DR UK visits London Hackspace

Thu,27 November 2014
News Equality & Rights

Today Disability Rights UK organised a visit to the London Hackspace. The visitors included members of the No10 policy unit, the Office of Disability Issues and advisors to Government ministers.

The visitors were able to hear of options for supporting disabled people in being members of exchange systems that could give them access to resources such as workshop space, tools and to other people for collaborative and productive relationships or enterprise. They also met and heard from Mathew Israelsohn a profoundly deaf member of the Hackspace, seen here in the centre of the photograph.

LHS visit

At the print shop the delegation were able to reflect on the possibilities of combining health and employment support budgets to enhance both their job prospects and recovery  and heard from Karen one of the participant users. Finally at the fab lab they were introduced to the range of equipment by Tamsin the project manager and were able to explore the possibilities offered by digital fabrication for disabled people becoming makers themselves whether for hobbies, learning or work. Disability Rights UK will be partners in a mobile digital fabrication laboratory from January 2015 and next month the first reference meeting of disabled people who will oversee the project will take place in Salford.

There is a UK wide hackspaces co-ordination group called the UK Hackspace foundation, they maintain a list of hackspaces here:

http://www.hackspace.org.uk/view/Main_Page

Martin Dittus has a list of London workshops/makerspaces/hackerspaces here:

https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/User:Martind/OpenWorkshopsLondon