Most Interesting Makespaces around the globe!

Nice list of makerspaces around the country - have you been to any of these? What factors are most important when considering whether or not to join a makerspace?

http://makezine.com/magazine/make-40/most-interesting-makerspaces-in-america/

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There’s a makerspace up in Toronto called Steam Labs that ran a Kickstarter recently and gave away Dinosaur Comics laser-cut T-Rex as one of their campaign rewards.

I worked at Metrix for two years, and it seems to me that the field is at a crossroads-- you’re seeing a lot of spaces that are essentially social clubs with more equipment, and a lot of spaces that have high membership fees or are application-only. Now that makerspaces are becoming more common, I think we’re about to see an explosion of spaces that are both culturally and financially accessible.

I was a regular at All Hands Active in Ann Arbor, MI for quite a few years and absolutely loved it. They were by no means the most technically advanced hackerspace and didn’t have any of the fancy tools I’ve seen in Seattle hackerspaces, but they more than made up for it in how welcoming and friendly they were. They were super nice in letting me donate time teaching classes in exchange for membership when I couldn’t afford to pay and were some of the most supportive people while I went through some really tough parts of my life.

For me, the attitude/culture of the space (which is very dependent on the leadership) is more important than access to tools or physical resources. If a hackerspace becomes just another place for techbros to hang out it becomes culturally inaccessible for a large portion of the population. This definitely showed because All Hands Active was the most diverse ‘tech’ space I’ve ever been in.

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Not the most interesting, but…looks like my city will be getting its own maker space soon! The Request For Proposal deadline is in 5 days. I am not qualified for this, but to anyone who is (and is looking for a project):

http://www.cityofwoodland.org/gov/depts/cd/bid.asp

There are several Maker Spaces in the Grand Rapids, MI. area. I recently joined GRMakers.

Much as I love the spirit of this thread. Why only the US? I realise that you are facing the prospect of a Trump presidency. The rest of the world is laughing at you (Kind of like this). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGoTCbGXRcc
Seriously though, I know the US is great for this kind of thing, but we do have similar stuff over this side of the pond.
Sorry, I know this is kind of a rant, but please people, INCLUSION! Or in other words, I felt left out.

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I don’t see anywhere that non-US is excluded? Show us what you have!

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You have seen the Title of this thread?
As for the rest, You got me. When it comes to the whole maker thing, you guys rock. Here in the UK, we do have them, but they are normally very poorly resourced and very poorly funded.

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Haha! No I didn’t see the title!

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@bailey, I hope you don’t mind, but I exercised a regular perk and changed the title. I think we are experiencing this as one world-wide family. Bring on the rest of the world!

Note that this topic started in June of 2015. Glowforge was still in stealth mode and it seems that posts were as much testing out the forum as it was getting things going.

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