The ideaLAB, Denver Public Library's makerspace in the Central Library, is a great place for generating creativity, innovation, and learning. We'd also like to help foster those things in our community. That's why the ideaLAB is announcing its Maker-in-Residence program. Are you a visual artist? Musician? Electronics wizard? Programmer? If you enjoy making things and teaching people new skills, we would love to hear from you!
The ideaLAB Maker-in-Residence will work out of the ideaLAB for 2 hours a week for 8 weeks, working on a project of their choosing, which will be displayed in the ideaLAB at the end of their residency. As part of your residency, we'll ask you to host two workshops to share your skills with the public. We'll cover the costs for workshop supplies and pay you a stipend of $500 for your supplies and time working and teaching; you get unfettered access to our tools, opportunity to learn new skills, public exposure for your work, and a chance to share your talents with your community and all the warm fuzzy feelings that entails. We're looking for all kinds of making, whether they're digital or physical. Do you make quilts? Android apps? Video installations? Artisanal firewood? Come and show us how you do it.
Our first maker-in-residence is JR Nielsen, co-creator of Dototot, a creative media company specializing in education material, and co-producer of the web series Daisy's Web Development Diary, Superusers: The Legendary GNU/Linux Show, The Nielsen Brothers' Byting Python, and The Hello World Program with his business partner and brother, Jared. If you've ever wanted to learn about Linux or computer science or Python from puppets, JR and Jared are doing amazing things.
As a proponent of open-source technology, JR's creative works are produced on Linux-based machines using mostly free and open-source software, which is why we're super excited his first workshop will be Free and Open Source Software for Creatives, coming up on Tuesday, February 23, from 6-8 p.m.
JR will be building his own version of the Atari Video Music in the lab during his 8-week residency - essentially, a box that takes audio and turns it into a visual display. It will involve a Raspberry Pi, Python, bluetooth connectivity, some 3D-printed cases, and a lot of trial-and-error. Come and meet him and talk with him about what he's doing every Tuesday from 5-7 p.m., starting February 16th.
Interested in being the next maker-in-residence?Head to bit.ly/DPLmaker to submit your application. Please familiarize yourself with what the ideaLAB is currently doing, our schedule, and the tools we have available by visiting our pages at denverlibrary.org/idealab and teens.denverlibrary.org/idealab before applying. We are currently looking for makers and artists to participate for eight weeks between April and December 2016.
What are you going to make?
Photo of the Atari Video Music by Wgungfu at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.