2018 was an exceptionally fun and busy year for Tam Makers, the community makerspace which Geo Monley and I co-founded a couple years ago!
We welcomed new teachers, including our first student teacher. We created an award-winning art float for social change with over a hundred volunteers. We started a teen maker club and other activities for high school students. Our community members amazed us with cool new projects.
Here are just a few highlights of what happened this year at Tam Makers, with photos and shout-outs to community members who made them happen. If you live in the Bay Area and would like to join the fun, sign up for our new classes and workshops for adults and teens in 2019.
We’d like to thank all of our community members who made Tam Makers so special this past year! Your energy keeps our shop alive with activity and it brings us great joy to work and play with all of you. Happy New Year!
January 2018 – New Teachers and Classes
Several of our community makers took on new roles as regular instructors at Tam Makers. Furniture maker Pierina Dell’Avo led our You Can Build It workshops. Creative director Chris Krueger taught CNC Router classes at Tam Makers and made many improvements to our makerspace this year.
A group of volunteers organized by Julia Dorn built this picnic table and benches, and set them up by Tam High School’s music building. This was just one of the community projects that took place at Tam Makers this year. See photos of our latest projects in our Tam Makers album.
March 2018 – Creating an Art Float for Social Change
In spring 2018, we created an Art Float for Social Change, to inspire people to participate in democracy. This community art project was built by a team of over a hundred volunteers, led by Fabrice Florin and Geo Monley at Tam Makers. We are grateful to them all — and to Tam High School for hosting this project and presenting it at the student center on Earth Day. To see how we created this float, view our project slides and photo album, as well as this Independent Journal article.
April 2018 – New Shop Tools
This spring, the Tam shop acquired new equipment for machining metal and plastic. Students used these Sherline milling machines and lathes to make a variety of parts, such as marble mazes and these handmade joints for our Art Float. See more photos in our Tam Makers album.
May 2018 – Art Float at Memorial Day Parade
The Art Float for Social Change made its debut at the Memorial Day Parade in Mill Valley. Our unique parade float featured Mother Earth and a circle of waving hands, spinning on a carousel of art pulled by a giant feathered serpent. Dozens of volunteers marched with us and our partners at Good Earth, MVCAN, Pataphysical Studios and the Youth Poster Contest. We received the Best Community Spirit Award for this collective art project, which invited people to vote and create a better world! To see the Art Float in action, watch this video and event photos.
June 2018 – New Student Projects
Tam High students created a variety of cool projects this year at Tam Makers, under the guidance of Geo Monley. Rebecca designed a beautiful bowl on Adobe Illustrator and cut it out on the laser cutter. Will designed and built this practical desk out of incense cedar and epoxy resin. To learn how to create projects like these, sign up for one of our classes for adults and teens.
July 2018 – Art Float on Fourth of July
People loved our Art Float at the Fourth of July Parade! We strolled down the streets of Larkspur and Corte Madera, showing off our giant earth and dragon of change to inspire thousands of spectators. Tam High student Emma Spike and the Freedom Singers performed classic protest songs on our float podium. Folks sang along, cheered us and responded to our call to “vote, speak up — and be the change!” See more parade pictures in this Art Float media page and in this photo album.
August 2018 – Planning Our Next Steps
To plan our next steps for Tam Makers, our core team held a retrospective this summer, with Chris Krueger, Fabrice Florin, Geo Monley and Meryl Rubinstein (shown from left to right on the photo above). They are holding the First Prize trophy we won for our Art Float at this year’s Fourth of July Parade in Corte Madera.
September 2018 – Our First Student Teacher
Tam High student Niles Wertz became our first teenage instructor this fall, with his ‘Introduction to Wood Turning’ class. An experienced wood turner, he showed adults how to make objects such as wooden pens, mallets, candlesticks, spinning tops, and bowls. He sells his own creations at local arts and craft shows, such as the Mill Valley Fall Arts show, where the photo above was taken.
October 2018 – Teen Maker Club
This fall, we started the Teen Maker Club, a new weekly afternoon workshop for students ages 12 – 17. As a result, many young makers have started to use the shop to create their own projects after school. They get to learn laser cutting, 3D printing, electronics, robotics, woodworking and more in activities supervised by Tam Makers director Geo Monley.
November 2018 – Automata Workshop
Last November, we led a fun workshop on how to create automata — or kinetic sculptures. Geo Monley hosted a group of North Bay Maker Educators, who learned how to make their automata move round-and-round, side-to-side or up-and-down. They designed their own animatronics, such as this animated cat, using bamboo sticks attached to foam cams, sliding through 3D-printed guides in their wooden boxes. We hope Marin students will enjoy creating their own automata as much as their teachers did! See also our short video, photos and lesson plan.
December 2018 – Meet our Community
Meet some of the folks who make our Tam Makers community so special! The week before Christmas, a few of the regulars joined open shop sessions to build projects that made us happy. For us, the best holiday gift of all was the act of creation, in the company of like minds.
Create your own artistic robot! Learn how to make your robot move in a variety of ways, using a programmable Arduino board. Decorate your animated character, give it a story, and create a magical world for it to live in. All materials are included in this course: you can take your robot home when the class ends.
This Maker Art class for grades 4-5 took place at the Lycée Français in Sausalito. We met every Tuesday for 12 weeks, from 3:30 to 5pm, between September and December 2017.
Students developed new skills in playful ways: science, technology, engineering, art and math skills (STEAM), as well as creativity, problem-solving and communication skills.
Teachers were multimedia innovator Fabrice Florin and software designer Edward Janne.To learn more, view our photo album, course slides and student guide — and check our course page for updates.
This short video of our Robot World class was created by Fabian at the Lycée Français. Merci!
Who is it for?
This program was for lower school children in grades 4 and 5 (ages 8-10). Four students participated in our afternoon class in Sausalito in fall 2017.
Where and when is it?
This class took place at Lycée Français in Sausalito, in the Innovation Lab (Room #340). The school entrance is 660 Coloma Street, Sausalito, CA 94945.
We met every Tuesday for 12 weeks, from September 12 to December 5, 2017, from 3:30pm to 5:00pm, at the Lycée Français in Sausalito.
Here was our course schedule:
Sep-12: Plan the robot world
Sep-19: Learn about robots
Sep-26: Build your robot 1
Oct-3: Build your robot 2
Oct-10: Program your robot 1
Oct-17: Program your robot 2
Oct-24: Break: No Class
Oct-31:Program your robot 2
Nov-7: Break: No Class
Nov-14: Finish your robot
Nov-21: Create the robot world
Nov-28: Rehearse your show
Dec-5: Shoot videos
Dec-12: Show & Tell
Can we see pictures from the classes?
Here are photos from our last “show and tell” class, when students performed a little play with their robots, based on their own original story: Devil Bot stole a secret recipe from Chef Bot, who runs the bakery where all the food is prepared in Food Ville. Police Bot and Swat Bot then chased the devil and locked him up, restoring peace in their little world, with “pizza for all.”
Students are creating their own robot and interactive art, in a playful way that makes learning more fun. Working collaboratively, they make their bots move, bringing characters to life and interacting with others in their new ‘robot world.’
This unique combination of art and technology helps them develop a range of new skills:
critical thinking and problem solving
Arduino, robotics and programming
science, technology, engineering, art and math skills (STEAM)
creative expression, communication & collaboration skills
Yes! We taught a Create a Robot class for adults and teens at Tam Makers in Mill Valley.
In just two evenings in September 2017, we showed students how to build their own artistic robot with Arduino, make it move around, shake its head and wave. And they got to take their animated creature home with you, to impress friends and family. 🙂 We may teach more adult classes in the future. Check out our classes page at Tam Makers.
What materials are included?
Each student received a robot kit, which they learned to assemble, control and program.
For this class, we created our own robot kit, using an Arduino Feather M0 for the robot, an Pro Micro for the remote, a custom chassis, plus three additional servos and more parts. Our robot kit was similar to commercial kits, but with a lot more features at a lower cost. This robot kit was decorated by the students to create an interesting animated character. Learn more about our robot kit in our student guide.
This robot kit supports these features:
• Roaming – the bot can move around under user control
• Moving – the bot can move some body parts (turn its head, wave its arms, using servos)
• Inputs – the bot has a variety of buttons (on/off button, buttons for different gestures, etc.)
• Remote – the bot can be controlled remotely (using a remote control or desktop app)
• Lights – the bot can have lights in its body (LEDs that blink, glow, or fade on and off)
• Sounds – the bot can play audio (using piezo buzzer to play simple beeps and tunes)
• Programming – the bot is easy to code (with visual programming tool like Snap4Arduino)
• Flexibility – the bot can be expanded (with extra parts to be ordered separately)
• Pricing – the bot is affordable (we’re aiming for a maximum of $75 per robot)
They programmed their robots with Snap4Arduino and made them move in different ways with servo motors. We used the school’s Macs to program the robots, using the Arduino software and Snap4Arduino, a visual programming tool. Arduino code was shared with parents when class ended, so they can help students to continue to program their robot at home.
What do the robots look like?
Students created some cool characters for their Robot World: Chef Bot, Devil Bot, Police Bot and Swat Bot
Each student received their own robot kit, which they learned to assemble, control and program. They built a chassis, wired up the Arduino electronics, made their own remote control, added a head and arms (laser cut based on their designs). Last but not least, they painted and decorated them to give them unique personalities. You can track their progress in our photo album.
The video above shows what our robots looked like in early stages of development. Our fun robots can roam around, shake their heads and flap their wings, at the touch of a button.
Below are a few photos of our first prototypes, made with laser-cut wood figures and servo motors (to see them in action, watch our video). We call them ‘Bambots’. This name is short for ‘Bamboodu Robot’: it is inspired by the fictional Bamboodu tribe we created for art projects like the Bamboodu Float and the Pataphysical Slot Machine.
Bambots like to shake their heads and flap their wings back and forth. The photos below show other prototypes of a Bambot Angel and an Bambot Dude, in different stages of construction.
For more pictures of this course, see our photo album.
What does the robot world look like?
We invited students to design a magical world for their robots, then build it and decorate it.
They imagined a future wonderland called FoodVille: a peaceful world filled with food, to insure a life of ‘everlasting fun.’ They created a colorful landscape centered around a volcano spilling out candy lava, with robot homes and a bright red soda fountain.
We asked students to decorate their robots so they looked like characters in that fantasy world. For a closer look, see our photo album for this course.
Who are the teachers?
Multimedia innovator Fabrice Florin and software designer Edward Janne taught this course.
Fabrice Florin
Fabrice is an art maker and social entrepreneur who creates unique experiences to inform and engage communities through digital and physical media. He has led the development of many pioneering products in education, news and entertainment, working with innovators such as Apple, Macromedia and Wikipedia. He is now a teacher and artist at Tam Makers in Mill Valley, where he teaches maker art to adults and kids. Learn more at fabriceflorin.com .
Edward Janne
Edward is a software developer and teacher at Tam Makers. He has an extensive background in interactive design and engineering. Prior to joining us, he was a technical animator at Bonfire Labs, a creative content agency. He also studied at the Academy of Art University and the University of San Francisco. Edward has taught several Maker Art classes with us, and will lead more classes for adults and teens at Tam Makers this fall.
Travel through time and meet characters from the past, present and future!
Our Maker Art class at the Lycée Français created a Time Machine with animated scenes and characters from the age of dinosaurs to the 50th century. This interactive art exhibit integrates physical and digital media, combining art, technology and storytelling.
Our 4th and 5th graders created their own scenes from the past, present or future, and brought them to life with motion, lights and sounds. Then also worked in teams to build interactive features to showcase their scenes: keypad, spinner and doors.
Watch the video above to see the Time Machine in action. Some photos are also included below. See more in our slides.
Students
This program was designed for lower school children in grades 4 and 5 (ages 8-10). Nine students participated in this class: Tilo Allexandre, Esther Bomse, Theodore Carman, Louise Eddy, Nathanial Jenkins, Lena Jessen, Eugene Maeght, Yann Menard and Marshall Patron.
Here’s a survey report on what students thought of this class: they found it very good, liked learning about Arduino, and most would recommend this class to a friend.
What did students create?
Students created their own interactive ‘wonderboxes’ for these time periods:
Age of Dinosaurs
French Revolution
World War 2
World War 3
New York 2092
Alien Invasion
25th Century
50th Century
They brought their characters to life inside their cardboard ‘wonderboxes’ by making lights blink, sounds play and things move.
Working collaboratively, they also created these Arduino-powered features:
Dashboard with keypad
Spinner
Doors with lights
What did students learn?
Students learned to design a miniature world, build it with a variety of tools, animate it with electronics, and tell its story in presentations at the Lycée in Sausalito — and at Marinovators at the College of Marin on April 22 (see photos). We also showed them how to program the popular Arduino board to create a cool interactive art experience.
This unique combination of art and technology helped them develop a range of new skills:
critical and logical thinking;
science, technology, engineering and math skills;
electronics, circuits, lights, motors and soldering;
This class took place at Lycée Français in Sausalito, in the Innovation Lab (Room #340). The school entrance is 660 Coloma Street, Sausalito, CA 94945 (see Google Map).
Schedule
We met every Thursdays for 12 weeks, from January 5 to March 30, from 3:30pm to 5:00pm, at the Lycée Français in Sausalito.
Here is our course schedule:
Plan our time machine (Jan. 5, 2017)
Design the time machine (Jan. 12)
Create your time scene (Jan. 19)
Create a character (Jan. 26)
Light up your scene (Feb. 2)
Build your time machine (Feb. 9)
Create a feature (Feb. 16)
Paint your feature (March 2)
Program your feature (March 9)
Finish the time machine (March 16)
Write your story (March 23)
Show & Tell (March 30)
(There was no class on Feb. 23.)
Who were the teachers?
Multimedia innovators Fabrice Florin and Edward Janne taught this course, with the help of our Tam Makers community.
Fabrice Florin – Teacher
Fabrice is an art maker and social entrepreneur who creates unique experiences to inform and engage communities through digital and physical media. He has led the development of many pioneering products in education, news and entertainment, working with innovators such as Apple, Macromedia and Wikipedia. He is now a teacher and founder at Tam Makers in Mill Valley, where he teaches maker art to adults and teens.
Edward is a software engineer, teacher and active member at Tam Makers. He has an extensive background in interactive design and engineering, and a personal interest in maker education. He is teaching other classes for adults and teens at Tam Makers this spring.
Students show off their Halloween Wonderbox at our first ‘maker art’ workshop at the Mill Valley Library.
For the past couple years, I have been teaching ‘maker art’ to lower and middle school children, to help them create interactive art with electronics and storytelling.
In our after-school classes, we build magical worlds together: a city of the future, a haunted house, a time machine or a halloween wonderbox. We show students how to bring them to life with animated characters, light them up, make them move, play sounds and tell their stories.
This hands-on, project-based activity invites children to learn by doing, in a playful way that engages all their senses and puts them in charge of their own learning.
Here’s an overview of our first classes for elementary and middle school students ages 6 to 14, in four different Bay Area schools and libraries (see list below).
Watch the video below for an overview on Maker Art. See also our separate report on the Time Machine, which we created with our 4th and 5th graders at the Lycée Français in 2017. Later this year, I will post more reports on our other projects (Haunted House, City of the Future).
Watch this video of Fabrice’s talk about our Maker Art classes at the 2017 Maker Faire.
What is Maker Art?
In our Maker Art classes, we invite children to create magical worlds together, combining art, technology and storytelling. Our students get really engaged in the process, which helps them develop their creative, problem-solving and social skills.
Here’s what we have learned so far from these Maker Art classes:
Maker art is deeply engaging
Art + tech + stories appeal to more learners
They identify with their characters
Creative freedom gives them license to play
Student-driven projects build their confidence
Collaborations are fun and productive
Family activities level the age gap
Wonderboxes help frame our imagination
This is what school should be like: project-based, hands-on, student-driven and collaborative.
To learn more, watch the above video of my talk on Maker Art at the 2017 Maker Faire. This 20 min. presentation gives a good overview of this promising new way to encourage children to develop their creative, problem-solving and collaborative skills (see slides).
I will give another talk about our Maker Art classes at the ReMake Education Summit in August 2017. In the meantime, check the above videos and slides, as well as these photos of our classes. I plan to write a more in-depth blog post about these findings in coming weeks. For now, here are more lessons learned, written by our team during our first experiments.
Update: In winter 2017, our Maker Art class built a Time Machine, a new time travel experience created by 4th and 5th graders at the Lycée Français. As shown in this video, our interactive art exhibit invites you to travel through time and meet characters from the past, present and future: participants created nine diorama scenes, from the age of dinosaurs to the 50th century. Read our full report on this class.
If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, we invite you to come visit us at Tam Makers, our new makerspace in Mill Valley. We offer a range of maker classes for adults and teens. Join one of our free meetups on the First Thursday of every month, starting in September. Making art together is fun and educational!
Young art maker Josephine Maeght shows off the Chinese New Year Wonderbox she created with another student at the Lycée Français in Sausalito.
Create Your Own Wonderbox
In our workshops, we give each student a small cardboard ‘wonderbox’ and ask them to create an interesting scene in that box, on a given theme (e.g. Chinese New Year, see below). They learn to design and build their artworks, then bring them to life with lights, motion and sound. At the end of the course, we assemble all their boxes together and ask students to tell their stories for a short video ‘show and tell’. We provide all the materials for this course and students can take their wonderbox home at the end.
This educational program invites children to develop a wide range of new skills, across multiple disciplines: from creative expression to science and engineering. They seem really engaged by the freedom to create their own interactive art, which gives them more control over their learning experience. And working collaboratively, they get to experiment together and help each other create something greater than any of them could do on their own.
Maker art students created Chinese New Year Wonderboxes with different animals from the Chinese Zodiac at the Lycée Français in Sausalito.
Chinese New Year Wonderbox
Celebrate the Chinese New Year by making an art wonderbox with a paper lantern and animated character.
In this course, students get to pick an animal from the Chinese Zodiac (e.g.: dragon, horse, tiger, snake). We give them a laser-cut wood figure as a framework to build on, as well as lots of art & crafts supplies and electronic parts. Kids bring them to life by making their characters move, light up, play sound — then coloring and decorating them with markers, fabric, feathers and jewels (see photo).
Children learn to:
• Light up a paper lantern
• Make a button and circuit
• Make their animal move
• Decorate their box
• Play sounds
• Tell their story
Our lower school students seem to love this fun and educational activity. They enjoy lighting up their lanterns and making their art move — and they gain a deeper understanding of electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as creative design and innovation.
Young art maker Theodore Carman built a cardboard propeller to move his flying dragon for the Chinese New Year Wonderbox he is making at the Lycée Français.
For example, to make their animals move, they had to explore different ways to animate their creatures: using glue sticks to make them vibrate, or hand-made paper propellers to push them forward and make other objects move (see photo). In the process, we’re all learning to create simple ‘poetic robots’ — with just a few affordable parts that anyone can assemble together.
The Chinese New Year is our theme for January and February 2016. Our next theme from March to July 2016 will be to build a City of the Future, as outlined below.
What will life be like in the 22nd century? Help dream up a better world and build a City of the Future. Future City Art by Boombastik3 via Deviant Art, freely licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.
City of the Future
Create a city of the future with arts and electronics!
In this course, children will imagine what the world will be like in 100 years, then build a futuristic model together.
This spring, I am teaming up with teacher and builder Geo Monley to teach this cool after-school maker course for middle-school students, held in his fabulous wood shop at Tam High. We will invite kids to invent the future by building it with art and electronics, making models of what life might be like in the next century. Starting March 30, we will meet every Wednesday from 3:30pm to 5:30pm at Tam High School in Mill Valley.
Students will first make a futuristic home with a cardboard ‘wonderbox’ and a small character, featuring a new invention that might change our lives in the 22nd century. They will then bring them to life by making their characters move, lights blink and sounds play. Next, they will work with other students to assemble their boxes into a small city of the future. At the end of the course, we will make a short video of their creations — which they get to keep.
Here is a first example of what our city of the future could look like.
This 3D model shows a first visualization for our city of the future, to be designed with our students. Created by Fabrice Florin with Sketchup, CC-BY-SA.
Our city of the future will include a row of ‘wonderbox’ homes in the foreground, and a city landscape in the background. The model will be about 6 feet wide, 3 feet deep and up to 4 feet high, and be showcased on a ‘maker art cart’.
We taught 5 different ‘maker art’ courses and workshops in 2016, in Marin and the Bay Area:
(Update: courses grayed out below are either full or have already occurred)
• Maker Art Class Lycée Français in Sausalito – Jan. to June 2016 Weekly after-school class for children ages 6-10 Themes: Chinese New Year | City of the Future Thursday afternoons for 90 minutes For enrolled students of the Lycée only Learn more
• Wonderbox Workshop Lycée Français in San Francisco – Feb. 15, 17 and 19 Special workshop for children ages 7-10 Theme: Chinese New Year Three classes of 90 minutes each during ski week For enrolled students of the Lycée only Learn more
• Create Your Own Wonderbox Mill Valley Public Library – Feb 16 and 18 FREE workshop for children ages 8-10 Theme: Chinese New Year Two classes of 2 hours each during ski week. No experience required. Grades 3-5 only. Parents welcome. Learn more
• City of the Future Tamalpais High School – March to May 2016 Weekly after-school class for children ages 10-14 Wednesdays at 3:30pm, for 2 hours No experience required. Parents welcome. With Geo Monley at Tam Makers Learn more
• Create a Haunted House Lycée Français in Sausalito – Sep. to Dec. 2016
After-school class for ages 7-10 (grades 4-5) Thursdays at 3:30pm, for 90 minutes For enrolled students of the Lycée only Learn more
Overall, this ‘maker art’ program seems like a great way to teach art and technology to school children, in a playful way that makes their learning experience more fun. So far, the students are responding well to this hands-on, project-based activity: they seem engaged by the freedom to create their own interactive art, which is music to my ears. And their parents also seem to really appreciate this fun and educational program.
To experiment with this vision, I am leading these pilot courses in 2016, with the help of my maker art community. We will determine next steps for this program after evaluating our first pilot results. Possible outcomes might include more Wonderbox workshops, a public maker space in Marin, a full line of Wonderbox kits, an online Wonderbox site for videos — and/or training programs for educators. We also hope that this program can help grow an ‘art maker movement’ over time.
For now, I am really enjoying this new chapter of my life as a maker art teacher. Designing and leading this program has been very fulfilling so far — even if it can be exhausting at times. In a sense, this is a culmination of all the work I’ve done in my career, from education to entertainment and technology, bringing together the physical and digital worlds to support better collaborations and deeper understandings.
Every decade or so, I try to re-invent myself and take a new challenge. My last decade was focused on facts and how to tell them apart from fiction — first with our NewsTrust experiment, then on a much wider scale with Wikipedia. It’s very likely that my next decade will be all about art, learning and community.
Art makers from Pataphysical Studios help prototype different ways to make animals move for the Chinese New Year Wonderbox course.
Thank you
I would like to thank my art and learning communities and the great team of friends who are working with me to offer these classes.
First off, I’m very grateful to the schools and libraries who are hosting this program: Andrew Sobol, Marjolaine Debord and Wladymir Wladymir Paiva and everyone at the Lycée Français; Anji Brenner and Karen Clarke at the Mill Valley Library — and Chris McCune and Betty Sue Johnson at the Tam High Union District. This classes would not be possible without their wonderful support of our cause.
I’m particularly grateful to my partners in the classroom: Cynthia Gilbert at the Lycée Français; and Geo Monley at Tam High School. Heartfelt thanks as well to my wife Phyllis for preparing the art supplies for this class, and to my art friends from Pataphysical Studios: Howard Rheingold, Jean Bolte and her daughter Natalina for their advice, creative prototypes, art supplies and help assembling the kits. Kudos as well to Tara Brown at Kithub for supplying the electronic parts.
Last but not least, it’s a real pleasure to meet parents of our students, and getting them engaged in the process. And it’s a real pleasure to be teaching their children, whose curiosity, creativity and enthusiasm are an inspiration to me.
I’m so happy to see a little community grow around our first maker art courses: I hope that over time we can turn this initiative into a vibrant community learning network.
We are starting Tam Makers, a new makerspace in Marin — and invite you to come visit, if you are in the area.
We offer courses for adults and teens, meetups and a new makerspace at Tamalpais High School, in our state-of-the-art wood shop and computer lab.
We created this community center to serve the needs of our local community, whether you are interested in making things for yourself or supporting a makerspace for your children.
Join our meetups
If you live in our area, come to one of our free meetups, so we can tell you more, hear what you think and plan our next steps together. Our monthly meetups are listed here and run from 6 to 8pm in our makerspace at Tam High School (see address below). Adults and teens welcome. If you missed our last meetup, here are photos and slides of this event, as well as the video of our presentation and group discussion.
Sign up for classes
This year, we are offering a wide range of classes for adults and youth: from Arduino to laser cutting, hand tools, wood turning and how to make elegant boxes, to name but a few.
Learn more in our Classes page, where you can sign up for these classes before they fill up.
All adult classes start at 6pm. Teens can also sign up for these classes, with the help of an adult.
Visit our makerspace
All events are at Tamalpais High School, in our state-of-the-art wood shop and computer lab: 700 Miller Avenue (Room 416), Mill Valley, CA 94941. See map.
The best times to visit our makerspace are during our free meetups (see above). To get a feel for our space and community, check out the Tam Makers Photo Album.
Create a city of the future in this cool after-school activity. Future Art by Boombastik3, CC-BY-NC-SA.
Update: This spring, we created a city of the future with lower and middle school children, ages 7-14.
We invited them to imagine what the world will be like in 100 years, combining art, technology and storytelling to express themselves and develop new skills.
We taught this after-school ‘maker art’ class in two different schools:
Children were deeply engaged by this hands-on, project-based, student-driven, collaborative activity. We think this ‘maker art’ program is a great way to learn by doing, and we would like to offer it to more children and educational partners.
Here’s our original overview for this fun and educational after-school activity.
What is it?
Create a city of the future with arts and electronics!
In this maker art course, you will build a cool model of what our world could be like in 100 years. You will first make a futuristic home with a cardboard ‘wonderbox’ and an animated character. You will then bring it to life by making your character move, lights blink and sounds play.
Next, you will assemble your boxes into a small city of the future, and landscape it together. At the end of the course, we will make a short video of your creations — and you get to keep your box when the course ends.
Who is it for?
This after-school course is for middle-school students, ages 10 to 14 (6th to 9th grades). No experience necessary!
What will students learn?
Our classes combine art and technology to help you develop a range of skills: science, technology, engineering, art and math skills (STEAM); creative expression and communication skills.
You will create your own interactive art, in a playful way that makes learning more fun. You will also collaborate with other students to build something greater than you could do on your own.
When is it?
During our spring course, we meet every Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:30pm at Tam High School’s wood shop in Mill Valley. This 2-hour class runs for 8 weeks, from March 30 to May 25, 2016.
What will it look like?
Here is a first example of what our city of the future could look like.
This 3D model shows a first visualization for our city of the future, to be designed with our students. Created by Fabrice Florin with Sketchup, CC-BY-SA.
Our city of the future will include a row of ‘wonderbox’ homes in the foreground, and a city landscape in the background. The model will be about 6 feet wide, 3 feet deep and up to 4 feet high, and be showcased on a ‘maker art cart’. See our course slides for more images.
As a multimedia innovator, Fabrice has led the development of many pioneering products in education, news and entertainment, working with Apple, Macromedia, Wikipedia and other digital media groups. He is a lead designer at Pataphysical Studios and is teaching several maker art courses in the Bay Area.
The Tam High course for middle school children is hosted by Chris McCune and Betty Sue Johnson at Tam District Community Education. Advisors include Jean Bolte, Tara Brown, Donald Day, Dale Dougherty, Phyllis Florin, Natalina Frederick, Cynthia Gilbert, Howard Rheingold and our art maker community. We’re grateful to them all for making this course possible!
Will you teach more courses?
Yes! We will also teach a week-long ‘maker camp’ the week of July 11, every weekday from 9am to 1pm: in this camp, we will learn to program Arduino boards to build our city of the future.
The Maker Media tent showed visitors how to create their own projects. Photos by Fabrice Florin, CC-BY-SA-3.0.]
Maker Faire 2015 gathered many hobbyists, artists and innovators on May 16-17 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in California. Empowered by new technologies such as 3D printing, Arduino and Raspberry Pi micro-computers, these creative enthusiasts have triggered a cultural revolution that is transforming the way we work, play, learn — and express ourselves. This growing “maker movement” just celebrated its 10th anniversary and keeps getting more interesting every year.
I visited the Faire with Jean Bolte, a.k.a. Dr. Figurine, one of our art collaborators at Pataphysical Studios. Along with a dozen of other doctors, we are building the Pataphysical Slot Machine — a community-created poetic oracle, that’s powered by Arduino. We were there to check out the scene, on behalf of our other art friends who couldn’t come this year.
As soon as we walked in, we were greeted with fire art from Burning Man, which always gets me inspired. Makers and burners have a lot in common, and it’s nice to see these two cultures overlap in this annual gathering. In our own work, we also try to blend art and technology, to grow an ‘art maker movement’ that draws on these diverse cultures.
The most appealing art experiences for us were in the dark Fiesta Hall, where a wide range of light sculptures and interactive exhibits caught our eye, wherever we turned (see photos). We loved the illuminated tree of changes …
… the flying dragon and the synchronized pods …
… the giant giraffe …
… the glowing cubes …
… and the touch-sensitive mandalas.
I loved seeing so many children getting their hands dirty and making things together in workshops throughout the show. I think this maker movement has a huge educational potential, because it encourages young people to learn with their hands, through trial and error, to solve problems in ways that can’t be taught with books and lectures. The maker mindset invites this kind of “experimental play”, and as Maker Media founder Dale Dougherty points out: “out of that process emerge new ideas, which may lead to real-world applications or new business ventures. Making is a source of innovation.”
Robots were everywhere, in all shapes and sizes. They seemed both easier to build and more sophisticated than previous years. It’s worth noting that many of the hundreds of robots I saw were made from 3D printed parts.
Which brings us to 3D printers. That technology has matured well — and is becoming mainstream. This year, there were more 3D printers at the Faire than ever before — and some of them were a lot more affordable for regular folks like us. Dremel now sells a reliable ‘idea printer’ for under $1,000, which is getting within our reach (see photos). With a 3D printer, I think I could make the parts we need for our Pataphysical Slot Machine a lot faster, with a better fit and higher quality.
We had a great chat with Maker Media Lab director Marty Marfin and his crew (see group photo): we are discussing a possible installation of the Slot Machine in their new location at the Palace of Fine Arts. They greeted us warmly and gave us great tips for what software and hardware to use for 3D printing. Rhinoceros is their recommended software for creating the 3D models, and we got a nice demo of how it works.
Marty is a former sculptor and model builder and is interested in working together to create robots that look and behave more like sophisticated puppets — taking this tech-centric medium up a notch on the artistic scale. This is very much in line with what we are proposing to do with Théâtre Méchanique, so stay tuned …
We also joined a talk with Arduino founder Massimo Banzi, who gave us a good update on how this open micro-processor platform keeps growing, enabling millions around the world to create new and interesting things. I bought my first Arduino at the 2010 Maker Faire, then had a chance to chat with Massimo in 2013 — and I can honestly say that Arduino has changed my life, giving me the ability to express myself through interactive art in ways I never thought possible.
It’s a real pleasure to see so many hobbyists, artists and innovators join this ‘maker culture’, which is changing the way we learn and express ourselves . Over time, I’d like to help grow an ‘art maker movement’ to merge the sensibilities of artists and technologists, making our collective creations more meaningful to more people — and maybe even touching their souls.
And if you have any stories or links to share about Maker Faire or your own experience as a maker, feel free to share them here. That’s how we learn from each other. 🙂
