Young Makers
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | PARNES LABS AB |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 250 000 |
| Project duration | October 2015 - December 2016 |
| Status | Completed |
Purpose and goal
The aim of the project was to attract more young makers to Makerspaces and maker culture in general. Via the principles of maker culture, youth get the opportunity to develop their creative abilities. With more young makers we also see new creative innovations being created. The target group was young people aged 9 to 18. As they get to realize their own ideas rather than to learn a specific technologies, they have gained a greater understanding of maker culture opportunities and has gotten a greater self-confidence that they can apply to future projects.
Expected results and effects
The result of our workshop series ´From idea to prototype´ shows that children with support are able to realize and create prototypes of advanced creative ideas. Self-confidence and belief in their own capability increased by all the participants and especially the girls had during the time we worked with them thought of new projects they wanted to realize. For children who want to get started, it is good to have workshops with specific content so that they are able to orient themselves with different tools.
Planned approach and implementation
We have worked with occasional workshops where young people got to try out different technologies and a workshop series of five meetings where we let the kids go from idea to prototype. Our approach where we started from our past experiences and from that held workshops have worked well. We challenged ourselves by launching the workshop series ´From idea to prototype´ and that gave a lot of new knowledge about what steps you can take to help young people find their capacity and be creative in a rewarding way. This has been summarized in a public manual and the project has been successful.