Dublin Maker, the annual celebration of creativity, innovation, and making, is back with its highly anticipated event for 2023. The event will take place on September 2nd, 2023, at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, Dublin 8.
Dublin Maker brings together makers, inventors, artists, and technology enthusiasts from all walks of life to showcase their projects, exchange ideas, and inspire the community. This year, Dublin Maker is set to captivate attendees with a remarkable array of exhibits, interactive workshops, and engaging activities.
The venue for Dublin Maker 2023, Richmond Barracks, offers a unique backdrop for this celebration of creativity. Steeped in history, the barracks provide an inspiring setting where old meets new, and tradition intertwines with innovation.
Attendees can look forward to a diverse range of projects on display, including robotics, electronics, crafts, art installations, and scientific experiments. From cutting-edge technological advancements to traditional craftsmanship, Dublin Maker showcases the power of imagination and ingenuity in shaping the future.
Dublin Maker is not just a passive viewing experience. Visitors of all ages are encouraged to participate actively. Interactive workshops will provide hands-on opportunities to learn new skills and engage with emerging technologies. Expert makers will be on hand to guide participants and share their knowledge, fostering a collaborative learning environment.
If you have a maker spirit and want to show off your own project. Why not answer the ongoing open call? A way to showcase your passion and enthusiasm. Beta-test your project and educate the next generation of inventors, STEM enthusiasts and the general public.
“We are thrilled to bring Dublin Maker back for another exciting year,” said the organising team. “Dublin Maker has become a platform for fostering innovation, inspiring creativity, and celebrating the maker spirit within our vibrant community. We invite everyone to join us at Richmond Barracks and immerse themselves in the wonderful world of making.”
Dublin Maker 2023 promises to be an unforgettable experience for attendees of all ages. Whether you’re a seasoned maker, a technology enthusiast, an artist, or simply curious about the world of making, this event offers something for everyone.
Save the date: September 2nd, 2023, at Richmond Barracks in Inchicore, Dublin 8. Don’t miss your chance to be part of Dublin Maker 2023 and witness the extraordinary projects, engage with makers, and celebrate the spirit of creativity and innovation.
A free one-day festival of makers, crafters, coders and inventors
Dublin Maker | July 23rd | 10 am – 6pm | Merrion Square Park
The soothing din of people tapping away at projects in garden sheds, the gentle patter of a crafting group overheard through a community hall window, the unsettling screams of a robot making for the door before unplugging its own power cord. These are the noises of Ireland’s creators and once a year they roar at Dublin Maker.
On the 23rd of July, the makers of Ireland will be showcasing a bounty of lockdown builds as Dublin Maker returns to being an in-person event. The output of a year of making sawdust in makeshift workshops, solder fumes in spare bedrooms and knitting in front of Netflix will be melded together to create a festival of hacking, making and DIY.
50 makers will take over a tented village of invention. From traditional Aran jumper-making, to AI racing robots, we have everything to keep robots warm and content, but also lots for humans. Take the chance to speak to makers who have created everything from wooden sculptures to lightweight jewellery, from 3D-printed cosplay props to giving coffee pods a second life as hand-crafted jewellery. Ask them questions, paw at their projects and get inspired.
This year’s event also features a repair café, where visitors can bring broken items along to Dublin Maker to be fixed by the clever volunteers from Tog Hackerspace.
Now in its tent 10th year, Dublin Maker is run by volunteers who simply want to see Ireland show its hidden inventive brilliance. It is an event for anyone with an interest in getting hands-on and making things. Now is the time to celebrate our invention, creativity, self-reliance and resourcefulness.
So come find out for yourself at the one-stop-shop for the hack-it, make-it, do-it mindset. Take the opportunity to glimpse into the future, get hands-on in the creation process and find inspiration to make, build and create.
It has been far too long since the last Dublin Maker in-person event. We are delighted to be back at our favourite location, in the heart of Dublin City – Merrion square.
So all you makers, crafters, do-er, hackers, builders, hackers and do-it-yourselfers come show everyone what you have been up to this past year!
The creative carnival of show and tell, Dublin Maker, is set to return to Merrion Square this Summer. With your help we will be transforming Dublin’s favourite city centre park into a spectacular family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness. We would love you to join us.
The open call for this year’s Dublin Maker is now open to anyone who makes anything. We are open to all inventors, makers, hackers and creators. Whether you’re a tech enthusiast or a creative crafter we’d love for you to apply for a place at our biggest Dublin Maker yet.
Each year, we welcome educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, artists, science clubs, students, authors and commercial exhibitors of all ages and backgrounds. Dublin Maker’s mission is to entertain, inform and connect the makers of Ireland, while inspiring the next generation of Ireland’s makers and inventors and we want you to be part of it. Take the opportunity to glimpse into the future, get hands-on in the creation process and find inspiration to become a Maker. There’s nothing else like it. Remember, your project doesn’t need to be finished, and it definitely doesn’t need to be for sale. We want you to share how you make, so in-progress, hobbyist projects are A-OK!
Dublin Maker ran its first successful all virtual Maker festival on Saturday, June 19th. With over 40 exhibits showcasing live demos, pre-recorded videos, posters to check out, and of course, the most important part, meeting the Makers themselves.
Over 300 people signed up to wander around our virtual Maker festival. Thank you all who joined us at Gather Town, it was experimental, and we were delighted that people were engaging with each other, exploring the virtual park space, and watching our 3 hour livestream. It finally came true for us to bring the Maker community and the general public together this year, and we are ever so grateful for all the support.
Before and After – Behind the scenes
It went from above planning out map for Gather Town and trying to figure out how it all works to…
THIS! Final layout of the Dublin Maker Virtual Festival 2021!
THANK YOU!
To our sponsors and partners, to whom this wouldn’t have happened
SFI
ESB Energy for Generations Fund
Festival of Curiosity
DCU
TOG Hackerspace
Science Hack Day
Laser Laura
We couldn’t have done it without the team ranging from our roving reporters, social media to volunteers (no order in particular):
Niamh Shaw
Phil Smyth
Emilia
Alastair Roe and team at VIMAR
Caolán Ward
Roisin Lyons
Chris Reina
Nathan Wheeler
(names of other volunteers)
And of course the Dublin Maker team itself, David, Jeffrey, Laura, Tomas and Vicky.
The Live Stream
You can (re)watch the 3 hour livestream set in a newsroom style with Jeffrey and Vicky, which includes interviews with Makers participating in the Maker festival with Niamh and Phil, a tour of the space on Gather Town with our roving reporters, learning how to juggle, and even a weather forecast. You can (re)watch it below.
The Makers Documentary
We wrapped up the festival by premiering a documentary in the virtual auditorium in Gather Town and via our Youtube channel. Dublin Maker commissioned the documentary and was made by Hugh Rodgers and his team at Invisible Thread Films following the stories of Irish Makers on how they got into making. I suggest having a tissue box nearby, it’s both inspirational and very touching, and we hope this documentary explains why Makers do what they do, and what Maker community and culture is about.
Thank you again to everyone who has supported Dublin Maker all through these years, especially this year.
Hai, everybody! Vicky here, writing about my reflection looking back as a member of the Dublin Maker team as their Maker Advocate. My role wrapped at the end of June and it’s been over 2 years since I joined the Dublin Maker Team as their Maker Advocate especially since my review blog post on life as their Maker Advocate.
I may have hung up my Maker Advocate hat, but it has been an amazing journey meeting so many people and organisations and finding ways to connect people. And guess what? I still haven’t found a good open digital platform to share Maker info and resources
❌ Github – Not everyone will be comfortable using git and github (nevermind know what pull requests are), even though it would be a great way to crowd gather info in a very transparent way.
🤔 Shared Google Spreadsheet – I’ve tried this in the past and people don’t add to the file either directly or via a form.
🤔 Padlet – Found about his from CESI conference (if you haven’t been and interested in education, STEAM and other Maker-y goodness, you should check it out.
But I think the latter is pretty close (until the platform starts charging as we all initially free to use amazing products and services).
Here’s the Maker groups from a mind map I created when I started.
😓 As I said, I’ve never found a way to share this information.
🤔 Could Notion be an answer? It embeds collab tools like Miro and very easy to get into creating pages, tables (better than airtable), even has kanban board, and more. Let folks know what you think.
If you have a suggestion of a tool that’s open and easily accessible for people to contribute, email info@dublinmaker.ie.
Lots of collabs, events, activities happened since that initial Maker Advocate blog post including bringing Maker culture to Startup Week Dublin in 2019, we even had the Maker Van (DCC Libraries) parked at Wood Quay for “Maker Monday” and invited the Maker community to speak at the event and showcase in the Maker Van.
Teaching Python Turtle to groups of young teens at Creative Techfest. There’s been so many great activities and meeting so many amazing people that fast forward to 2020 and like everyone else, longing to meet and engage with people in person, even over a cup of tea to see how we can work together, get excited about ideas, and generally connecting, and of course, Science Hack Day!
The year 2020 was a hard year for many, and it’s still fresh in my memory on how all my activities stopped at the end of Feb 2020 when the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions came into force.
I was just off the high of:-
Previewing Coolock Library’s Maker Space (we helped advised on kitting out the space and linking up with other Makers) before its official launch
😥 And as it hits home more, my first trip to Berlin Makerfaire to represent Dublin Maker, its festival was cancelled. I was going to demo my first Maker project in public, a print your own text based adventure game. This would have been my first ever official Makerfaire and it is one of the largest in Europe. My plans were dashed as I hoped to visit and make connections with various local Maker/Hackerspaces by my Dublin Maker team-mate, Jeffrey, as my tour guide.
🤔 The first 3-6 months of 2020 also gave opportunities for many people to roll up their sleeves to figure out how to help with the shortage of PPEs for frontline workers from 3D printed or hand-made masks to people. Folks were also picking up making skills, including myself as I was completely lost from having a heavily populated calendar to it being almost wiped clean. How will I engage with the Maker community, how do I utilise my role and I also want to feel relevant in all that chaotic and confusing period? I wanted to help. Many organisations and people were trying to figure it out for themselves as lockdown and each level of restriction crept ever higher and no vaccine in sight. I started learning to make my own fabric face masks, they plucked up the courage to learn how to use my sewing machine I bought before lockdown.
Zine to accompany my print your own adventure game
I helped connect OSV to organisations that can donate any laminates for face shields, and Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council really helped my contacts.
As more and more events and conferences are going virtual, we decided to move Dublin Maker from 2020 to 2021 in hopes that we may have a hybrid or virtual event. Spoiler, it ended up being an all virtual Maker festival.
ENGAGING COMMUNITY DURING COVID-19
Before we get to that, during 2020, besides learning new making skills and publishing them on our website, we participated in events, gave talks like EnthusiastiCon (they are based in Berlin, kind of makes up for the Makerfaire cancellation).
Following are either collaborations, or new ways to engage with the Maker community and finding ways to raise the profile of the Maker community.
I was asked to join Smart Balbriggan’s Steering Group as representative of Dublin Maker team as they are planning an IoT Maker Space in the town centre, which also gave us a platform to talk about Dublin Maker and the Maker culture to its community.
DUBLIN MAKER PODCASTS
But how do we engage with our Maker community during this period of lockdown? We have been talking about making podcasts on and off before, and we ended up making 2 series of podcasts over the year: https://dublinmaker.buzzsprout.com/
I did try to upload them to Youtube, and tried my hand at making visualisers that changed as the people spoke in the podcast, but it didn’t generate as many visits. The other way was to play with an idea to record video of the podcast and show clips of it, but we decided to keep it all audio in the end.
2021 is our big year when the Dublin Maker Festival makes a comeback. The equipment used is pretty much the same as what I used for Maker-a-Day.
We needed help and feedback as this is all new to us and we wanted Makers themselves to let us know how they would like us to run Dublin Maker, and any tips if we were to do a fully virtual one. What are they anxious about when doing virtual events?
We answered questions as we were seeking questions ourselves on how to host Dublin Maker on Gather Town and how it will look like as we haven’t seen another Maker festival do something like this.
But we did it! Even a newsroom style 3 hour live-stream. I spend many hours getting overlays, graphics, b-rolls (extra intermission footage so there’s no silence or if there’s a technical issue, this helps us give us a breather behind the scenes).
Here’s the Dublin Maker 2021 Live Stream that you can re-watch:
Equipment and tools used:
iTrack CM25B microphone
Yamaha MG60X (mixer)
Scarlett 2i4 (audio interface)
beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro 32 Ohm (headphones)
2 x Elgato keylight
Elgato Stream deck
Canva
Affinity Designer
iMove (quicker and exports to mp4 instead of using Final Cut Pro)
Screen capture on the Mac
OBS streaming to Youtube
Zoom (thanks to DCU)
We premiered a documentary about The Makers at the end of the Dublin Maker festival:
🥰 So here’s final thanks to the team for offering me this opportunity to connect with the Maker community, big ❤️ to David, Jeffrey, Laura and Tomas.
🌈 Now a big list of thank yous building on the previous list (I’m sure I am going to leave out someone, so I might update this list in near future):
Cathay Foley (SFI for all your support and advice)
Angela, Paul, Aoife and rest of the team from DCC Public Libraries
Andrew from BRYR
Annabelle from Innovate Dublin
Thom from maker.ie
John from The Nerve Centre in Derry
Gretta from National Print Museum and seeing their PrintLab
Sarah from St John of Gods
Barbara from National Youth Council Ireland
Dominic Campbell from Creative Aging International & Dublin City Council Culture Company
Miriam and Jen from Tech Space
Kate from Make, Create, Innovate
Ellen and Vincent from Festival of Curiosity
Fiach, Melissa and Cathy from The Digital Hub
Rodhan from The Digital Hub
Gerard from Fablab Limerick
David and Fergus from BenchSpace in Cork
Liam from DCC (Ballymun)
Involve (Navan)
Sylvia from I-Form / Women in 3D printing Ireland
Jake Byrne (TCD and maker educator extraordinaire who ran activities on the Maker Van at Dublin Maker)
Local Enterprise Office (DCC)
Barbara, Tara and Darren from Coder Dojo
Orlaith from Explorium
Aishling Hyland, Aishling Lennon, Aoife Sheridan, Breffni ORourke from Fingal County Council, and Helen and Lillian from Blanchardstown Library
Eamon Donyln (All the great chats and ideas from SmartBalbriggan Steering Committee)
Tara, Cheryl, Nadja, Maria, Mick and Richie from LoveLaceSpace
Mairead from Science Gallery Dublin and SYSTEM 2020
Ann O’Dea from Silicon Republic
Stuart Lawn from Fab Lab Maker Hub (Manorhamilton)
Staff at DCU School of Computing
Insight at DCU (special call out to Operations)
DCU Comms (advice on marketing and promos)
Gene, Colin, David and all the Startup Weekend Dublin crew
Deirdre Green and ASSESSMAKE21 team and partners
Deirdre Butler (DCU’s Institute of Education)
Sinead O’Shaughnessy from Dublin City Council Culture Company
Chris, Pam and Hassan from MakerMeet
Nathan Wheeler (Crafty Nathan’s Creations)
Julie Power (CodeWeekEU Ambassador)
Gemma Dempsy (DCU Sports)
Suzanne Little and Aoibheann Bird (Girls Hack Ireland)
Ramya Bhat (From DCU Finance and super patient with all my questions)
Shaun O’Boyle (all those great podcast tips and pointers)
Stacey Connolly (helpful advice on promotion, from Beachhut PR)
Irina Dzhambazova (tips from your experience as podcaster)
Hugh, Zlata, Anna and the team at Invisible Thread
And to anyone who actually pushed me to apply for this Maker Advocate role, including my husband, Mick, thank you. It’s been challenging and amazing at the same time. I know our paths will cross as I’ll always be a fan of Dublin Maker.
🙌 And guess what? They’ll be back at Merrion Square next summer, so set reminders in your diaries to buy sunscreen and get your thinking caps on with your next project for Dublin Maker Festival 2022!
If you want to find me, I’ll still be involved with the Irish tech community especially around diversity in tech – https://beacons.page/whykay – I’m sure our paths will cross, and best of luck to the team, and looking forward to many more Dublin Maker Festivals in the near future.
As a take on what I say when I sign off on Dublin Maker podcasts.. (ahem, podcast voice on)
“And this is Vicky, your Dublin Maker advocate, signing off for the last time!”
Dublin Maker will be held on Saturday June 19th and Sunday June 20th in our special 2-day virtual festival on the grounds of our Dublin Maker Gather Town!
It is a free to attend, community-driven event.
The festival takes the form of a “show and tell” experience where inventors/makers are sourced through an open call, and will have an opportunity to showcase their creations at individual virtual booths. It will be a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness. It’s a celebration of the Maker movement where anyone can show what they are making, and share what they are learning.
We welcome all types of submissions in all shapes and sizes. Don’t worry about if it’s finished, we love work-in-progress projects, it’s a chance for people to engage and chat about its process and you never know, solutions might pop out at stranger places.
⌛️Note: Makers will need to be available for a minimum of 2 hours (which is the smallest time slot block), during which the Maker will be available to answer questions about their showcase, like an Ask Me Anything.
Being part of Dublin Maker this year means making a video showcasing your project, and if you need help to get started, we’ve a series called Make a Maker Video to help get you started. Huge thanks to Chris Reina and Nathan Wheeler for collaborating with us.
All Maker videos will be located in a dedicated Dublin Maker Festival 2021 playlist on our Youtube channel.
Also check out our website dublinmaker.ie to see what sort of ideas we have seen in previous Dublin Maker festivals and here’s a sneak peek to get an idea of what Dublin Maker Festival is like virtually in the video below.
This will be the 9th Dublin Maker festival. Check out the fun we had in 2019 with the video below.
Whether it’s traditional crafting projects, something you are still tinkering with, apply for a place at our biggest Dublin Maker festival yet.
Come join us and the take the opportunity to spread the Maker Revolution!
Your project does not have to be finished, and it does not need to be for sale.
We want you to share how you make your project, so we definitely welcome work-in-progress, hobbyist projects.
Go on, throw in a project!
The Open Call closes TUESDAY MAY 4, 6PM (Irish Time).
In this episode we talk to Amanda Jolliffe from Microsoft Dreamspace where she brings us on her journey from her role in Dreamspace through to all the various activities that happened in the space before the Covid-19 lockdown came to their virtually hosted events including a TV programme broadcasted nationally!
About Amanda: Amanda Jolliffe is DreamSpace Lead in Microsoft Ireland. DreamSpace is an education venue that has an ambition to be a catalyst for change in how school communities think about and engage in STEAM and digital technologies. The DreamSpace program content is developed by teachers, of which Amanda is one. You can find out all about the DreamSpace programs using the details below or search social media pages with the #MSDreamSpace.
In this episode we are joined by Christine Campbell, Founder and current Managing Director of Anyone4Science co-hosted by Vicky Twomey-Lee and Jeffrey Roe.
Christine brings us through her journey on how Anyone4Science was born. She has such a vast wealth of experience and knowledge that we were jotting them all down and we hope you find this podcast useful from engaging young audiences, lessons learnt and much more.
In this episode, joining us (Vicky Twomey-Lee and Jeffrey Roe) for a chat is Dr. Rebecca O’Neill, telling us all about her role in Wikimedia Community Ireland, how to contribute to Wikipedia, and rest of Wikimedia’s family.
And why people should also contribute to Wikipedia. What is “Women in Red”? Plus Rebecca is looking for pics of pancakes in Ireland. 🥞😆
Dr Rebecca O’Neill is the Project Coordinator for Wikimedia Community Ireland. A large portion of her work focuses on improving and strengthening the representation of women and content relating to Ireland on Wikipedia as well as the Irish language Wikipedia – Vicipéid. She is also the co-host of the new podcast, The World According to Wikipedia.
Dublin Maker Festival is going virtual this summer.
We would like to invite our Maker community and friends to hear about your experiences and suggestions on how we can make this year’s event as memorable, engaging and interactive as past Dublin Makers.
Have you attended a Maker-related event in the past year?
What are your experiences, good and bad?
Were you an exhibitor in past Dublin Maker Festivals?
Are you thinking of exhibiting at upcoming Dublin Maker events?
Have you run/hosted any virtual workshops especially in the area of STEAM?
