Youth Talk: A Makerspace for Teens in Shanghai

By Nick Sweeting
 

The world of electronics is a fascinating one, and one that has recently become popular amongst the teenage crowd. A group of my friends and I have already formed one, and aim to start a wider, inter-school makerspace called make512.

Across the globe, there are currently over 900 ‘makerspaces’; informal gatherings of people that enjoy building and constructing creative projects with their hands. Projects worked on in these makerspaces can be anything from floating remote-controlled sharks to prototype Mars rovers.

Across Shanghai, there is already quite a sum of teenagers who are veritable tech geniuses. Many of them tinker with projects over the weekends and have hobbies that allow them to explore their passions, but few of them have the resources required to do any of the fantastic projects that require advanced machinery.

This is where the makerspaces come in. In Shanghai, there is already a growing makerspace known as Xinchejian (xinchejian.com), where I recently visited and presented my humble make512 group along with a few of our projects. After visiting I realised the incredible potential a group like Xinchejian provides; using their machinery, you can basically make anything you can imagine. We could stop trying to re-invent the wheel and just join their group, but instead we’ve decided to take our own group further, and really gear it towards teens in particular.

Here’s a little bit of background on make512: we consist of six sophomores and freshmen from Concordia International School Shanghai and we’ve recently worked on an LED cube, a sound-reactive LED jacket, and various other music-related lighting projects.

We have already contacted various interested teens from Dulwich, SAS, and SCIS in order to gain an idea of who would be interested in joining or collaborating with make512. We have also begun drafting a proposal to garner official status at Concordia International School Shanghai as an extracurricular club. If we succeed, next year we aim to be a group of many more members who actively meet and share ideas.

If you are interested in inquiring about joining or contributing in any way, e-mail: [email protected]