Some huge news this morning! We are officially teaming with the Lynn Public Library and their teen makerspace project, dubbed QuaranTEEN. Right now they have some great tools: Mac workstations, a 3-D printer, Makey Makeys, iPads, and more. We can offer them even more to work with, including our robotics and electronics gear, our wood and metal shop tools, our plastics and upcycling gear, printmaking, even our photo and darkroom equipment! We need some spaces to teach our workshops and classes, they need more stuff – it’s a match made in (maker) heaven!
Like most libraries today, Lynn Library is working to keep vital, keep current, and fit into the 21st century. Makerspaces are very common solutions to keeping the Public Libraries at the center of communities, especially students and young people, and the Lynn QuaranTeen program came out of response and guidance directly from the teen community – and gets tons of use.
For us, it’s a significant alliance with the community. It’s working with a partner with a proven model, community involvement and the start of a great program. It’s a place – a physical space – to work with people, teach classes, and help spread the Maker love.
For the Library, it’s access to all of our tools and resources, and more, a possible (probably) avenue for expansion into our final home. We’re all about STEAM programs, well this is a way to provide in-house STEAM and a bigger, more robust home for the Library’s work in the future.
Read more about the Library here, and be sure to visit the Lynn Library Facebook page and their Lynn Library Teens pages.
Stay tuned, this is just the beginning of great things to come!
Keep making stuff. Take care of people, play nice and clean up after yourselves.