Similar to the site visit I did at Chelsea I also visited the digital fabrication area at Camberwell to gather a wider understanding of the space across UAL.
Similar to the site at Chelsea, the Digital Fabrication area is right next door to the wood workshop, although slightly more contained in its own room rather than being at the end of a long corridor. I spoke to the technicians working about the space and the pros and cons of it being so close to other workshops. One of the technicians at Camberwell said this helps with students ‘connected thinking’ which I completely agree with. If the space was further divided from the other workshops then the outcomes would inevitably be less ambitious and more singular in scope. For example, you could laser cut an object and then finish it in the wood workshop, rather than stopping after the first process.
Logistically this also makes sense, as we talked about in our discussion. For example laser cutters are only so big so having the wood workshop next door to cut larger materials is a huge benefit. If these two areas were separated then the process of moving materials becomes more difficult and even a potential barrier for some students.
We also talked about the difficulty of noise in the space, as they have a full size CNC at Camberwell which creates a lot of noise when in use. However, the technician mentioned that it’s often not a problem as there aren’t many computers in the space where students prepare digital files as this would be done beforehand somewhere else. This is different to our thinking at Lime Grove. We have iMacs and PCs in our space where students can prepare files with our help for fabrication process, ie laser cutting or 3D printing. Because I work at Pre-Degree the level of understanding from students is slightly less and I feel it’s our job to prepare them for degree level so we need the machines in our space to help with that process. This makes me think how noise could be more of a barrier for us, so in that instance us being in an isolated room away from the noise of the wood workshop could be a benefit. For some students ‘sensory environments can be extremely overwhelming’ (Manning, et all, (2023) When we are fully set up we will have machines that will create a lot of noise and I’m currently having discussions with my colleagues on how to prepare for this. For example, building an isolated room within a room that houses the noisier equipment, or potentially having quiet hours in the workshop.
We also talked about student materials. At CCW Foundation we sold materials for the laser cutter as there was no shop on site. We now have a shop at Lime Grove but it doesn’t stock the right materials in its current format. The technician at Camberwell mentioned that they don’t sell materials and this can actually be a problem as students often buy cheaper materials that aren’t right for the machines and can even potentially be dangerous. They also mentioned that often students want to leave materials in the space and this causes an issue with space – which extends to a wider issue of space for students amongst UAL. We collect a lot of off cuts of materials that we provide to students as I’m aware the financial situation of students can vary drastically, hopefully ‘removing financial barriers as practical tactics’ (Erin Higgins et al 2023) toward making.
References:
Manning, C., Williams, G., & MacLennan, K. (2023). Sensory-inclusive spaces for autistic people: We need to build the evidence base, Autism, 27
Erin Higgins et al (2023) Towards a Social Justice Aligned Makerspace: Co-designing Custom Assistive Technology within a University Ecosystem, In Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.