Making at UWSP: Stop Talking, Start Doing!

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If you get a chance, check out the exhibit “Maker: People, Places, Things” currently being showcased at the Smith Scarabocchio Art Museum.  I attended the opening reception last Friday, and found it inspiring to say the least.  I was fortunate enough to talk to the featured artist, Wendy (Schmidt) Hynes and her husband, Morgan Hynes.  Both have a wealth of experience in makerspaces and I could have picked their brains all night for nuggets of information.  The gem that hit me over the head was a comment made by Wendy when I shared our ideas; “sounds like you guys need to stop discussing, and just start doing!”  Yeah, that made me pause for a moment. Could we really just start doing? 

“Photo from the exhibit “Maker: People, Places, Things” by Wendy (Schmidt) Hynes”


The more I thought about it, the more I realized that we are actually already DOING.  And while officially we have never called it a makerspace, I think we have more than a foundation in place.  It’s a matter of getting the word out.   Here’s a brief summary of “makerspace” resources available to the UWSP community:

·         3D Printing (since summer 2014!)
·         Programming/Workshops
o   Makerspaces in Portage County and UWSP: Opportunities for Collaboration
§  Greg Wright, Arts Alliance of Portage County
§  Wednesday, March 16th, noon – 1 pm (LRC 107)
o   Wiki-Wise Editing
o   3D Design for Beginners
o   Ongoing 3D printing workshops
o   Do you have an idea for a workshop? Let me know!
·          Makerspace Resource Guide
·         And most importantly, our campus is filled with people who are already experts at Making!

It’s a start.  It’s actually more than many campuses have.  My hope is that it will grow from here.  But to do so will take a community of people.  I welcome ideas, expertise, and thoughts as we try to formally pull this all together.  The purpose of these blog posts is to help facilitate that discussion and generate ideas.  I will share activities we are working on (currently experimenting with using an Xbox Kinect to create 3D scans!), examples of how making activities can be incorporated into your curriculum (like Katja Marquart did with her Interior Architecture course), and stuff that I just find cool!

So, stay tuned…

Mindy King, Emerging Tech Librarian


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