Last week I had a pleasure of doing a workshop with 7-15 year old kids at the social centre Booster in Beaucaire.
Hopefully, soon they will have their own machines but for the moment they are using a mini Fab Lab borrowed from MicroFolies in Paris.
My focus in this workshop was to introduce them into the world of digital fabrication and the notion of DIY through a playfull activity that would result into creating their own object that they could come home with. In this case, stickers and masks that were designed by them.
I did an introductory part in which we introduced ourselves to each other with a little explation of what we wish to do. Followed by a short presentation of what is an silhouette and how it can be converted into digital data that is fed to the machine.
After kids drew their design and animators went to scan them, I have given them a short presentation about the digital fabrication, infused with the notions of current enviromentaly unfriendly production and transport system.
I have introduced the possibility of Do-It-Yourself approach as an alternative, showing them the various technologies and their use. Finishing by showing them a design process of few designs I have made myself.
The final result of the workshop - happy kids with their new creations :)