16 people from across the creative and digital sectors came together for the first FuseBox Open Workshop yesterday. We had artists, web developers, makers, coders and more working together to develop ideas for our fantastic new space - The FuseBox. Don't worry if you missed it. We're having another workshop at the same time next week: 2:00 - 4:00pm on Thursday 30 May. Register here.
The purpose of the workshop was to develop ideas for The FuseBox that we can pilot over the next few months in order to learn what's going to be most useful for the sector. I was really impressed with the quantity and quality of ideas, and most of all the enthusiasm from people to actually help make these pilots happen. Here's what we came up with, and I have also tacked on a couple of other ideas that came out of conversations before the workshop.
- Creating a model of business support for people in the Maker community to commercialise projects that start as hobbies. We'll be looking to collaborate with with investor groups, incubators, mentors and others.
- Breaking the creative process into 10-12 steps to help people identify where they have skills gaps or needs, and match them up with people to collaborate with who have strengths in these areas.
- Leave-your-rate-card-at-the-door' sessions where people come along and give their time freely to others in the sector and at the same time have access to all of the other great brains there. (This idea in particular generated a lot of buzz at the workshop.)
- 'Ship-it-or-bin-it' events where people can show others their unfinished projects - those ideas you get 80% of the way through but somehow never complete, and get feedback and support to either get it done or let it go.
- Quite a big idea around using the space as a learning environment, like an alternative school. This is a theme that's already been talked about a lot so we'll be looking to see how we can pilot some ideas to test this out.
- Adding some colour to the space and at the same showcasing art and other work from people in the sector.
- Creating an online library of learning materials such as tutorials.
- Getting graduates or others thinking about taking their first steps into entrepreneurship working out of The FuseBox where they can access support as well as being matched with other start-ups with whom they can trade their time in return for training and other useful things like a website for their new business.
- Linking graduates with industry mentors and employers both for networking and troubleshooting their businesses.
I'd love to know what you think of these ideas and hear suggestions for other areas to explore. Please leave a comment below, and come along to the workshop on Thursday 30 May.