Digital Maker Community at Camberwell, Chelsea & Wimbledon Colleges of Art (CCW)

CCW has a strong making tradition and has excellent making workshops, resources and specialist staff. However the current arts learning landscape at CCW does not accommodate space or support for ‘digital making’ or messy digital making.

“I go to whichever MakerSpace has what I need for my practice, tools & expertise, but most of all a MakerSpace has a community, a peer network of digital makers"

Arts students on why they go to MakerSpaces

The growing digital maker movement highlights a widening gap between formal pedagogic practices (institutional) and informal learning through emergent practices (grassroots).

The digital maker community is an informal, cross-disciplinary group of staff at students at CCW exploring and supporting emergent digital making practice through discourse, workshops, events, hack days & jams.

The CCW MakerSpace community aims to foster a collaborative approach across disciplines, HEIs, industry, projects, and enterprise, which is mutually beneficial for all. The community supports discourse around the material and conceptual exploration of digital making and pedagogy, openly sharing and critiquing experience, knowledge and expertise of emerging technologies.

Projects and activities managed by Chris Follows, CCW Digital Learning Technologies Manager, CCW Digital, Learning, Teaching and Enhancement

Areas of interest, critique and experimentation:

• Analogue and digital, recycle/Up-cycle old tech 
• Artificial Intelligence & Drone, Gaming, Robotics
• Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing
• Digital modeling, fabrication & 3D-scanning/printing
• Physical computing/interaction, Wearable’s & Projection mapping
• Sensors, Arduino, Processing, Max MSP, Raspberry Pi, BBC Micro Bit
• Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Holography

Chelsea Jam Event

Digital MakerSpaces are increasingly becoming important physical digital making hubs for arts staff, students, graduates, entrepreneurs and startups although there is a lack of awareness of the benefits, relationship and impacts the maker movement has on formal education and sustainable arts practice.

On May 13^th 2015, CCW Digital curated its first digital making community-building event in the banqueting rooms at Chelsea College of the arts titled Chelsea Jam ‘Digital MakerSpace Day’.

Chelsea Jam a public facing event brought together staff, students, industry and individuals from across the sector to share perspectives on digital making within the arts with an aim of establishing a new 'arts digital making community'.

The event included digital making demonstrations and presentations from leaders of UK MakerSpaces, UAL students and staff as well as a maker un-conference in an adjoining room. See full Chelsea Jam programme May 13th 2015 and a short one-minute video compilation from the Chelsea Jam event here.

The day will include a mix of open & free drop-in activities:

Makerspace Demos: including South London Makerspace and Machines Room

Student Maker Movement: Student’s showing/talking about work they have made/making and how they’ve collaborated with maker movement. 

Presentations: including Ande Gregson, Co-Founder, Director Fab Lab London - The Open Workshop Network and Joanna Neil, using digital technology tools and platforms for auto-ethnographic projects, University Centre Blackburn College.

Live making: staff from across UAL demonstrating live digital making, open studio style

Makers Corner un-conference: Audience takes an active part in shaping the day by volunteering to take part in sharing your experiences of digital making

Any many more: presentations, workshops, exhibits/installations, demonstrations, stalls etc

The CCW Digital maker community has since carried out new activities and Jams including:

• Tech industry collaborations with sector leaders engaging in activities, workshops, testing and critiquing of new products and inactivates
• The ‘Digital Practice Exchange’ sharing good practice and new pedagogic approaches across disciplines and colleges
• Pop Up Digital Maker Space, a staff and student collaboration project to develop a new concept for enhancing the integration of digital making in learning and teaching and cross-disciplinary practice
• Find out more about all these projects here