Decibel
Assembling Space For All
Clip | 5m 9sVideo has Closed Captions
A Rundberg makerspace builds a new kind of creative community.
Makerspaces can be great places to work on welding projects or pick up new woodworking skills, but they don’t always feel welcoming to women or people in the LGBTQ community. But ASMBLY Makerspace in Rundberg is building a space where everyone feels at home.
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Decibel is a local public television program presented by Austin PBS
Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders
Decibel
Assembling Space For All
Clip | 5m 9sVideo has Closed Captions
Makerspaces can be great places to work on welding projects or pick up new woodworking skills, but they don’t always feel welcoming to women or people in the LGBTQ community. But ASMBLY Makerspace in Rundberg is building a space where everyone feels at home.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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(tools whirring) - When you walk into assembly, you might hear grinding sounds from the metal shop.
(grinder whirring) And then the lathe, that's got a pretty crazy, very loud sound as well.
And then, you know, in the 3D printing, you hear the gantry moving around really rapidly.
(printer clattering) Sometimes you want headphones.
(chuckles) (upbeat music) This is also a great time if people wanna just come up and look at stuff.
My name's Valerie Wilmot.
I'm the Executive Director, Volunteer Executive Director here at Asmbly Makerspace.
(tools whirring) If no one has heard of the concept of Makerspace, the easiest way for us to kind of like get it to click for people is a gym membership for tools.
People can come in and use and experiment and play on.
(upbeat music) - Oh whoa, you're getting towards the end of the rainbow.
(group muttering) - We try to have as many free events as possible, but we're also intentional about the programming that we do and the people that we partner with to bring in opportunities and workshops that are specifically geared towards some of those groups that are oftentimes not in those spaces.
(tools revving) Originally, this actually started out as ATX hacker space.
The culture was a little different.
It was described I think accurately as like an '80s computer club vibe.
It was dark, it wasn't very clean, it wasn't exactly the most welcoming place.
One of my early experiences was having someone walk up to me, not asking anything about my project or what I was doing, but just telling me that I was sanding wrong.
(laughs) I grew up around tools, and it gave me this level of confidence and empowerment that translated into other areas of my life.
Part of what drives me to do the work that I do here, I wanna be a part of making that more accessible for people.
As we transitioned to being Asmbly Makerspace and changing the way the physical space felt, we also with that, tried to shift the culture to being more inquisitive and welcoming, where they can kind of innovate for themselves.
- I have my test right here.
This would be yellow.
So this would mean this is a vowel, and this is the letter or the word family.
My name is Rebecca.
I am a teacher of the deaf.
Right now, I'm printing some vowels.
Everything is color coordinated 'cause it's deaf ed, so it's visual.
So we're trying to figure out how to take what the hearing kids are doing and make it accessible to deaf kids.
There's a lack of resources, so we make a lot of stuff.
I can't, I couldn't afford the equipment that we have here at home and I wouldn't be able to make stuff like this if I didn't have this kind of resource.
(machinery revving) - The colors, that's fun.
When I first joined was like, I hardly ever saw another woman in the shop, and there are still days like that here, but it's gotten a lot better.
Part of getting there has been making sure that it feels like a safe space for everybody.
That's one of the things that's the biggest value of this space, is just the people in it and the different perspectives.
The way that a woodworker looks at a problem versus how a ceramics person looks at a problem is just totally different.
- [Artist] It's good.
- [Artist] Thank you.
I'm really happy.
I really like it.
Thanks.
- So when people come through these doors, everything else outside of that kind of stays and we say like, we're just here to make cool stuff.
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Decibel is a local public television program presented by Austin PBS
Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders