MAKLab

Ethos

People, from all walks of life, should have access to the tools to change their life, play with an idea and start an enterprise. MAKLab is driven to help deliver this in a broad range of geographic locations, for all backgrounds and to all ages.

Making a difference

Over the last 50 years Scotland, like much of Europe, has struggled to maintain the practical skills, expertise in manufacturing, innovation in materials and learning systems that our economies were founded on.
We are taking action to support our young people, innovation and education on innovative technologies. We constantly strive to tackle these problems in an innovative and engaging manner, handing skills from generation to generation, passing experience from craftsperson to apprentices and from industry to young innovators. 

Making as a mechanism for learning

Physical making is not only a way to develop our technical skills, but can also be a powerful tool to develop soft skills, strengthen interpersonal relationships, improve problem solving and promote play in a positive manner.

By creating real, tactile and tangible outputs that can be picked up and passed around we can also explore cultural and social issues as well as the more obvious making skills.

The physical making process can reward some of our primitive emotions that make us human. We believe that by supporting, building and promoting these skills, we can impact on wider aspects of society, improve wellbeing and generate social capital.

Access for everyone

Whether you have a new idea for a product, would like to manufacture a piece of furniture or pick up some new skills, we are here to help you through every step of the process.

MAKLab was founded in 2012 to allow people to access the latest disruptive technologies but since then we have grown and now deliver teaching workshops, community outreach programmes, professional development and accredited learning for a wide demographic across Scotland.

We are delivering a network of spaces, that trade skills and resources with each other, across Scotland alongside our strong links to resources across the world.  Whether you need access to specialised equipment, or need to experiment with new materials, there aren't many processes that we can't help with.