London Hackspace has a new venue :D

London Hackspace has been running for ~14 years.

It started out as a social club for programmers, engineers & techies, and due to the facilities that we built for ourselves, it morphed into a community workshop, where people could get better-priced access to a wider range of tools than any one individual could maintain on their own. :D

More information can be found here:

https://london.hackspace.org.uk/

We've been using a number of different places as our venues, and we just started moving into our new venue last Friday. :D

We're still setting up, so everything there is currently Work-In-Progress.

While it isn't all set up, our current equipment list can be found here:

https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Equipment

We have the cheapest lasercutter in London, but this is because we don't just charge in money, but in time. All of the equipment is maintained by members volunteering to help, so it's an ideal opportunity to learn about the care & feeding of the tools. :D

Our current legal structure is using a Company Limited By Guarantee, rather than a co-op, but it's essentially a buyer's co-op in form, as we share expenses and effort, to get access to a better range of tools than we can afford as individuals.

This is where it is relevant to co-operatives.

The idea that i was planning to pitch at the Co-op Hackathon, is to set up Co-operative Workshops that could be used for local fabrication and manufacturing.

The price-point of the hardware necessary for Digital Design, Digital Fabrication, and, Digital Manufacturing, has fallen incredibly over the last 30 years.

The original FabLab created at MIT cost between $150k-$250k in 2000/2001.

Nine years later, a group of 4 artists in Holland built one for 5000 Euros. :D

The instruction manual for their set-up can be found here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121014094321/http://www.fablabamersfoort.nl/en/page/fablab-instructable-0

As the price-point of the tools has dropped, there are a wide number of opportunities for co-operatives that are now feasible, as the manufacturing costs of the necessary infrastructures have fallen to the level that local fabrication would be profitable. :D

One of the needed infrastructures for a resilient society is for food-growing.

There are designs for self-contained planters that give 3 times the crop yield using 50% of the soil, and 20% of the water.

One set of designs i helped with can be found here:

https://wickcuriosityshop.net/collection/plant-regulated-growing-system

All that is required for a basic set-up is access to sunlight, and a clean water supply, and as they are self-contained, they can be installed anywhere, including marginal land that isn't currently suitable for farming.

Used effectively it would increase the growable land on our planet by 40%.

If we set up food-growing co-operatives based at every food-bank, then no-one would need to go hungry. :D