As a tenant of Halifax’s historic Roy Building, which will be replaced by a new building this year, Halifax Makerspace Society is looking for fresh accommodation. The fledgling group of creators needs a space large enough to accommodate a growing membership keen to work on and build their creative design and technological projects.

Halifax Makerspace, whose membership  now stands at 30, has been running on Barrington Street since March last year.  Whereas other groups may focus on technology or medical research, Makerspace caters to people who build or manufacture things.  The members include people of all ages and skill sets, from computer programmers, electricians, welders and carpenters to people who like to sew.

The Makerspace movement began in Germany in the early 2000s and is spreading around the world. In Halifax, as elsewhere, members use the space to socialize, share knowledge and tools, work on their own projects and collaborate on others. Fifteen members worked on the Infinity mirror that was part of Halifax’s recent Nocturne Festival.

“We’re a blank canvass for creative people to come in and make stuff,” said communications director Daniel Oulton as he sat in the group’s current accommodation – two narrow offices on the first floor of the Roy Building that are crammed with circuit boards, pieces of unfinished wooden structures and tools. “There are so many creative people in Halifax who know so many things that if we get them all together in one room awesome stuff will happen.” 

Some members are currently involved in assembling a RepRap3D printer – the clever design means that the printer prints its own parts. Oulton himself is a recent graduate of Dalhousie, where he studied technical theatre. He said he has learned a lot about programming and robotics from group members and is now re-wiring a control car so that it can drive itself. “I love the idea of working on something because you want to and getting to learn new skills through that. We are still a very young group, and we are looking to collaborate with other groups, like the Halifax Tool Library – we share a common purpose.”    

Oulton said the group needs a bigger space to attract more members and to house the bigger projects members wish to work on. He said it would be good to have enough room for a band saw, a table saw and other fabrication tools. Apart from space and affordability, the only other criterion is that the new Makerspace be central and accessible by public transit.