Sat 13 March: 10am - 5pm. Sun 14 March: 11am - 5pm
Day pass: £3.95 adult & £10 family
Weekend pass: £5 adult & £15 family
NB: Family ticket admits 1 adult + 3 children or 2 adults + 2 children. Ages 4 and under go free.
The world’s premier event for DIY technology and craft will again be returning to the UK. This interactive event features cool robots, clever gadgets, garden shed inventions, knitted wonders, the occasional fireball, and much more! With loads of great shows and demonstrations at Centre for Life and Discovery Museum, there's something for absolutely everyone!
What is Maker Faire?
Already established and popular in the US and Japan, Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages who like to tinker and love to make things. Visit the Official Maker Faire Site.
What can you do at Maker Faire?
Race power tools, challenge the world’s fastest Rubik’s cube solving robot, make your own 3D glasses, get your photo taken by a six legged robot, dance with recycled bottles…
Centre for Life and Times Square
With over 50 Makers showcasing their inventions, Maker Faire will be even bigger and better this year. And with a weekend ticket, you can also experience everything else Life Science Centre has to offer, including the Crazy Motion Ride and Planetarium.
Booking: None required. Buy tickets on the door.
Highlights...
Rubot II
Maker Faire wouldn’t be complete without robots! Challenge RuBot II – the world’s fastest Rubik’s Cube solving robot. With two cameras for eyes, RuBot II scans the cube before his pneumatic actuated arms solve it. He can usually solve the puzzle in less than 35 seconds. Will you be able to beat him?
IC Hexapod
The Artbot iC Hexapod is a six-legged robot that has been designed to react emotionally to humans. He can spot people’s faces in a crowd, follow them around, interact with them and capture their image. When he sees a face, iC robot visibly follows the face of the human looking back at it. iC can find multiple faces in a crowd and will usually latch on to the largest first, will it be yours? Maker Matt Denton has also created hexapods for TV and film, including a six legged tortoise which featured as one of Hagrid’s pets in Harry Potter.
Silverline Power Tool Drag Racing
Get your trigger finger at the ready for Silverline's Power Tool Drag Racing – think belt sanders meets Formula 1! Have a go at racing power tools down a 30ft track and measure your reaction and performance times. In the power tool arena, you’ll also get a chance to see a chainsaw powered stretched mini Moto, and watch the professionals race their modified angle grinders, dremels and saws in a bid to be crowned Silverline Power Tool Drag Racing Champion!
For all the family...
Make, Make, Make!
Whatever your age or experience, there’s plenty of opportunities for you to make your own creations! Get arty with Drawbots – a simple robot that makes beautiful spiral drawings. Or how about making bathbombs – the perfect Mothers Day gift!
Bloodhound Engineering Adventure
Sat 13 March only:
11am-12pm, 1pm-2pm, 3pm-4pm
Bloodhound SSC is a unique engineering adventure. Their mission is to build a car capable of travelling a over 1000mph. Take part in an interactive show to uncover the challenges in building a vehicle that travels faster than a speeding bullet. Suitable for age 8 and over
Please Note: Limited capacity, reserve tickets on the day.
Especially for adults ...
Hardware hacking
Anyone can learn how to make cool things with microcontrollers! Even if you’ve never soldered before, you can make a fun and intriguing project at Maker Faire. Blink lights, hack your brain, turn off TVs in public places – learn how to do it all at the Hardware Hacking soldering station. Back by popular demand will be the self hypnosis glasses – make your own for a 14 minute experience like no other!
Presentations and workshops
Although most of Maker Faire is suitable for everyone, there’ll also be some special adult presentations and workshops. Learn about microcontrollers with Mitch Altman – most (in)famous for inventing the wildly popular TV-B-Gone, a keychain that makes it fun to turn off TVs in public places. Workshops include sketchPatch.net's 'SketchTag' game – a chance to create animations and drawings, created from the code up!
.png)
sketchTag - Programming made fun!
Sat 13 March: 11am-1pm & 2pm-4pm
Come and collaborate on animations and interactive drawings, created by you from the code up! This is a fun and easy way for everyone to share programs, even if you have never done it before. So come and join sketchPatch.net in a round of sketchTag! Open to all!
e-Craft Workshop
Sat 13 March: 1pm-5pm
Want to make interactive plush toys? Make your knitting or sewing electronic with conductive thread? Weave sensors into fabric? Iron-fuse beads into game controllers? Change your favourite teddy bear into a noise machine?
At this DIY workshop, you will learn how to hand-make interactive 3D things, using a combination of traditional craft and simple electronics.
Requirements: No prior technical or craft experience required. We will provide plush, textile, sewing machines, fusebeads, irons, needles, thread, soldering irons and other tools and materials; but if you practice a craft (knitting, crocheting, wood-chiseling, origami, soldering, etc) or have fabric/yarn etc you would like to use to build your object, feel free to bring it with you along with your tools. All the electronic parts needed for this workshop will be provided by us. We will also have available different templates and kits for ready-made models: if you have little or no crafting experience, these will get you started by letting you assemble or modify simple objects.
Booking: Limited capacity, book online below.
I-Robot
Full weekend workshop Sat 13 - Sun 14 March
A mobile video workshop focused on collective video making using mobile phones. This 2-day workshop will raise the participant's awareness of the hidden creative potentials of mobile phones, as well as introduce them to basic video editing suites. We will create short movies based on the topics of the Science Festival, from the perspective of a robot. Participants will first review examples of movies made using these techniques, learn how they were made, then get to shoot their own short movies and edit them. The workshop will end with a public screening of a final piece. Please bring a laptop and a mobile phone with video-recording capabilities, if you have one. If not, we will have some equipment (phones and computers) available. We provide all the necessary software. No prior experience required! Come to this workshop to uncover the mysteries of how to make great looking video productions with mobile phones and discover the joy of participatory film making!
Maker Faire Booking: None required. Buy tickets on the door.
For dancing robots and giant glowstick towers, check out
A Taste of Make at Discovery Musuem.
Make sure to check out the other Maker Faire Events: