Episode: 2636
Title: HPR2636: Liverpool Makefest 2018 - interviews with Noel from JMU FabLab
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2636/hpr2636.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:51:49

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This is Tony Hughes for Hacker Public Radio and I've got with me.
This is a small version of our lab that we have at the art design school, I call our
mobile fab lab. We've got laser courses, 3D printers, 3D scanners, some virtual reality
and it's really just showcasing and I'm kind of like demystifying what we do. So it's
part of our outreach programme, we're in Jumbo's university and I'm being part of a
maker community really. So what kind of things do you do at the university
with the equipment you've got here? Oh my words, we start, we have over a thousand
creative minds in the art design school, so as well as having to support the programmes
and it seems like we have fashion students, architectural students, fine artists. We
work with a lot of external sort of small companies as well so we're working on some fantastic
projects at the moment around creating a mobile sort of hologram maker which will be a local
company called Real Space called Al Jucopia. That sounds cool. We want to, it's a
cosplayer open maker competition which was a European project and somehow we won it.
That's a big surprise to me as well but it gave us a 20,000 pounds, it's a sort of kickstart
idea and it's really all about how makers and manufacturers work together. So how do you
take an idea and realise it? And that's just one of the type of projects, but as I say,
our ethos within the Fab Lab community is we can make our most editing, so that's the
challenge we can't, but that's what we intend to do and so anything that comes through into
the Fab Lab, I call it a melting pot, so the fact that I went and much more interested
is when you get a fashion student and an architect together and what comes about that and all we
give to is give them access to the tools. I think that's important is giving the skills
and tools and that's what we really do. So basically if you make the resources available
they'll find a way of using it and making something out of it. Yeah, maybe build it and
they will come and that's what we've done and because we've passed this like international
community. So about 2014 I flew out to, I always say I'm not that clever, so I was given
this space and like all these things, it was just a room full of equipment and that equipment
was not too clever, so I just did a Google Sage and a fan of that is a thing called Fab
Labs and the biggest one in Europe was in Barcelona, so I didn't tell anyone, so I just
flew out to Barcelona. I met up with the director who's called Thomas Diaz and part
of that meeting was to talk about how I would become a Fab Lab in Liverpool and that's
when this really journey started for me and we just grown over that time. So how long
did I go with that? That was 2014 but it was funny, you know we had these conversations
and I always say I've been doing this for like maybe five, six years and last I've been
doing this for 35 years because I just forget before and this new wave of making, I was
part of the whole new media wave which was about the convergence of devices and technologies
and now what's happening my time is suddenly new media becomes physical and I think that's
exciting times for us all really and they call it industry 4.0, I don't really what that
means but again it's just the converges in technology and I just think about how we can
democratize, manufacture and how makers can help in sort of like being part of that revolution
really and it's quite interesting because one of the initiatives outside of Barcelona
is Fab City so until recently I've always been a Fab Lab but now I'm a Fab City in my
hands and that's how we create these sustainable maker cities in the future so part of this
is that is an ecosystem that's supporting so I think that's where the makers come in.
Yeah you've got does Liverpool, you've got yourselves here in Liverpool. I think people like
make Liverpool in the north now and all around where does the fabric districts but I'm
also interested in connecting with the city much wider as well because the history of the
city is quite interesting because I'm one of the greats who've lost in the 60s the city
plans to move themselves to the peripheral and that causes another of issues but part of
that is that you can reconnect these places again as the places where I come from and through
making and I think that making empowers people and I really do that you know through
the process through that creative process. Yeah making and the peripheral things that
go with making like the open source community and things like that. Well that's interesting
because I've just been in a talk in Barcelona I was out with the students in the Fab Lab
in Barcelona for a few days, working with them and a fantastic city, a fantastic culture
around making as well but part of that is that sort of how this has all really sort of
joined up and sort of that open source community. There's a guy and forgive me if I forgot
his name, there's a guy who started the free software foundation Gnu and he saw another
subtle differences between open and free so I'm I'm tendin some move towards free software
as in freedom, how how that frees the citizen. I think you're talking about Richard Stolmer.
Yes absolutely fantastic, it's very quirky individual. He was and he was a bit like his some kind
of good because when he came outside people were hanging off everywhere and he actually
did a weird thing where he actually had an auction for the Gnu which I didn't really think
existed for this but he raised 200 euros for him so some boss is Gnu but again you know
it's the things that some bosses as a city is going to interest me in the future because
one of the big things that's going to happen and I really believe this is that with
our replication I think what we have now is a conversation about how we really do democratize
by the fact that along only when we have a replicator and so in about 20 to 50 years
we'll have the technology to replicate things and that's when it went less and I think
it's going to be the time and we have real change. So it'll go from science fiction to science
fact exactly and there's a guy called Neil Geysenhalte at MIT who started the whole fab
lab thing who we met with and it was interesting because I was walking around I'm still walking
around in a bit of a bubble at the moment because he said to me forget bits we get machines
that make machines think about asses and that's where we're at and the first thing they're
going to do is replicate water and it's all about scale and that will happen and I think
we've got to be ready for it and we've got to start we have those conversations and it's
interesting to call it now the age of abundance when when in the age of scarcity of what happens
when we can have almost anything and that's that's going to be I think that's what we've got to
prepare our children for and I'm probably the same age as you we have this it's a legacy thing
for me and I think that's why I do what I do it's because I believe that we have to prepare our
children for the future definitely have to prepare the children for the future it's just getting the
resources to make sure the children get there yeah no it's not going to be a guy's excitement
I want it I'd love to be around maybe you think he can replicate me now but I want to be around
for that revolution because when like because I always ask the question is what have you had to
replicate it what's the first thing you would replicate and in my head I would replicate the
replicate it I give it to you and that's that's real that's that's the improvisation of the row
and I'm going yeah and then if then if everyone could have cleaned water that's one of the first
challenges of say the UN it was that we have to solve and I think that's what we all can do I
think and that's why I love spaces like this because there's people who do is you think about
solving problems and then that's one of those problems we have to solve so yeah there's some
really interesting concepts in all obviously we could we could solve for hours or we've not got
hours but that's really good could you just give us a link to information about your particular area
yeah so just follow us on Twitter at lgmufablab and yeah and just send me a message we want to talk
with and I mean very honestly I'm pretty much open to everything I believe in that everything
thing so if I believe that we can make almost anything I think we can design almost anything
and I think we could distribute almost anything so that's our that's our tagline which I've just made
of thank you very much brilliant thank you thanks
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