DigiFab Kits: Mini Mobile Makerspace Design in the Arts Curriculum

Abstract

Artist educators work in a great diversity of locations from informal community spaces to formal learning spaces in schools and museums. Art educators are exploring modes of transdisciplinary curriculum connecting art to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEAM) to meet the diverse challenges of making and learning. One of the roadblocks to maker forms of education is access to digital fabrication technologies such as 3D printers. To bring digital fabrication to a wider range of arts learning contexts, I designed a mini mobile makerspace that focused on 3D printing that I am calling a DigiFab Kit. As an extension of the concept of the FabLab Classroom model, I share my design decisions and experience of 3D printing in a mobile framework. My development of DigiFab Kits is an exploration of curated object collections that deploy as mobile makerspaces with adaptable curricular concepts appropriate to technology that can be used anywhere there is electricity.