UK's first FabLab brings invention to the people

FabLabs (Fabrication Laboratories) are community workshops where almost anyone can make almost anything. They give everyone– from small children through to inventors and businesses – the capability to turn their ideas into reality.

There are 35 FabLabs worldwide – located in US cities and rural India and from the northern tip of Norway to African villages. Each is connected by a global communications network, enabling the sharing of ideas, designs and knowledge.

Born from an outreach project by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in inner-city Boston, FabLabs have exploded around the world – reversing the top down approach to technological advancement by empowering everyone to invent. 

The Manufacturing Institute (www.manufacturinginstitute.co.uk) hopes that the Manchester FabLab will be the first of many for the UK and it has partnered with MIT, Manchester City Council and New East Manchester to open the first centre in east Manchester.

Shepherds in Norway have used their FabLab to create mobile phones to track sheep. In Afghanistan ‘FabLabbers’ are creating a local telecoms infrastructure and prosthetic limbs, while in South Africa a government and business backed project is creating simple internet connected computers that hook up to televisions and cost just ten dollars each.

Other quirkier inventions include a web browser for a parrot, an alarm clock you wrestle with to wake you up and a ‘scream body’ that allows you to vent extreme frustration into a soundproof pouch and then release the noise later.

Speaking at the Manchester launch, FabLab founder Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of The Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, said:  “FabLabs give people the tools they need to create technology, to be creative and make the stuff that they can’t buy in the shops. Manchester led the first industrial revolution and now it is at the centre of a new industrial revolution where anyone can make anything, anywhere using digital manufacturing.”

Julie Madigan, Chief Executive of the Manufacturing Institute, said: “This is a grass roots, community project that gives everybody the tools to tap into their powers of invention. By empowering individuals, developing skills, furthering innovation, educating children and prototyping new product ideas from business, a FabLab can stimulate the economy and benefit many different parts of the community.”

Sir Howard Bernstein, Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, said: “FabLab is another first for Manchester and is a key part of the regeneration for east Manchester. This world-class imaginative project has the power to inspire invention and innovation opportunities which I am sure the creative talent of Manchester will seize  - bringing together young and old, businesses and individuals, to share in creating their own products.”

Although typical FabLabs have a technically skilled staff, much of the learning and teaching comes from other users and by communicating with people in other FabLabs internationally. The philosophy is open source, whereby people use the centre for free in return for sharing full information with the global community.  Businesses and inventors can opt to protect their product development ideas by paying to use the service.

A FabLab is a small scale workshop with the tools to make almost any object out of glass, metal, plastic or other advance materials, incorporating electronics and other technologies. Complete novices can use the centre and receive help in developing their own ideas, or in building some of the products made at other FabLabs using ready made instructions.

The Manchester FabLab will have a direct connection via the internet and real time video to the worldwide  FabLab network, so that users can keep in touch, problem solve and brainstorm ideas with others as far afield as Pretoria, Ghana and Afghanistan.

The Manufacturing Institute and Manchester City Council – via the Innovation Investment Fund - are working in conjunction New East Manchester to secure a suitable site in east Manchester that will provide a local community hub and will also be accessible for those travelling in from across Greater Manchester and further afield.

Eddie Smith, Chief Executive of New East Manchester added: “The prospect of having a FabLab located in east Manchester is very exciting.  Although this project is still in the early stages, it has the potential to form a key part of our regeneration programme for east Manchester.”