Activities

Activities happen throughout the day during the Maker Faire.

• Artful Mechanisms // Playful Engineers
• Basic Jewelry Making Skills // Elizabeth Silva
• Drive a robot // Overclocked and Aquabots FTC teams
• Intro to laser cutting // FreeFall Laser
• Jack’O Lantern carving // Dan Manson
• Jewelry making // Ws Forever Jewelry
• Lightbox // Deep Ocean Study
• Make a cardboard circuit // MakeFixHack
• Make your own injected molded keychain // Precious Plastic MHC
• Make your own Zine // Tiny Bee Stationary
• Play games including checkers, chess, Connect4, drawing, finger knitting/crochet, rubber stamps, and bubbles // ParKit
• Play the flaming, musical trumpets // The Royal Trumpets
• Shred recycled plastic // CT River Valley Precious Plastic
• Soapstone carving techniques // The Hive
• Terra Science and Education MakerHall Activities
  • Spaghetti Engineering
  • The Mechanic’s a Girl!
  • Earthquake Zone
  • Astronaut 101

1:30 – 2:30

Sarah Pike will showcase the artists she has worked with and how they integrate laser cutting into their handcrafted pieces. We’ll look at the range of ways creatives use primary laser cutting materials (paper, wood, acrylic, fabric, leather) in their work.

Sarah Pike is an artist and owner of FreeFall Laser, a laser-cutting studio specializing in collaborating with artists and artisans to create custom work that combines technical expertise with artistic vision. She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Prior to opening FreeFall Laser, Sarah taught studio arts at the Community College of Vermont and printmaking at Bennington College, where she was the technical instructor of printmaking. She has been an artist in residence at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium, Steindruck München in Munich, and carpe plumbum in Leipzig. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in North America and Europe. Sarah has presented her laser cutting research at the American Institute for Conservation Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas, USA, SNAP Symposium in Rheine, Germany, and Southern Graphics International Conferences in Portland, Oregon and Dallas, Texas, USA.

3:30 – 4:30

“A student walks into a bar…
…of steel stored on the shelf and this necessitates a follow-up conversation about storage and shop safety.”

Shira Epstein will answer questions like “What is a makerspace? What kinds of activities take place in a makerspace? What distinguishes the university makerspace from other spaces on campus that facilitate academics and research?”

Shira is the Director of Campus Makerspaces at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a lecturer in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. She works to build the maker culture and resources across the University and runs the interdisciplinary UMass Amherst Makerspace with her team of students and staff.