them work so hard.”
Rutter has also worked on a computer animation project with Sarah Doremus’ art students at Sedgwick Elementary School.
Rutter said the Fab Lab’s high-tech equipment will become more a part of everyday life and work.
“It’s becoming more affordable, it’s becoming easier to use,” he said.
Rutter uses his 3D printer at home. He printed out brackets that will hold fishing rods on his wall.
Some day, he said, the Fab Lab’s digital fabrication equipment could be used for something like restoring a feature of an old house. “If you have a weird shelf or cabinet you’re trying to design, you could use [the equipment] to preserve the original architecture without outsourcing it to some highly expensive expert from across the country somewhere,” he said.
Haystack will hold two more workshops. The next workshop, on February 28, focuses on the 3D Printer and will cover the basics of the machine. The final workshop on March 13 will teach participants how to use a vinyl cutter. There’s a waiting list, so more workshops may/will be held in March and April, Rutter said.