Around the country, there are lots of tinkerers working on what they hope will be the next brilliant idea — but who don't have the tools in their garage to build it.
In dozens of cities, those innovators can set up shop in a "maker space" — community workshops where members have access to sophisticated tools and expertise.
A Growth Spurt For Maker Spaces
Since moving into its new home this month, the for-profit Columbus Idea Foundry in Columbus, Ohio, is now considered to be the largest maker space in the world. The facility is being renovated with hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds. It also received a $350,000 grant from the nonprofit ArtPlace America to aid its "creative place-making" mission.
Members of Artisan's Asylum, a 40,000-square-foot hacker space in Somerville, Mass., have raised $4 million on Kickstarter for a variety of small businesses. Executive director Molly Rubenstein says $3.5 million in venture capital investments have also gone to startups at Artisan's Asylum, where many classes are sold out and a waiting list exists for studio space.
The TechShop in Detroit, opened in partnership with automaker Ford, is credited with helping increase the number of inventions by Ford employees, according to Bill Coughlin, CEO of Ford Global Technologies. TechShop recently announced it was opening a maker space in partnership with BMW in Munich. TechShop facilities were opened in Pittsburgh and Arlington, Va., after thousands of memberships were purchased for veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).