I'm really lucky that over the years I've got to visit and work out of loads of makerspaces, hackerspaces, fablabs and others. Mostly in the UK but a few notable overseas ones also. I can't say that this one is overseas, well apart from you need to get a ferry to visit Makerspace Arran on the fantastic and beautiful Isle of Arran.
In fact, if memory serves this is only my second ever Scottish makerspace, my first being the sadly missed Maklab in Glasgow which I was lucky to visit and hot desk from a few times over the years. I was really interested to have a quick look at Makerspace Arran as it's in a similarly remote and rural position as some of the Ffiws makerspaces I've been involved with here in North Wales. It was only a flying visit but it was lovely to see a few of the projects I'd spotted on Makerspace Arran's social media in the flesh. The space is actually on two levels with the ground floor being a shop. The location of the shop is right at the start of a very popular walking trail up Goat Fell which is the highest summit on the Isle of Arran. Also at the foot of the path around the makerspace are a garden centre, a pub (which does great chips) a microbrewery and a leather workers workshop and shop. There's a stack of parking and a lot of tourist footfall in the area.
The shop sells stuff that has either been made in house or has been made on the island and has a great range of gift items that are really nicely curated and relevant to the location. There are no "kiss me quick hats" or other generic stuff, everything is made here, and has links to Arran. It's really impressive. There's lots of stock of tee shirts commemorating your walk up Goat Fell and small lasercut medals as a reminder of your successful ascent. They've researched some of the traditional historical games that would have been played on the island in times gone by and reproduced them using the laser cutter. They are also up for helping out other producers and makers.
There were some lovely cast epoxy broaches and necklaces where the epoxy has been cast into the shape of Arran itself and Mark told me about how they had used the 3D printers to help create objects to then create silicon moulds from to help the maker increase production and accuracy. One fantastic project is the lasercut Liberator 1 LB30A kit which has a sad connection to Arran in that one crashed into Mullach Buidhe in 1941. The lasercut kit is created in 1.5mm plywood and has interestingly used as a source an old book of air plane silhouettes which was created in wartime as a guide for civilians to identify aircraft.
They aren't all about the profit though, the small makerspace located above the shop is beginning to look at running workshops for anyone to book into. There's currently an exploration to see if there is enough interest in workshops around scale modelling using kits. I did offer to run a FreeCAD workshop up in the space whilst we were visiting but sadly, due to some makerspace members being off the island that week it wasn't to be! Ah well maybe next time!
